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The books, exhibitions, and theatrical productions AN reviewed in 2024
Plays about gentrification and Grenfell. Books about anarcho-syndicalism in the pre-war French construction sector. Exhibitions pertaining to the untold stories of architects who fought fascism, and the past, present, and future of Bahrain. These are just a few subjects AN covered this year in reviews. Here are the books, exhibitions, and productions AN reviewed in 2024.In Architecture from Below, Srgio Ferro addresses the relationship between architecture and capitalist developmentSrgio Ferro fled a dictatorship in Brazil decades ago and moved to France. Ever since, Ferro has lectured and written about workers movements, particularly in the French construction sector; and architectures pernicious relationship to capitalism more broadly.Architecture from Below: An Anthology (MACK Books) compiled these lectures and histories. It was edited by Silke Kapp and Mariana Moura, and translated by Ellen Heyward and Ana Naomi de Sousa. Doug Spencer reviewed the book for AN.What makes the Pearling Path most exciting is its use of existing city fabric and strategic piecemeal development. (Iwan Baan)Bahrains Pearling Path offers a two-decade retrospective on history, identity, and architectural narrativeAN contributor Ali Ismail Karimi took us to Bahrain this year to learn about Muharraq Pearling Path, a city-wide affair which attempted to tell the story of the Bahrain pearling trade through an architectural narrative.In his review, Karimi also ruminated on the recent projects in Bahrainnamely by Christian Kerez, Valerio Olgiati, Office KGDVS, Atelier Bow-Wow, FormaFantasma, Leopold Banchini, and Studio Anne Holtropand the Gulf more broadly. City Limits sees urban interstate development through the eyes of community organizersMegan Kimble, in her new book, City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of Americas Highways, offers a fiery critique of urban interstate developments. Anjulie Rao reviewed City Limits for ANwhile ruminating on her own experiences as a commuter in Chicago.City Limitsfocuses primarily on three Texas cities and their traffic freeways that undergird massive traffic flows: Houstons I-45, Austins I-35, andDallass I-345. What does the future hold for each of these infrastructures? Read Kimbles book to learn more.Much of the plot unfolds in a kitchen reminiscent of HGTV programming. (Joan Marcus)James Ijamess play, Good Bones, directed by Saheem Ali asks: What color is gentrification?At The Public Theater in New York, James Ijames staged a play inside a home renovation in an unnamed American city. The plays title is a likely riff on the HGTV series of the same name.Kevin Ritter reviewed Good Bones for AN. The plays central couple, homeowners Travis and Aisha, recently moved into the historically Black and systematically disinvested neighborhood where Aisha grew up, Ritter penned in his review. Travis is a restauranteur, selling historically Black cuisine at elevated prices.Gillian Slovos Grenfell was a chilling reminder for New Yorkers that it could happen here tooGood Bones was just one of two plays AN reviewed this year. The other was a theatrical production by Gillian Slovo on Londons Grenfell fire.SlovosGrenfell was an attempt at retelling the 2017 fires very complicated story with seemingly endless moving parts within a three-hour window of time (split by a 15 minute intermission) in all of its complexity and human emotion. Margarete Schtte-Lihotzky gets her first retrospective in the U.S.Ive done a lot more in my life than just this! Margarete Schtte-Lihotzky, then in her late 90s, told a reporter in 1997. TheAustrianarchitect had been asked about a project she was sick and tired of being asked about. If I had known that everyone was always talking about it, I would have never made this damn kitchen!Indeed, Margarete Schtte-Lihotzky was much more than the widely celebrated Frankfurt Kitchen she designed in 1927a project which catapulted her into the annals of modernism. She was also an antifascist resistance fighter that risked her life battling Nazis during World War II, an anti-Vietnam War activist, a militant feminist, and a bonafide communist that dedicated her life to the working class.At the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York this year, a new exhibition, Margarete Schtte-Lihotzky: Pioneering Architect. Visionary Activist, captured the full spectrum of the late architects contributions to design, and society at-large.Harvards The State of Housing Design underscores architectures limitsIts easy to feel defeated by the American housing systems dysfunction. ButThe State of Housing Design, abookthat the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard (JCHS) published in October last year, shows how new architecture is grappling with these realities. It features 113 projectsdiscussed across 25 essays and interstitialsthat speak to these themes.The State of Housing Design was reviewed for AN by Diana Budds.The show took place inside Banvard Gallery at Ohio State University. ( Knowlton School of Architecture)Samiha Meems Girlroom elevates the spatial politics of girlhoodArchitecture educator Hannah Dewhurst traversed the Knowlton School of Architecture this year to introduce readers to an exhibition by Samiha Meem, Howard E LeFevre 29 Emerging Practitioner Fellow at Ohio State University.Girlroom offered a physical set that references elements of the#girlhood movement, Dewhurst said. The work on display emerged from the algorithmic economy of recent years, and is part of a larger critical contemporary movement that includes artists like Molly Sodaintertwined withfeminine, spatial, computational, and queer theoretical investigations of the past century. In Dreams + Disillusions, CJ Lim and Luke Angers imagine other worlds through text and imageThrough a dozen case studies and more analytic chapters that romp through everything from the aftermath of Londons great fire to North Koreas Hermit Kingdom, British architects CJ Lim and Luke Angers presented a universe of brightly colored and gravity-defining architectures in their book, Dreams + Disillusions, which came out this year.Dreams + Disillusions was reviewed for AN by Aaron Betsky, professor of architecture at Kean University. Betskys own book, The Monster Leviathan, which also came out this year was reviewed for AN by Todd Gannon.Virginia Hanusiks Into the Quiet and into the Night diverts our attention to the everyday impacts of climate crisisWhen you hear the words climate crisis, what comes to mind? Surely, images of ominous thunder storms and tattered buildings are invoked, but what about the days, weeks, and months after tragedy strikes?In Virginia Hanusiks Into the Quiet and into the Night, the author captures the human toll global warming takes on people, and their daily lives. The photography book was reviewed by Alexander Luckmann.Theater of Hopes and Expectations models in the Center for Architecture galleries (Matthew Carasella)Constructing Hope: Ukraine foregrounds memory, communal organizing, and resiliencyAn expansive group show curated by Ashley Bigham, Betty Roytburd, and Sasha Topolnytska at Center for Architecture this year showcased how activists and designers in Ukraine have confronted Russias 2022 full scale invasion.Constructing Hope: Ukraine was reviewed for AN by Charlie Weak. The artists of the models are internally displaced people (IDPs) and refugees who participated in workshops led by thePrykarpattian Theater, Weak wrote. These differ from the exactness of other exhibition pieces. Their roughness, shifting scales, and levels of resolution say something about the memories that these homes held: Why might more care be taken to recreate this specific, workaday window? These moments of special focus elicit questions at the heart of theConstructing Hope: Ukraineexhibition. What makes a house a home? Owen Hatherleys Walking the Streets/Walking the Projects learns from New York and Washington, D.C.InThe Walker: On Finding and Losing Yourself in the Modern City, Matthew Beaumont recently revisited theflneurs place in the post-industrial metropolis; andThe Philosophy of Walking by Frdric Gros (translated by John Howe) did the same.With his latest book,Walking the Streets/Walking the Projects, architecture critic Owen Hatherley enters this echelon by asking what a new generation of American socialists might learn from strolling New York City and Washington, D.C.
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