The First Step Housing Competition Tia Blassingame With180 entries submitted from thirteen countries for the First Step Housingcompetition, on October 28, 2003 Common Ground Community and the ArchitecturalLeague of New York announced that five design proposals would share top honors.First Step Housing, developed by Common Ground, offers private, affordabletransitional housing. As opposed to regulated and […]

Review: Pamphlet Architecture 23: MOVE: sites of trauma Tia Blassingame MOVE: Sites of Trauma cover image MOVE: Sites of Traumastyle=’font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Verdana’>opens with a brief discussion ofthe often antagonistic relationship between the Christian Movement for Life, orThe Movement (MOVE) membership, Philadelphia law enforcement and the WestPhiladelphia neighborhood that lead to the May 13, 1985 annihilation of threecity […]

Review: Pretty Vacant Tia Blassingame Houser, Image from Pretty Vacant by Clive Piercy   Review:Pretty Vacant: The Los Angeles Dingbat, Observed by Clive Piercy,Chronicle Books (October 2003)   Twentyyears after moving to Los Angeles, Brit Clive Piercy has composed his loveletter to the city and his cherished dingbats in this glossy, brick-likehardback. Vacant islargely a […]

From chaos "an endless work party of jubilation"  Tia Blassingame  Interior View of the Hubbells House before the fire   From chaos "an endless work party ofjubilation": can architects heal a scorched and scarred San Diego?     Atthe close of October, four wildfires–Cedar, Paradise, Otay andRoblar–terrorized San Diego County. From the tight-knit community of […]

Transcendent Journeys: The Photographic Vision of Max Victor Alper J. Wallace  Red image: �Shades of Red� ,Blue image: �Night Quest� ,Yellow image: �The Awakening� Max Victor Alper, 11 x 14 C-Print, Amsterdam Whitney Gallery Receivingconsiderable acclaim in New York City recently for his fine art photography isMax Victor Alper, a former faculty member and administrator […]

Sophisticated Variations Kirse Junge-Stevnsborg  Techno I (1999)   Perfectgeometry and ornamental stylization demonstrates the polarity in Siri Berg’sshow at Konstn�rshuset in Stockholm. She presents an ample perspective of herwork, ranging from radical minimalist paintings dating back to the 70’s tonewer and more commingled works on Japanese paper and canvas – ranging fromcollages, polychromes, monochromes, and […]

Adventures in the Present / Out of Brazil Carlos Sansolo  Erika Fraenkel, F�rias For�adas   We began by holding screenings at a few art galleries, media art centersand museums in Brazil; after the first event, we thought it would be importantto have international videos to establish a dialogue with our own nationalproduction.   Our situationhere in […]

Playing with Shonibare Anthony Downey Maxa, Yinka Shonibare, 2003, Emulsion, acrylic on textile   Notoften does a painting leave a grin on your face, and it is even more uncommonto find that grin still there after you have left the gallery. YinkaShonibare’s paintings, however, do exactly that – and, crucially, somethingelse too. An entire wall […]

Bill Rabinovitch and Jackson Pollock Squared Tarvis Watson image of him as fighter pilot   If youever find yourself having coffee with Bill Rabinovitch, be sure to ask himabout his days flying fighter jets. It’ll take him a moment to conjure hisprevious incarnation and he’ll probably iterate that he never did any fighting,having left the […]

Divining Fragments: Reconciling the Body K�an-Jeff Baysa  Patrick Martinez, Untitled, 2002, video installation, with assistance from the National Library of Medicine. Thehuman body is a slippery surface upon which discourses of race, class, gender,and sexuality are mediated, and thus it is a contested scientific, political,ethical, cultural, economic, and social site. Since human subjectivity andidentity are […]