Mimi Zeiger

Critic, editor, curator and instigator.

If there was any lingering doubt that Brutalism — the architectural style derided for everything the name implies — was back in fashion, the “Atlas of Brutalist Architecture” quashes it with a monumental thump. At 560 pages representing some 878 works of architecture in over 100 countries, the outsize volume is part reference tool, part coffee table book, and certainly part of an ongoing design trend favoring big, big books.

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This year, the Van Alen Institute in New York celebrates its 120th anniversary. It’s hard to believe that an organization that was founded in 1894 as the Society of Beaux-Arts Architects would find itself in 2014 with a taxi-yellow bookshop on West 22nd Street, the drive to keep reinventing itself, and a new leader with a global vision. Read More …

The city. The city is arguably the dominant subject of architectural discourse today. Its return came in topical waves over the last decade: landscape urbanism, infrastructural urbanism, networks, shrinking cities, and wholesale metropolises constructed in China and the Middle East. And the 2008 bust, with the almost overnight evaporation of building commissions, by default solidified the city as subject, as the singular project for investigation. New York City’s grid, Detroit’s ruin, and Los Angeles’ heterogeneous sprawl proved enticing topics of research and speculation. Read More …