activism

Article: Wishful Thinking

Public Anagrams

Public Anagrams is based on the manipulation and subversion of mainstream slogans describing well-known public art and urban development paradigms and strategies, such as “smart cities” or “urban regeneration”. By mixing up letters and by turning upside-down the slogans, the artist aims at raising critical awareness about the hidden outcomes of urban development strategies. Slogans […]
Article: Critical Imagination

Bersih 4: Street Protests as a Form of City Making

Cities and architecture are not devoid of politics. Produced and governed through political processes, they often become the canvas upon which power is mapped. But this can also backfire. A square, designed to provide the setting for showing off the architectural grandeur of an institution, often becomes the very place where the populace gathers to […]
Article: Critical Imagination
Feature Image: Kevin Dooley, Paper Money, Extreme Macro, CC BY 2.0

The Four Faces of Financialization: Cities as a Site of Struggle

In spite of describing an important set of social and economic transformations, the word financialization has become used so frequently and in so many contradictory ways, that it risks becoming as fragile and confusing as other recent buzz-words like globalization, neoliberalism and gentrification. Yet the forces at work behind the term are real and have […]
Article: The Unmasters
Mark van der Net - Amsterdam

Fewer Regulations, More Open Source and a Broader View

This is what Mark van der Net thinks can uncover new perspectives for architecture and urban planning. CA: Mark, you created OSCity – a free online platform that combines cutting-edge technology, open source and spatial planning. Can you briefly explain what it is and how it started? MvdN: It started about two years ago. Around […]
Article: The Unmasters

Towards Collective Subjectivity

We spoke to Alex Foti and Trebor Scholz during Moneylab #3 – Failing Better? in two separate conversations, addressing a set of the same questions from two different perspectives. The final format of this interview as a conversation has a comparative purpose and should not be read as an actual record of a conversation. CA: Can […]
Article: Critical Imagination

Call to Action – On How the Political Potential of Architecture can Give Power to a Marginalized Community

With the unstable political ground in recent years, the subject of architecture in the political setting has suddenly gained new interest worldwide. As a response to the post-2008 financial recession and its inevitable repercussions within the built environment, the prevailing doctrine of corporate ‘iconic’ architectural production is now being greatly challenged by the daring alternatives […]
Article: The Unmasters
Let us keep our own noon_2013_David Horvitz

No one owns the beach: On time and public space on and offline

AM: Could you tell us something about your latest projects? DH: Recently I have been thinking a lot about different ideas of time and its standardization. I have realized a few projects related to time zones and time distribution. In one of them I melted an old bell; in another I moved the border of […]