Welcome to Curbed's new weekly round-up of architecture and design on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and (god forbid) even LinkedIn. Collected from retweets, intra-office chats, and, well, anything that sent us into a 140-character tizzy, this is what Curbed editors actually read this week. Please be in touch if you have a recommendation for next week.
1. In case you can't afford the one-way ticket to Marfa, Texas [$661, we checked], Mark Lamster is here to help—or at least his Instagram account is. Follow the Dallas Morning critic as he makes an obligatory trek to Donald Judd's former home and the birthplace of lo-fi minimalism. Need a slightly longer primer on why Marfa, Texas, is a mandatory design pilgrimage? We can help with that too.
After decades of controversy, the Smithson's monumental housing estate is being emptied of tenants before demolitionhttps://t.co/oHkeQmWAyi
— Architectural Review (@ArchReview) May 18, 2015
2. Hold your breath, say your prayers: Robin Hood Gardens is finally, finally slated for demolition. This time, it seems pretty serious. Robin Hood Gardens is the only prominent remaining project designed by Alison and Peter Smithson—a Socialist power couple who set the agenda for Britain's post-war architecture and coined the term "Brutalism." And, for the last few years, the imperiled housing complex has been the will-they-or-won't-they of preservation battles. The British government granted Robin Hood a five-year immunity from demolition in 2009, an entire cadre of architects like Zaha Hadid and Richard Rogers rallied in defense of the embattled monument, and, at the conclusion of those five years, the Twentieth Century Society wrote a passionate screed that, once again, argued that building deserved permanent protection. Since the building is currently in the midst of a pre-demolition evacuation, it looks like it was all for naught.
3. Where do you find Jonathan Nesci, a self-taught industrial designer with an unshakable knack for elegant and playful forms, at NYCxDesign? Appropriately, he's taking a selfie in his own mirror. Only one of a dozen mirrors exhibited at Patrick Parrish's Present Perimeter exhibition, the project explores "a compositional framework that combines equal numbers of hexagons, half-hexagons, rhombuses, and triangles."
Oh my god, if I start snuffling around in this NYC map now, I'll emerge at dawn. http://t.co/MG0qjhRryq
— Justin Davidson (@JDavidsonNYC) May 21, 2015
4. This Tuesday, previously productive offices in New York, nay, the world, came to a halt when the New York Public Library published an entire catalog of historic photos of New York City—mapped, geotagged, and easily accessible. Here's what you might not know: The entire map has the potential to crowdsource urban information. Just click the places you know, add comments, adjust the transcription and voilà, you've altered the history of the city.
5. What happens when hundreds of architects (and Bill Clinton!) descend upon Atlanta for the annual American Institute of Architect's National Conference? They pay homage to John C. Portman, the cherished inventor of "futuristic cinema's go-to city." In case you don't know about Portman, let this primer be your introduction.
Once spent a day at Palmyra just after 9/11, nearly alone w the bedouin, awed by the consoling grace and urgency of its ruins. Now this.
— Michael Kimmelman (@kimmelman) May 20, 2015
6. Michael Kimmelman has every right to be sad about Palmyra. As of Sunday night, Syria's President Bashar al-Assad moved out, ISIS moved in, and preservationists across the globe clenched their jaws in pure horror. Palmrya, Syria's age-old city of Neolithic ruins, is irrefutably irreplaceable.
We're happy to share that a fall 2017 Donald Judd retrospective is set at @MuseumModernArt http://t.co/75jsFPglTb pic.twitter.com/3NWUxauz85
— Judd (@juddfoundation) May 22, 2015
7. Need proof that dreams do, indeed, come true? Minimalist golden boy Donald Judd is slated to take over the Museum of Modern Art come 2017. This will be the first major retrospective of Judd's work since 1988 and it should be big one. MoMA curator Ann Temkin explains that it will take over the entirety of the Museum's second floor contemporary galleries along with a significant chunk of the atrium.
8.Patrick Parrish, a gallery owner with an affinity for social media, just gets it sometimes. After the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, Wanted Design, #SUOFFSITE, and Collective Fair, it's time to indulge in design guilty pleasures.
re. @LangeAlexandra and @leedykxhoorn tribute to Sert's King School https://t.co/6SvGV3FD0I (painful to watch)
— Ana María León (@anamarialeon) May 21, 2015
9. Let's take a moment and add the demolition of Josep Lluís Sert's Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School in Cambridge, Massachusetts to the laundry list of things bumming us out this week. We're going to sit this one out and let Curbed critic Alexandra Lange (Plot twist: She attended the elementary school as a precocious youngin') explain why Sert's late life work matters so darn much. Here's a choice quote, "Architecture critic goes to kindergarten at modernist school. Years later, she returns to the city of her birth and discovers the school again, surrounded by construction hoardings, on the brink of destruction. Can she save it? Except that was me, and I was too late."
· All Too Short; Didn't Read coverage [Curbed]