You are currently browsing articles tagged architecture.
Architecture has long been a popular subject of alternative magazines. Clip Stamp Fold covered the architecture zine culture of the 1960s and 1970s, and now Archi-zines is trying to do the same for the present day, curated by Elias Redstone.
It’s currently a small list, but growing quickly – sadly no RSS feed right now, but it’s well worth checking back regularly to follow this evergreen genre of alternative urban thought through magazines.
icon is often overlooked in favour of the bigger boys like Blueprint (my mistake, thanks for the correction Will), but it’s consistently one of the most interesting and creative design/architecture magazines on the newsstand, such as when they got architects and designers to take a lie detector test for their Detectives issue. Their latest issue is a reminder of how their thoughtful angle doesn’t just review what’s out there, but also can push ideas and practice forward. It’s The Fiction Issue.
Imaginative thinking in the field is employed by a host of good names, including Will Self, Cory Doctorow, Bruce Sterling and China Miéville. The magazine’s review section this issue fits the theme too, with critiques of the MOMA/Tim Burton exhibition and an iPhone app about New York buildings that were never built.
They’ve also produced a limited-edition hardback version, to give it a chance at a longer lifespan. (A part of me wishes they’d also redesigned the pages to make it hardback size, but you can’t have everything.)
As ever, the subscriber-only cover (the blue one above, centre) looks much nicer than the coverlined one (the red one, right). Lovely image, too, though I’m not sure if the mouse needed to be labelled “fiction”, and I’m also not a huge fan of Fuel’s mangling of it with tree branches on that hardback edition (the red one on the left). But in a field where almost every cover right now shows that pointy building in Dubai, it’s a refreshing point of departure.
It’ll take more than a while for it to arrive on a newsstand over here, so I can’t comment on how it actually turned out, but I was sold on “this month, icon abandons journalism”. Definitely worth a look.
New Scandiwegian architecture/urbanism magazine Conditions looks rather lovely – a graphical cross between icon and Frame, perhaps – no bad thing. (Bonus link: icon this month features a grumpy cover by a graphic design hero – first Brody, now Jasper Morrison; old people today, no respect for print, I tells ya.)
Looks like there are some interesting infographics in there, too. Conditions does have a good name, and I’m looking forward to seeing a copy – but its launch cover reminds me more than a little of Loops. Space helmets are clearly in right now.
This is a fairly short review, and it’s entirely my fault.
Read the rest of this entry »
