#mark lamster

[davidbrussat]

Johnson's risky functionalism

Johnson’s risky functionalism

Eddie Warburg’s Manhattan apartment designed by Philip Johnson. (USModern)

Philip Johnson, the modernist architect who tricked America into embracing modern architecture, was a nasty piece of work according to Mark Lamster’s book, The Man in the Glass House. But there are some humorous passages whose inclusion reflects Lamster’s ability to use modernist silliness to tickle the funny bone of his…

View On WordPress

[davidbrussat]

Philip Johnson's MoMA flub

Philip Johnson’s MoMA flub

Exhibit at 1932 Museum of Modern Art. Model is of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye. (moma.org)

Dallas Morning News architecture critic Mark Lamster’s recently published book The Man in the Glass House, a biography of modernist architect and impresario Philip Johnson, has found so much to dislike in the man that I have been thoroughly enchanted – so far. But I want to quote a passage that almost…

View On WordPress

[coverspy]

The Man in the Glass House, Mark Lamster (M, 20s, collared shirt and striped wool tie, cardigan, navy leather sneakers, wearing grey fingerless gloves, Prospect Park Alliance tote between feet, Q train)

[jarrettfuller]

Mark Lamster is the architectural critic of the Dallas Morning News, a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and a professor in the architecture school at the University of Texas at...

On this week's episode of my podcast, Scratching the Surface, I have a really insightful conversation with the architecture critic Mark Lamster. Mark is currentlythe architectural critic of the Dallas Morning News, a professor in the architecture school at the University of Texas at Arlington and a recent Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He’s the author of several books, and is currently finishing a biography of architect Philip Johnson. In this episode, Mark and I talk about how he started writing about architecture, how making books is like making architecture, what it’s like writing about architecture for a daily newspaper, and how technology is changing the role of the critic.

I always love talking to architecture critics and Mark was especially interesting to talk to in that his post at a daily newspaper means he has a different audience and different experiences than pretty much every other guest I've had on the show. I really enjoyed his perspective and thoughts on writing for a general audience and the purpose of writing about architecture in an ever-changing culture. Enjoy!

[jarrettfuller]

A really nice piece on criticism in the digital age from Mark Lamster, the architecture critic at The Dallas Morning News:

Perhaps the single most important criteria for the critic is evaluating how a certain medium is adapting to, reflecting, and advancing the conditions in which it is created. Criticism itself has rarely had to do this, but now it is facing this dilemma; the critic needs to find new ways to respond to a changing media environment. That’s a daunting challenge, but one it would be hypocritical, not to mention self-destructive, not to embrace.

All change entails loss, and the losses in the shift to a digital culture in newsrooms have been deeply painful for the arts. Critics are perhaps not prone to optimism, but there are some corresponding benefits: We’re no longer constrained by the limits of the printed page; we can embed photographs and video and audio in our stories; and there are entire new platforms available to us — podcasts, social media, and whatever the next thing to hit might be.

It's a short piece and I could have easily quoted every paragraph — I really enjoyed it and it fits nicely with what I talk about so much on my podcast.

[davidbrussat]

Dish Dallas kitsch

Bo and Patty Pilgrim Chapel, at Dallas Baptist University. (DMN)

Mark Lamster writes about architecture for the Dallas Morning News, which owns, at least for now, my employer, the Providence Journal (for sale by A.H. Belo, which also owns the Morning News). So I was predisposed to be generous in my response to his essay “Kitsch Dallas: Why is the city of the future stuck in the past?” After all,…

View On WordPress

[discoveringdallas]

Quick thoughts on Mark Lamster's talk at the DMA tonight.

One comment stuck with me, but it was by no means a significant comment. Just that, to paraphrase, "DART has the most milage of public transit track in the US, but trains do go where the people are."

Lamster described this as "mind-boggling." (Maybe due to his fatigue from public speaking three nights in a row - nothing really poignant came out of his mouth tonight, but he has, what I consider the right mindset.) But things started to make sense to me. Our transit has low-ridership, because it was designed for low-ridership. The city/DART didn't bet their income would come from fares. Instead, it would come from an increased tax-base from new development along the transit routes. 

It is not meant to function for the people that live where the live now. It is supposed to be convenient for the "transformed" (be it gentrified or constructed from scratch) areas around the transit hubs. 

Transit-oriented development has bothered me for a while now. And the intense focus/obsession with new development or economic development (aka the new phrase for "urban renewal") from these entities/stakeholders that surround it.

Ugh! My frustration for economics, politics, and planning is always growing. Grrrr.

[mikasavela]

I wish designers cared as much about mass transit as they did about their bikes. We don't get very many articles in the design press about our decayed subway system, nor does there seem to be much of a galvanized movement within the design community to do anything about it. (I'm speaking here primarily about New York City.) Transportation Alternatives, a wonderful organization, bills itself as an "advocate for bicycling, walking and public transit," which seems bizarrely out of order to me. When the design (and architecture) press covers mass transit here, it's often to wax nostalgic about Massimo Vignelli's map of the system—wonderful, I admit.

From "It's Not (Just) About The Bikes" by Mark Lamster in Design Observer, 28 Nov 2011.