The Chowk

The Chowk is a magazine committed to bringing you the most fascinating stories from the world of art and design.

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The Clever Architectural Feature That Makes Life on Bermuda Possible - Atlas Obscura

Bermudians are some of the most water-conscious people in the Western world, and this consciousness is built into their homes. The blindingly white, limestone Bermuda Roof—an architectural rain-catch concept with roots dating back to the 17th century—is singularly responsible for making human life possible in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The roof of each home is mandated, by law, to catch…

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Funny Business - An Inside Look at the Art of Cartooning - Little Goat Productions

Little Goat Productions’ documentary Funny Business is the first feature length, insider look at some of the best known cartoonists for the venerable New Yorker magazine. The film won a CINE Golden Eagle Award for excellence in filmmaking.

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Inside Sweden's "Museum of Failure" for failed gadgets and electronics - YouTube

Welcome to the “Museum of Failure”, a new museum in Sweden that takes a look at history’s biggest failed products featuring cool gadgets, electronics. The museum in Helsingborg, Sweden founded by Samuel West is meant to teach its visitors about innovation and learning through failure.

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How Vincent van Gogh’s family secured his place in history – as told by his great-grandnephew

On the artist's 170th birthday, read about how his legacy reached us.

“What would have happened if Jo had not put [Vincent] on the map?” asks the Van Gogh Museum’s director, Emilie Gordenker. “Without her, we would not know van Gogh now as we do.” Photo by Beyza Eren on Pexels.com One of the most recognizable artists of the current times, Vincent van Gogh’s work would have been lost to time were it not for the work that his family members put in to preserve his…

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Hegra, an Ancient City in Saudi Arabia Untouched for Millennia, Makes Its Public Debut | Travel | Smithsonian Magazine

Once a thriving international trade hub, the archeological site of Hegra (also known as Mada’in Saleh) has been left practically undisturbed for almost 2,000 years. But now for the first time, Saudi Arabia has opened the site to tourists. Astute visitors will notice that the rock-cut constructions at Hegra look similar to its more famous sister site of Petra, a few hundred miles to the north in…

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Vandamm theatrical photographs, 1900-1957 - NYPL Digital Collections

On the World Theatre Day, explore some elaborate sets from 20th Century New York theatres.

On the World Theatre Day, explore some elaborate sets from 20th Century New York theatres. “Porgy and Bess” in 1935 Noël Coward’s “Present Laughter,” Plymouth Theatre 1947. “Point Valaine,” 1935 at the Barrymore Theatre Scene from “Wonderful Town”, Winter Garden Theatre, 1953 “Jumbo”, Hippodrome Theatre, 1936. See more pictures from the archive here.

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Living Inside the Earth: the Yaodong, cave buildings in China – SOCKS

The Yaodong (窑洞) is a type of architecture developed in the Loess Plateau in the north of China. The name literally means “cave building” and describes a series of buildings carved into the earth.The region has a wide temperature range during the year, with cold and dry winters and hot summers; the earth surrounding the interior spaces in the Yaodong helps keep them isolated in both conditions.…

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It’s Time for a New Definition of Architectural Beauty – Common Edge

Beauty has been thought of as the only aesthetic quality worth worrying about. People strove to create it. They defined ugliness as its absence and blandness as its insufficiency. Buildings that didn’t go far enough were deemed unsuccessful and those that went too far were deemed pretentious. Even so, it was important to try because buildings were either Architecture if they tried, or vernacular…

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What Can We See in the Oldest-Known Photographs of Kandahar? - Atlas Obscura

Explore the earliest known photographs of Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Simpson, a British surgeon assigned to the Indian Medical Service, had been sent to the strategically located city not only as a military doctor, but also as a documentary photographer, tasked with creating a visual record that would serve a bevy of purposes, including for surveillance, military intelligence, and propaganda directed at the British public. When he left the following April, along…

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Inside the Picture Perfect—and Highly Lucrative—Business of Book Styling - Literary Hub

The woman who owns this home commissioned Juniper Books—a company that specializes in custom residential libraries—to style and stock hers. They sourced books based on her guidelines and printed unique custom jackets to display the graphics she chose. The apartment came with the library when she bought it, and since she loves old books, it made sense to fill it up. With a small note of jealousy,…

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From sheep to sea – an ode to the iconic sweater that warms Cornish sailors | Aeon Videos

Famed for its indigo shade of the ocean and its place-specific knit pattern, the iconic sweater known as ‘the gansey’ has been worn by Cornish sailors on seaward journeys since the 18th century. In the short film Cast Out With Love, based on a poem of the same name, the UK-based filmmaker Greg Dennis takes viewers through the crafting process, from sheep-shearing to dying to knitting, capturing…

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How ‘Candy Crush’ Trapped Us in the Machine Zone - ArtReview

Candy Crush Saga arrived on mobile devices in November 2012, five years after the release of the iPhone but just as such shiny machines were hitting the mainstream. The game sat in your pocket next to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, gamified social media that could likewise be described as ‘free to play’. During a decade of stagnant wages, these companies also scored billions in revenue from the…

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The Man Who Invented More Than 800 Iconic Toys | Eddy's World | The New Yorker - YouTube

Eddy Goldfarb, who is ninety-eight, created such classics as the bubble gun, chattering teeth, and Kerplunk! Here’s how he did it. Compliment this piece with a history of another iconic “toy”: the Video Game Cartridge.

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Julia Morgan, American Architect - JSTOR Daily

A lasting legacy of Morgan’s career, then, is her completed work, particularly the buildings she designed for Progressive Era women’s organizations, which supported her throughout her career. The Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) was one of these. Morgan’s design for the YWCA in San Francisco’s Chinatown, founded in 1916, connects deeply to California history and shows the racial…

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Communication Breakdown: Grant Wallace, His Heirs & the Legacy of a Forgotten Genius – Riot Material

Read about Grant Wallace's tryst with spirituality and art.

I saw image after image of automatic writing, celestial alphabets, color-washed charts and diagrams covered in mathematical equations and writing, all so beautiful and mystifying, evidence of a profound intelligence and a very deep dive into abstruse mathematics and physics. There was so much of it, showing such incredible and intense devotion. I told him they were extraordinary. But he was so…

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These Gorgeous Photos Capture Life Inside a Drop of Seawater | Science | Smithsonian Magazine

Just when you think you have seen it all... here come the copepods! #biology #nature #photography #discovery

A passion for the infinitesimal leads a photographer to discover the countless creatures that live unseen in the ocean To really enter this world, you need to look through a magnifying lens. There you’ll see a vast array of vanishingly small plankton, including crustaceans known as copepods. They come in some 13,000 known species, from glimmering-blue sea sapphires to noodle-shaped cod worms.…

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The Woman who Documented New York's Super Funky Street Style of the 1980s- Messy Nessy Chic

Layering has always been the name of the game! See Amy Arbus' work, straight from the streets of New York

“The only direction I was given was to photograph anyone that made me turn my head,” Arbus explained looking back on her work. “The theory behind the whole On the Street page for ten years was that these kids were inventing the styles that then were going to be borrowed by [designers such as] Marc Jacobs, Anna Sui.” Amy Arbus is a celebrated photographer known for her portraits of people from…

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