The Frontier Dozen—September 5, 2024
Annotated links to twelve stories, buildings, and projects that deserve your attention
Latest
Shelter in Place
A new book offers ideas for how we can survive the “long emergency”
100th Issue: Shelf Space
Celebrating a milestone with beautifully designed libraries
Stage Directions
Two books on performance—and how we relate to performers
Behind the Scenes: Set Pieces
On a new book Frontier designed and edited for a longtime partner
Neighborhood Watch
Let people become mayors of the medians and presidents of the empty plots
Renovation Project
Owen Hatherley celebrates the urban residential complexes denigrated in North America as “the projects”
The Frontier Interview—Brock James on designing libraries
The Toronto architect discusses the imperative of flexibility, fostering community, and responding thoughtfully to existing contexts
Trojan Horses
Will the Olympics die out before host cities learn how to harness them to achieve good things?
Let It Grow
An argument for preserving the intimacy, resilience, and dynamism created in postwar Tokyo—and exporting it across the world
The Frontier Interview—Dan Leers on “Widening the Lens”
On the definition of photography, sensing rather than seeing landscapes, and museums as drivers of sustainability and community
I Can See Clearly Now
On learning to think about exhibitions, not just art
The Built Environment
Enough Is Enough
On sufficiency and upfront carbon, through Lloyd Alter’s new book
The Built Environment
Eastern Promises
In Egypt, President Sisi speed-runs nearly two centuries of urban-planning ideas in service of his political agenda
The Built Environment
The Frontier Interview—Common Accounts, “The Death Report”
Igor Bragado and Miles Gertler rethink architecture’s relationship to the inevitable
The Built Environment
The Frontier Dozen—May 16, 2024
Annotated links to twelve stories, buildings, videos, or projects that deserve your attention
The Built Environment
Names On the Land
On the “narrative struggle” that monuments and markers represent
The Arts
The Frontier Interview—Virginia Hanusik
The New Orleans artist on extractive economies, resilience, and the emotional power of art
The Built Environment
Postcards from the Edge
Organizer and writer Matt Hern reports from the new suburbs
Technology
The Frontier Interview: Jake Dow-Smith
On the web’s needless complexity and translating signals from one medium to another
The Built Environment
The Frontier Interview: Terremoto
On creative autonomy, acknowledging labor and laborers, and building relationships that will last decades.
The Built Environment
Seeking Fulfillment
On touring an Amazon warehouse and reading Heike Geissler’s “Seasonal Associate”
The Built Environment
The Future Sound of London
A new anthology with predictions of London a century from now misses the voices of today’s residents.
The Built Environment
Passing It On
Two stories about helping the next generation