Worldcrunch
Our new OneShot proves that ghosts are real: Moe Zorayi has photographic evidence from Afghanistan … Listen to the award-winning Iranian-American photographer tell the story behind this powerful photograph. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/embed/8eZ73EKGRyE expand=1] Burqa Women in White (© Moe Zorayi/OneShot) OneShot is a new digital format to tell the story of a single photograph in an immersive one-minute video. Follow OneShot:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/embed/KZv3UMLsxX8 expand=1] OneShot — Jesus statue at American megachurch, 2005 (©Nina Berman/NOOR) OneShot is a new digital format to tell the story of a single photograph in an immersive one-minute video. Follow OneShot:
Alternative energy projects might be good for the environment. But with a few exceptions, they’re awful on the eyes.
Wandering the narrow streets of Peniscola, a village in eastern Spain, I stumbled upon this quaint — if kitsch — house. Not only did it get me wondering how long it took to plaster all the shells on the facade, but I could almost smell the plates of seafood paella that came first!
Planning experts from Denmark and the U.S. tasked with redesigning a Buenos Aires shantytown were surprised by some of its built-in people-friendly dynamics, which can be applied elsewhere — even in upscale projects
Some designers can’t wait to start burrowing. In Mexico, there’s even talk about building an ‘earthscraper.’
Many have hailed the innovations of Songdo, a planned community near the South Korean capital of Seoul. But the city, which once served as a set for the “Gangnam Style” music video, also has its critics.
A young designer from Paris is applying his knowledge about natural light to the narrow streets of the Argentine capital.
Vintage wallpaper and other Old World touches meld into chic Buenos Aires surroundings to push Home Hotel to be named the region’s top boutique address.
PALERMO — As the Sicilian capital’s oldest market, La Vucciria has long drawn visitors from around the world for its myriad colors and aromas. While its peculiar traditions live on, with vendors barking out in the local dialect to sell their products to passersby, the market is a shadow of its former self. Once immortalized […]
NICE — You can spot an IKEA store from a mile away: The classic blue-and-yellow box design of every outlet of the Swedish home goods giant is as much a part of its identity as the quirky names of its chairs and the meatballs at the snack bar. Get ready, though, because IKEA’s look is […]
Africa’s largest museum is set to open in Cape Town next month, backed by a former Puma CEO and designed by a star British architect. It is not without its critics.
Guédelon, an attraction in Burgundy, recreates the Middle Ages in a way that aims to make visitors smarter while they’re having fun.
César Pelli has designed some of the world’s best known skyscrapers. But he writes that the wonder of a beautiful city is collaboration over generations of many talented architects who care about the way people live.
-Analysis- Hamburg is a sleepy place most days. When the G20 isn’t in town, the port city churns with the comings and goings of large, steel barges in its spacious harbor. To the millions of visitors who arrive in the city each year, for business or pleasure, Hamburg appears as a sort of peaceful locus […]
AIX-EN-PROVENCE — Here, the vineyard traces the pathways of art. It usually is the other way around, whereby a well-known vineyard expands its activities (rooms for rent, a restaurant, exhibitions) to attract more wine buyers. But at Château La Coste, 15 kilometers from Aix-en-Provence in southeastern France, the cultural offer is so rich that people […]
Hong Kong was still under British rule when we visited it. This strangely shaped building was then named the Prince of Wales Building and housed the head office of the British Army. In 1997, when the island became an autonomous territory of China, it was renamed: Chinese People’s Liberation Army Forces Hong Kong Building — […]
In Switzerland, some local governments are turning to sound specialists to make cityscapes easier on the ears.
PARIS — In their quest for a sustainable urban future, city planners can learn a lot from history. And in Paris, that can mean just taking a moment to look around. Georges-Eugène Haussmann, the driving force behind a drastic overhaul of the city beginning in the mid 19th century, made an enormous and lasting mark […]
The architectural icon begun by Antoni Gaudi in the late 19th century is still incomplete. Now city hall wants to end a century-old legal exception, as debate continues about protecting the original architectural vision.
In the heart of the colorful moor of southern England, the Postbridge clapper bridge was built with large flat stones back in the 14th century. Beauty meets utility.
The Watergate complex may be the most famous building in Washington, D.C. for the wrong reasons — and we didn’t even have to break in to visit it!
SPOTLIGHT: THE WORLD TUNES IN TO VEGAS It’s a favorite trope in U.S. presidential campaign coverage to say “the world is watching.” In this campaign, it comes with a heavy dose of close-the-shades embarrassment, between Donald Trump’s treatment of women and Hillary Clinton’s treatment of her emails. But as the two candidates prepare for what […]
BUENOS AIRES — This city wants to make itself a kinder, friendlier place for the elderly, with plans to improve urban infrastructure and promote common-sense practices to help reduce accidents inside homes. Taking its lead from the World Health Organization (WHO), which has pushed in recent years for more user-friendly cities and better conditions for […]
HAVANA — Cuba“s belated embrace of the Internet has people packing into places like the Plaza de la Revolución and the colonial fort Castillito, two of the island’s just 114 public WiFi hotspots. Overall, the number of Cubans who regularly access the Web is still relatively small. But things are changing, and quickly. The Internet […]
-Analysis- BUENOS AIRES — We seem to have forgotten how architecture can affect us and for that, perhaps, we can blame some of the excessive statements made about it. Consider Leon Battista Alberti, an early theorist of Renaissance architecture, who declared in 1400 that the balance of classical forms could turn barbarian invaders into civilized […]
Just like nearby Venice, Commachio is built in a marshy lagoon across dozens of little islands, joined by bridges like the Ponte dei Trepponti here.
BUENOS AIRES — An Argentine architect has won his country’s 2016 Sustainable Habitat Prize for his very first project, a self-sustaining country home inspired by Michael Reynolds’s emblematic “earthships.” The winning project, designed by architect Germán Spahr and built near Bariloche, in western Argentina, maximizes insulation, is self-powered, has a vegetable patch and even treats […]
PUEBLA — Mexico’s recently opened International Museum of the Baroque, in this historic colonial city, is as much a work of art as the numerous 17th- and 18th-century pieces it contains. Designed for Puebla by Japanese architect Toyo Ito, the structure — with its 53 white walls, all a little different from each other, and […]
If you visit northern China’s Xuankong Temple, the famous “Hanging Temple” built into a cliff some 75 meters above the ground, believe me: You won’t let go of the hand rail.
From David Lynch to Francis Ford Coppola and Wes Anderson, filmmakers are going beyond movie sets to design hotels, bars and nightclubs.
A Sao Paulo cleaning lady turned to a group of architects in hopes of sprucing up her ramshackle home. The result was a prize-winning revamp that challenges conventional ideas about cost and aesthetics.
LYON — In 2012, you could still catch sight of “yoyos” hanging from the jail cell windows. A yoyo, in French prison jargon, is a cord inmates throw through window bars to reach another cell and retrieve various objects. At the Saint-Paul and adjacent Saint-Joseph penitentiaries, in downtown Lyon, inmates could even get stuff from […]
Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, winner of the 2014 Pritzker, has used material like paper and cardboard to rebuild homes in disaster zones. The displaced of Ecuador await his singular eye.
GRASSE — They call it “the Provençal permit,” a local custom of sorts that involves building first and asking questions later. The logic is that once a construction is in place, authorities will feel more or less obliged to approve it retroactively. It is surprising how often that actually happens. Recently, though, one land owner […]
Prince Charles believes brutalist buildings are like “monstrous carbuncles,” but there is a frenzied architectural movement afoot to save these concrete blocks.
One of the few wonders of this world that my wife and I did not get to see is Cambodia’s Angkor Wat temple. Still, in Thailand we visited one of the finest examples of Khmer architecture: the Prasat Hin Phimai temple, which used to be connected with Angkor by the Ancient Khmer Highway.
The stunning facade of the Basilica di Santa Croce in Lecce, in southern Italy, is a good example of the exuberant architectural style that has earned the city its nickname of “capital of Baroque.”
The Alhambra palace, in southern Spain’s Andalusia region, is a jewel of Islamic architecture, a testament to Moorish culture in the country. There would have been even more beauty to admire had my fellow Frenchmen from Napoleon’s armies not destroyed several towers 150 years before we arrived.
These beautifully fortified walls protect the old medina quarters of Fes, the “Mecca of the West.”