CriticalProductive

10/06/2023

Editor Milton S. F. Curry in a recent Q&A with The Architect's Newspaper:

"Architecture and urban design must be part of the conversation about how to build, sustain and maintain social order through equitable and diverse means. Technology will not solve social, cultural, political problems without a proper humanistic lens."

AN asked leading architectural educators about their role, including Milton Curry of Cornell College of Architecture, Art, and Planning (AAP).

10/06/2023

We are extending our ISSUE 2 Submission Deadline!

Submit to CriticalProductive Journal by November 21st 2023 for peer review.

Visit our Journal's MIT Press page to learn more about the theme CURRENTS AND FLOWS and to see our Submission Guidelines: http://direct.mit.edu/cpro

08/03/2023

Exciting news! Founding Editor Milton S. F. Curry is joining Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning (AAP) as Senior Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives and Engagement and Professor of Architecture.

Previously, he was Dean at the University of Southern California School of Architecture, 2017–22.

Former USC School of Architecture Dean (2017–22) Milton S.F. Curry will be joining Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning (AAP) as its new Senior Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives and Engagement and Professor of Architecture.  Curry's new...

07/13/2023

Open Call for Projects
ISSUE 2: CURRENTS AND FLOWS
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Submission Deadline on October 10th, 2023
Details + Guidelines at http://direct.mit.edu/cpro
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CURRENTS AND FLOWS takes up the issue of human migratory flows, planetary + climate precarity, and the resulting natural and cultural conditions.

CriticalProductive is interested in work exploring the aesthetic, spatial and physical dislocations that result from the organization of people and capital, in, around and between urban centers and cities.

The Journal welcomes creative work, critical analysis and studies, from urbanists, humanists, designers, architects, artists, philosophers, anthropologists and more, on this important topic.
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MIT Press

03/09/2023

Meet SARAH MINEKO ICHIOKA, Editorial Collective Member—

Ichioka is an urbanist, strategist, curator and writer. She leads Desire Lines, a strategic consultancy for environmental, cultural, and social-impact initiatives and organizations. Her latest book, Flourish: Design Paradigms for Our Planetary Emergency, co-authored with Michael Pawlyn, proposes a bold set of regenerative design principles for addressing our compound environmental and social crises.

In previous roles, Ichioka has explored the intersections of cities, society and ecology within leading international institutions of culture, policy and research—including as Director of The Architecture Foundation (UK) and as Co-Director of the London Festival of Architecture (both from 2008 to 2014).

Ichioka’s critical writing has been published by the Serpentine Gallery (Koenig), the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism (Actar), Barbican (Prestel), Mies van der Rohe Award (Actar), and the Urban Age (Phaidon). Her commentary and reportage have been featured in CNN.com, Monocle, BBC London, Folha de S.Paulo, and Design/Anthology, amongst others.

(Photo Credit: Photography by Abdul Hafiz, courtesy of DesignSingapore Council)

MIT Press

03/07/2023

Reminder! Call for Projects - ISSUE 1: Sovereignty / Populism—

We are seeking essays, creative design work, and visual art addressing past, present, and/or future approaches to questions of sovereignty, populism, and design—broadly speaking.
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CriticalProductive is a journal/magazine of culture, arts, and architecture that publishes innovative and multidisciplinary research, scholarship, and creative work.
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The Submission Deadline for this issue is April 14, 2023!
Read more at our MIT Press page: https://direct.mit.edu/cpro

03/04/2023

CriticalProductive x MIT Press Launch Announcement!

"...We are excited to partner with the MIT Press on CriticalProductive, part of a constellation of actions aimed at diversifying academic scholarship and dissemination of creative work; and broadening the audiences of the work of our contributors." - Editor Milton S. F. Curry
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Read the announcement here: https://mitpress.mit.edu/mit-press-to-launch-culture-arts-and-architecture-journal/

Also, check out CriticalProductive Journal's home on the MIT Press website—with Journal Info, Call for Projects and Submission Guidelines: https://direct.mit.edu/cpro

CriticalProductive is a unique publication at the forefront of discourse and visual representation about the present and future conditions of cities and urban spaces.

03/03/2023

Meet AMANDA WILLIAMS, Editorial Collective Member—

Amanda Williams is a visual artist on the south side of Chicago, who trained as an architect at Cornell University. Her work seeks to inspire new ways of looking at the familiar and in the process, raise questions about the state of urban space and ownership in the United States. Williams' creative practice employs color as an operative means for drawing attention to the complex ways race informs how we assign value to the spaces we occupy.

Williams has exhibited widely, including at the MoMA in NY; Venice Architecture Biennale; MCA Chicago; and a public commission with Andres L. Hernandez, at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis. Her work is in several permanent collections, including at the Art Institute of Chicago and the MoMA.

She has been recognized as a MacArthur Fellow, a USA Ford Fellow, a Joan Mitchell Painting and Sculpture grantee, a 3Arts Next Level awardee and is the inaugural Artist-In-Residence at Smith College. She sits on the boards of the Graham Foundation, The Black Reconstruction Collective and the Pulitzer Arts Foundation.

A highly sought after lecturer, including a 2018 TedTalk, Williams has served as a Visiting Professor at Cornell University, Washington University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

(Photo Credit: Tony Smith, Photographer; Storefront for Art and Architecture)

MIT Press

03/03/2023

Meet JASON STANLEY, Editorial Collective Member—

Jason Stanley is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. Before coming to Yale in 2013, he was Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Rutgers University. He has also been a Professor at the University of Michigan and Cornell University.

Stanley is author of the books Knowledge and Practical Interests (2005), which won the 2007 American Philosophical Association Book Prize; Languages in Context (2007); Know How (2011); How Propaganda Works (2015), which won the 2016 PROSE Award for Philosophy from the Association of American Publishers; and How Fascism Works (2018). His forthcoming book project, The Politics of Language (co-authored with David Beaver) will be published by Princeton University Press later in 2023.

Stanley writes about authoritarianism, propaganda, free speech, mass incarceration, and other topics for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Review, The Guardian, Project Syndicate and The Chronicle of Higher Education, among other publications.

MIT Press

03/02/2023

Meet BEN UYEDA, Editorial Collective Member—

Uyeda is a designer, builder and entrepreneur based in Joshua Tree, CA, and the founder of HomeMade Modern and The Modern Home Project. He designs and builds everything from furniture to houses, and shares videos of his process via social media to more than 10 million monthly viewers.

In the last several years, Uyeda's design ideas have reached more than 50 million people, and the free designs he gives away are being built on six different continents. He gave a TEDx talk, "Why I Give My Best Design Ideas Away for Free" (2015), in which he explains his shift in focus to delivering affordable designs to the masses. Despite the populist and affordable nature of his work, Uyeda's designs have been featured in an exhibition and workshop at the Vitra Furniture Museum in Germany.

Previously, he's lectured at the Cornell University Department of Architecture, and at Northeastern University. He co-founded the award-winning architecture firm ZeroEnergy Design.

MIT Press

03/02/2023

Meet SHAWN L. RICKENBACKER, Editorial Collective Member—

Rickenbacker is a trained architect, urbanist and urban data researcher. He is Director of the J. Max Bond Center for Urban Futures, where he directs the Center’s sponsored research, and Associate Professor of Architecture at the CCNY Spitzer School of Architecture.

Rickenbacker's research and work at the Bond Center directly confronts the complex intersection of spatial equity and the social, environmental, and economic impacts of place-based policies, programs and design through the lens of urban data, forensic and design research. Through his leadership, the Center has embarked on several funded research projects spanning from Harlem New York, and internationally to Accra, Ghana.

He’s served as Senior Research Fellow at the Phyllis M. Taylor Institute for Social Innovation, where he researched ‘Artificial Intelligence and The Future of Social Urbanism’; The Favrot Chair in Architecture at Tulane University; Gensler Distinguished Professor at Cornell University; and Director of the Motorola Sponsored Future Interactions Lab at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Design.

MIT Press

03/01/2023

Meet ARTURO ORTIZ STRUCK, Editorial Collective Member—

Architect, visual artist, and skilled multi-disciplinarian, Arturo Ortiz Struck has had his work exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2008, 2012); Guangzhou Triennial for contemporary art (2005); and invited participation in the Ordos 100 project in 2008.

He is the head of Taller Territorial de México, an architecture, art and urbanism research workshop in Mexico City, and has been since 2007. His professional practice addresses a variety of types and scales, including interior, architectonic and urban design, and urban planning.

Arturo won the National Journalism Award, Rostros de la Discriminación, for his 2012 article "Desde la arquitectura, la discriminación" ("From architecture, discrimination") discussing structural discrimination through the lens of maid's rooms, present in the homes of middle and wealthy upper classes in Mexico.

He has taught at the Architecture Department of Universidad Iberoamericana, and at University of Michigan's Taubman College.

MIT Press

03/01/2023

Meet FRIDA ESCOBEDO, Editorial Collective Member—

Escobedo is an architect and the founding principal of Frida Escobedo—her eponymous studio in Mexico City—since 2006. The studio’s reputation, initially built on a series of competition-winning projects in her native country, has since achieved global scope.

Escobedo received the prestigious appointment to design the annual Serpentine Pavilion in London’s Kensington Gardens in 2018, becoming the youngest architect to undertake the project.

Recently, in 2022, she was appointed to design the new Modern & Contemporary Wing for The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, becoming the youngest and first woman architect to design a building for the institution.

She has taught at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture (2016), Planning and Preservation (2015); the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London (2016); Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (2016/2019); Rice University (2019); and Yale University (2022).

Escobedo is the recipient of numerous accolades, including the Architectural League of New York’s Young Architects Forum Award (2009), the BIAU Prize (2014), the Architectural Review Emerging Architecture Award (2016), and the Architectural League Emerging Voices Award (2017).

(Photo: Frida Escobedo, 2014, Columbia GSAPP)

MIT Press

02/28/2023

Meet R. A. JUDY, Editorial Collective Member—

R. A. Judy is Professor of Critical and Cultural Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, and a member of the boundary 2 Editorial Collective. His work spans comparative literature and cultural studies, as well as Arabic literature and Black studies.

Judy is author of (Dis)forming the American Canon: The Vernacular of African Arabic American Slave Narrative (1992), and Sentient Flesh: Thinking in Disorder, Poiēsis in Black, published by Duke University Press in 2020.

He has published numerous essays in the areas of philosophy, contemporary Islamic philosophy, literary/cultural theory, music, and Arabic and American literatures. Judy has also edited numerous special issues and dossiers for boundary 2.

MIT Press

02/28/2023

Meet FERNANDO LUIZ LARA, Editorial Collective Member—

Fernando Luiz Lara is Roland Gommel Roessner Centennial Professor of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is also Director of the PhD Program in Architecture. From 2012-2015, Lara was Chair of the Brazil Center at the Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies.

Lara works on theorizing spaces of the Americas, with emphasis on the dissemination of architecture and planning ideas beyond the traditional disciplinary boundaries. He's written articles discussing the modern and the contemporary architecture of our continent, its meaning, context and social-economic insertion.

His recent publications include two books, co-edited with Felipe Hernández—CENTER 24: Decolonizing the Spatial History of the Americas (2021) and Spatial Concepts for Decolonizing the Americas (2022). His other publications include Excepcionalidad del Modernismo Brasileño; Modern Architecture in Latin America (Hamilton Award runner up 2015) and Quid Novi: Architectural Education Dilemmas in the 21st Century (Anparq best book award 2016).

(Photo Credit: Beatriz Lara)

MIT Press

02/24/2023

Meet ARLENE DÁVILA, Editorial Collective Member—

Dávila is a Professor of Anthropology and American Studies at New York University, and she is the founding director of The Latinx Project—an interdisciplinary space focusing on Latinx art and culture, and hosting artists and curatorial projects at NYU.

A recognized public intellectual focusing on questions of cultural equity, and Latinx and critical race studies, Dávila is the author of multiple books focusing on Latinx cultural politics spanning the media, urban politics, museums and contemporary art markets.

Her latest book, Latinx Art: Artists, Markets and Politics (Duke Press 2020), was selected as one of the best art books of 2020 by the New York Times and ARTnews, and as a favorite book by Smithsonian scholars and Artnet News.

MIT Press

02/24/2023

Meet JUNOT DÍAZ, Editorial Collective Member—

Born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New Jersey, writer Junot Díaz is author of the critically-acclaimed short story collection Drown; The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and This Is How You Lose Her, a New York Times bestseller and National Book Award finalist.

He is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, PEN/ Malamud Award, Dayton Literary Peace Prize, Guggenheim Fellowship, and PEN/O. Henry Award. Díaz has received a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

A graduate of Rutgers College, Díaz is the Rudge and Nancy Allen Professor of Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Previously, he was the fiction editor at Boston Review. He is the cofounder of Voices of Our Nation Workshop, a community-based organization that puts writers of color, their narratives, voices, and experiences at the center of all conversations.

MIT Press

02/24/2023

Meet PETER GILGEN, Editorial Collective Member—

Gilgen is Associate Professor of German Studies, and Director of the Institute for German Cultural Studies at Cornell University. He is also a member of the Graduate Field of Comparative Literature at Cornell.

His areas of interest include: aesthetic theory (including aesthetics of nature); art theory; German Idealism and Romanticism; systems theory; the relation between literature and philosophy; poetics; the history and medium of lyric poetry; contemporary experimental literature.

Gilgen’s most recent work includes essays on beauty and posthumanist aesthetics, translation and the philosophy of history (Benjamin and Kant), the conditions of the contemporary university, as well as a number of essays on the urgency of literature.

(Pictured on the right: Peter Gilgen speaking at the CriticalProductive launch event, V1.1: Theoretic Action, at Van Alen Books, New York in 2012.)

02/23/2023

Meet LILY H. CHI, Editorial Collective Member—

Chi is Associate Professor of architectural design, theory and history, and Director of Graduate Studies for Architecture at Cornell University. Interested in the ways in which architecture construes and constructs temporality, Chi has written on filmic and literary spaces, on formulations of architectural ‘use,’ and on informality in contemporary urbanism.

Architecture’s role in the city as political context is a theme in a number of her recent projects, including a Graham Foundation supported study of tourism, city-building, and war in 20th-century Saigon.

Chi’s current projects—a database of experimental incremental housing design, and a collaborative book project with Sarosh Ankesaria entitled Reconsidering the City Museum: the Case of Sanskar Kendra—explore the agency of buildings as remote artefacts, destined to increasingly distant contexts and indeterminate futures.

MIT Press

02/23/2023

Meet TEDDY CRUZ and FONNA FORMAN, Editorial Collective Members—

Cruz and Forman are long-time partners and Principals of Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman—a research-based political and architectural practice in San Diego, investigating issues of informal urbanization, civic infrastructure and public culture, with a special emphasis on Latin American cities.

Cruz is Professor of Public Culture and Urbanism in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of California San Diego, where he is also Director of Urban Research in the UCSD Center on Global Justice. Cruz is known internationally for his urban research of the Tijuana/San Diego border.

Forman is Professor of Political Science at UCSD and Founding Director of the UCSD Center on Global Justice. A theorist of ethics and public culture, she focuses on human rights at the urban scale, climate justice in cities, and equitable urbanization in the Global South.

Together, their work has been exhibited widely, including at the MoMA, NYC; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, NYC; Das Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; and M+ Hong Kong. They represented the United States in the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale.

(PHOTO CREDIT: Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman)
MIT Press

02/22/2023

Meet DANA CUFF, Editorial Collective Member—

Dana Cuff is Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at UCLA (UCLA Architecture and Urban Design), where she is also Director of cityLAB—an award-winning think tank advancing experimental urbanism and architecture. Cuff has published and lectured widely about design equity, the architectural profession, and affordable housing, and her leadership in urban innovation is widely recognized in the U.S. and abroad.

Cuff is author of several books, including The Provisional City (2001), about postwar housing in Los Angeles, and a co-authored book, Urban Humanities: New Practices for Reimagining the City (2020), documenting her collaborative, cross-disciplinary research and teaching at UCLA funded by the Mellon Foundation. Her new book, Architectures of Spatial Justice, was published by MIT Press in 2023.

Based on cityLAB’s design research, Cuff co-authored a landmark bill permitting “backyard homes” on virtually all 8 million single-family properties in California (AB 2299, Bloom-2016), doubling the density of suburbs across the state. Cuff co-authored a second piece of legislation (AB2295-Bloom), signed into law in fall 2022, to permit affordable workforce housing on school land throughout California. She and her team are working on a wide range of new forms of affordable housing to be co-located with schools.

02/22/2023

Meet NAHUM DIMITRI CHANDLER, Editorial Collective Member—

Nahum D. Chandler is Professor in the School of Humanities at the University of California, Irvine and is known as a scholar of the work of W. E. B. Du Bois. His latest book, “Beyond This Narrow Now”: Or, Delimitations, of W. E. B. Du Bois, was published by Duke University Press in 2021.

He is author of the book, X: The Problem of the Negro as a Problem for Thought (Fordham University Press, 2014). His book-length essay, Toward an African Future—Of the Limit of World, first issued in 2013, was re-released by SUNY Press in 2021.

Chandler has lectured throughout the U.S., Europe and Japan. He's served on the faculties of Johns Hopkins University and Duke University, in addition to his current appointment at UC Irvine and multiple invited visiting professorships. His research on W. E. B. Du Bois and Asia led to his appointment as a distinguished research fellow at the Pacific Basin Research Center at the Soka University of America in 2020-2021.

MIT Press

02/16/2023

Meet SOL CAMACHO, Editorial Collective Member—

Architect, curator and urban designer, Sol Camacho founded and directs RADDAR, an architecture firm based in São Paulo, Brazil and Mexico City. RADDAR represents an innovative architectural practice, viewing research-as-design and design-as-research as complementary processes that feed into each other.

As Cultural Director of the Instituto Bardi / Casa de Vidro in São Paulo in 2017-2022, she managed Lina Bo Bardi’s archive and was in charge of cultural programming and exhibitions—curating international exhibition "Glass Houses" and more. Notably, she co-curated Brazil’s exhibition "Walls of Air" for the Venice Biennale in 2018.

Camacho has taught, written and lectured internationally on architecture, urban design and conservation, with appointments at CENTRO in Mexico City; Kent State University College of Architecture and Environmental Design in Ohio; PUC Lima in Peru; FADU in Montevideo, Uruguay; and Escola da Cidade in São Paulo.

MIT Press

02/16/2023

Meet ADRIENNE BROWN, Editorial Collective Member—

Adrienne Brown is an Associate Professor in the Departments of English and of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity at the University of Chicago. In 2022, she was appointed Director of UChicago's Arts + Public Life intiative (Arts and Public Life), a dynamic hub that centers people of color and fosters neighborhood vibrancy through the arts on the South Side of Chicago.

Brown specializes in American and African American cultural production in the 20th century, with an emphasis on the history of perception as shaped by the built environment. Her book, The Black Skyscraper: Architecture and the Perception of Race (2017), received the 2018 Modern Studies Association’s First Book Prize.

She is currently working on a book that charts how Americans experienced residential space as a social, spatial and racial unit during the move to mass homeownership in the United States in the 20th century.

MIT Press

02/14/2023

Meet MARSHALL BROWN, Editorial Collective Member—

Marshall Brown is an architect, artist, and scholar. Notably, he has represented the United States at the Venice Architecture Biennale. His work is in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Contemporary Photography, and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

Brown is also Associate Professor at the Princeton University School of Architecture where he directs the Princeton Urban Imagination Center.

In 2022, he was awarded a grant by the Graham Foundation for his second and latest book, The Architecture of Collage—published in conjunction with the exhibition, The Architecture of Collage: Marshall Brown, at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.

02/14/2023

Meet HANSY BETTER BARRAZA, Editorial Collective Member—

Originally from Barranquilla, Colombia, Hansy Better Barraza co-founded Studio Luz Architects (Studio Luz Architects) in Boston, MA nearly 20 years ago and is Professor Emerita at RISD. She embraces a collaborative design approach and draws from culture and local craft to transform traditional expectations of urban spaces, using architecture as a tool to confront inequity in the built environment.

In 2016, Barraza was awarded a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts to support the research, writing and publishing of her book, Where are the Utopian Visionaries? Architecture of Social Exchange.

Studio Luz’s designs have received international honors including the Architectural Record Design Vanguard Award, a Progressive Architectural Award, multiple AIA Design Excellence Awards, the Architectural League of New York’s Young Architect’s Award and the Chicago Athenaeum’s American Architecture Award.

(Pictured on the right: Hansy Better Barraza, Amanda Williams, and Teman Evans in conversation at the CriticalProductive Symposium “Curating Race, Curating Space” at Taubman College in 2011.)

MIT Press

02/13/2023

We're excited to introduce the many, very talented expert collaborators / peer reviewers serving on our Editorial Collective in 2023! — Individual EC member intros this week.
MIT Press

02/03/2023

Meet Editor in Chief / CEO, Milton S. F. Curry!

A leading cultural thinker, his research and creative work spans arch, urban design & critical theory. He is Professor of Architecture at the USC School of Architecture, where he was Dean from 2017-2022. He was Visiting Scholar at Harvard GSD in Fall 2022.

Professor Curry has been featured on NBC News, Huffington Post, Architect’s Newspaper and Los Angeles Times for his thought leadership at the intersection of architecture, city design, cultural and racial identity, and contemporary art.

Professor Curry is published widely, and has lectured widely - most recently at Harvard GSD, Cornell Architecture, Princeton School of Architecture, Yale University, Rochester Institute of Technology Vignelli Center and at The Architectural League of New York’s 138th Annual Meeting.

He serves on the Museum of Modern Art Board of Trustees Architecture and Design Acquisitions Committee, and on the Abode Communities Board of Directors and Finance Committee.

Read a recent profile here: https://shop.designmiami.com/blogs/news/milton-s-f-curry

MIT Press

01/31/2023

THE ISSUE 1 CALL FOR PROJECTS IS OUT!
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Now welcoming submissions for CRITICALPRODUCTIVE ISSUE 1: SOVEREIGNTY / POPULISM. We are seeking theoretical, visual and spatial explorations that account for the past, present and future approaches to questions of sovereignty, populism and design broadly considered. See the CFP Prompt and Submission Guidelines at our MIT Press page: https://direct.mit.edu/cpro

Submission Deadline — April 14, 2023
Publication Date — Fall/Winter 2023

01/25/2023

New article on Archinect talks about CriticalProductive Journal's recent launch announcement!
MIT Press

Former USC School of Architecture Dean Milton S. F. Curry has announced the creation of a new architecture journal. Titled CriticalProductive, the peer-reviewed print and digital academic journal will be released three times per year by MIT Press and will be “invested in the intellectual project.....