Group items tagged

The new 18,000 sq. m. Maison de l'Économie Créative et de la Culture en Aquitaine, MÉCA, creates a frame for the celebration of contemporary art, film and performances, cementing the UNESCO-listed Bordeaux as the epicenter for culture. Check out the monolithic, sculptural building here…

One of our most innovative, popular thinkers takes on-in exhilarating style-one of our key questions: Where do good ideas come from? With Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson pairs the insight of his bestselling Everything Bad Is Good for You and the dazzling erudition of The Ghost Map and The Invention of Air to address an urgent and universal question: What sparks the flash of brilliance? How does groundbreaking innovation happen? Answering in his infectious, culturally omnivorous style, using his fluency in fields from neurobiology to popular culture, Johnson provides the complete, exciting, and encouraging story of how we generate the ideas that push our careers, our lives, our society, and our culture forward. Beginning with Charles Darwin's first encounter with the teeming ecosystem of the coral reef and drawing connections to the intellectual hyperproductivity of modern megacities and to the instant success of YouTube, Johnson shows us that the question we need to ask is, What kind of environment fosters the development of good ideas? His answers are never less than revelatory, convincing, and inspiring as Johnson identifies the seven key principles to the genesis of such ideas, and traces them across time and disciplines. Most exhilarating is Johnson's conclusion that with today's tools and environment, radical innovation is extraordinarily accessible to those who know how to cultivate it. Where Good Ideas Come From is essential reading for anyone who wants to know how to come up with tomorrow's great ideas.

London-based design practice SHH identifies and fills the work culture gap in #China by introducing more collaborative and networking opportunities in a large luxurious co-working set-up in #Guangzhou. Check out the story here

Through contemporary spatiality and a shared ecosystem, 'Common Lights' by Cosmos Architecture promises to offer the community of #BanjaLuka a versatile social and cultural life. Check out the newly unveiled designs of this multifunctional cultural centre…

What would a museum represent in the 'Burning Man' culture? What role would the people play? Through dynamic engagement, the 'Museum of No Spectators' by creators John Marx and Absinthia Vermut asks a series of pertinent questions that address nonconformist cultural preservation

The small Dutch town of Spijkenisse celebrates the opening of its new cultural centre today. The Theatre de Stoep designed by Ben van Berkel of UNStudio…

In what may feel like a flashback to the porn wars of the '60s, a new study investigates the link between a country's relative gender equality and the degree of female "empowerment" in the X-rated entertainment it consumes. Researchers at the University of Hawaii focused on three countries in particular: Norway, the United States and Japan, which are respectively ranked 1st, 15th and (yikes) 54th on the United Nations' Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM). To simplify their analysis, their library of smut was limited to explicit photographs of women "from mainstream pornographic magazines and Internet websites, as well as from the portfolios of the most popular porn stars from each nation." Then they set out to evaluate each image on both a disempowerment and an empowerment scale, using respective measures like whether the woman is "bound and dominated" by "leashes, collars, gags, or handcuffs" or "whether she has a natural looking body." Their hypothesis was that societies with greater gender equity will consume pornography that has more representations of "empowered women" and less of "disempowered women." It turned out the former was true, but, contradictory as it may sound, the latter was not. "While Norwegian pornography offers a wider variety of body types -- conforming less to a societal ideal that is disempowering to the average woman -- there are still many images that do not promote a healthy respect for women," the researchers explain. In other words, Norwegian porn showed more signs of female empowerment, but X-rated images in all three countries equally depicted women in demeaning positions and scenarios. This, the researchers surmise, "suggests that empowerment and disempowerment within pornography are potentially different constructs." So, gender equality is accompanied by sexual interest in a broader range of beauty types but not a decrease in porn's infantilization of females, use of dominating fetish gear on women or any of the other characteristics th

Winner of an international competition, Dutch architects Mecanoo and Kaohsiung-based MAYU architects' Tainan Public Library represents the meeting of cultures, generations and histories; check it out and leave us your views…

Architectural studio Concrete designs #HotelAndaz at #Munich, borrowing the best of the local culture and tradition to compose a contemporary project that is as myriad as the city itself.

Ar. Rajeev Sathe designs a transparent office in Mumbai, steering the design to balance the innate values of the company with the cultural ethos it wishes to inculcate in its employees. Check it out here…

An iconic cultural beacon, the Hangzhou Yuhang Opera House, designed by Henning Larsen, marks an unmistakable presence as it nestles on East Lake's expansive waterfront. Check it out here

Interior designer Saheba Singh of This Is It Designs Pvt. Ltd. focuses on underplaying cultural nuances, materials and colours to create a chic bar and lounge in Tokyo. Check out how she ensures veiled Indianness to seep through…

A bold form that draws from the modernist style of the campus and yet fosters a fresh perspective - the Anáhuac Cultural Centre is itself a work of art by Grinberg + Topelson Architects and Broissin Interiors.

Himematsu Architecture uses hemp leaf motif symbolic of growth as an integral pattern of a boutique hotel's facia in Tokyo, announcing Japanese cultural roots to a city readying itself for the Olympics 2020. Take a look here

Ar. Lotfi Sidirahal introspects into traditional Omani architecture and interior design to chisel a contemporarily flavoured resort at the scenic cliff edge in Oman. Check out the design and tell us what you think...

So, yes, it's true that the average guy on the street doesn't understand economics, and it's also true that we don't understand economics. We just have a more sophisticated lack of understanding than the guy on the street.

Public art projects are manned with an intention of eliciting some cultural feedback and significant finsings in the ethos of a city and its peple. Is this truly accomplished? Check out Baptiste Debombourg's work at Nantes and leaev us your views…

I'm an admirer of Caitlin Flanagan's skills as a writer of prose, and I like that she likes to take on topics that others shy away from. But it's always bothered me that the Atlantic lets her write articles that, under guise of book reviewing or some such, make sweeping statements of social trends without any kind of empirical backing or even recognition of the possibility that assertions can be verified or not through data. Fortunately, for the first time ever this blog has an intern, Ryan McNeely, currently pursuing an MA at Princeton and conversant with research methods and facts in a way that Flanagan isn't. I asked him to poke around at her latest article which posits that very young teen girls are spearheading a cultural counterrevolution against a burgeoning hookup revolution. Not surprisingly, there seem to be some problems.