MAS = More

“There are images that are impossible to forget, searing themselves into our collective consciousness. One man staring down a column of tanks in Tiananmen Square. A high school student attacked by police dogs in Birmingham, Alabama. This is such a photo.” (The Atlantic)

Bill Cunningham, the street-style photographer whose photo essays for The New York Times memorialized trends ranging from fanny packs to Birkin bags, gingham shirts and fluorescent biker shorts, died in New York on Saturday. He was 87.

He wanted to find subjects, not be the subject. He wanted to observe, rather than be observed. Asceticism was a hallmark of his brand. (New York Times)

"The drawings illustrate hypothetical migrations to the city, whereby the original home of the migrant is layered with their current home within the city of Toronto," explained Evan Wakelin in his thesis research paper.

(Wind turbines, like the one seen here in Rochelle, IL, are among the recent transformations of Illinois soybean and corn croplands. © 2015 Luke Hegeman / MODUS Collective)

From the Hidden issue of MAS Context: 

“These logistics landscapes, where third-party logistics providers, warehousing and distribution facilities for online retailers, and manufacturing plants cluster around massive inland ports, are more than the just the inverse of America’s centers of tourism and commerce: they are distinct urban environments, critical junctions in the global circuitry of twenty-first century capital.

Like the shipping container itself, these environments are hyper-engineered for efficiency and economy, and are done so in an effort to transcend existing local ecological and hydrological dynamics. Standard rail turning radii, warehousing dimensions, and road widths are deployed across the country in an effort to maintain a physical uniformity that keeps the specifics of place at bay, thereby sustaining the high standard of living across the continent that so many Americans enjoy. However, if these logistics landscapes, like the sites of reinvestment so popular with today’s designers, are categorized based upon form alone, much is overlooked. The infrastructure and development needed to deliver goods to market collides with existing local economies and ecologies to produce regionally-specific logistics landscapes.” (MAS Context)

(Birmingham Central Library. Photo by Bs0u10e0/Flickr)

(Cloud Gate Sculpture at Millennium Park, view inside the sculpture gives an impression that contradicts the immaterial shining surface. © Jan Theun van Rees)

(An aerial view of the installation being constructed. Photograph by Luca Bruno/AP)

“For the first time, for 16 days, from the 18th of June to July 3, they will walk on the water,” Christo said of the 2,000 residents of Monte Isolo, which is normally only accessible by boat.

(John Margolies. Photo by Don Hogan Charles/The New York Times)

From sea to shining sea, John Margolies knew, there was much that cried to be photographed. There was the Long Island poultry store in the shape of a vast white duck; the gaping alligator’s mouth through which visitors entered a Kissimmee, Fla., zoo; the 65-foot-long muskie in Bena, Minn., that housed the Big Fish Supper Club; and the Donut Hole, a doughnut shop in the form of — what else? — in La Puente, Calif.

There were also main streets, motels and miniature golf courses; barbershops, billboards and banks; gas pumps, sumptuous movie palaces and a pink plastic flamingo or two.

Mr. Margolies, who died on May 26, at 76, was considered the country’s foremost photographer of vernacular architecture — the coffee shops shaped like coffeepots; the gas station shaped like a teapot (the Teapot Dome Service Station in Zillah, Wash.); and the motels shaped like all manner of things, from wigwams to zeppelins to railroad cars — that once stood as proud totems along America’s blue highways. (New York Times)

(The Belgian display includes this digitally manipulated photograph by Filip Dujardin of a pavilion with no apparent function, one of his "memorials." (Bravoure / Filip Dujardin)

The 48-year-old Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena calls his dense, earnest and grassroots edition of the Venice Architecture Biennale, which opened Saturday to the public and will run through November, “Reporting From the Front.” The show collects work from a range of architects operating on the forward lines of what Aravena calls “battles” against inequality, crushing poverty and environmental crisis and puts it on display with the informality of a journalistic sketch.

From the latest issue of MAS Context, Hidden, the contribution of sociologist and photographer David Schalliol.

Started more than 40 years ago, the Tunnel and Reservoir Plan (TARP) is a goliath project designed to mitigate this problem by reducing the number of times when untreated sewage must be released into the area’s waterways. During periods of heavy precipitation, rain is diverted into the Deep Tunnel, a network of more than 100 miles of conduits as wide as 33 feet in diameter and deep as 350 feet below ground. The tunnels channel the effluent and rainwater into large reservoirs, which store the combined wastewater until it can be treated by the plants—and then released into the waterways.

These photographs present the three major portions of the southeastern section of the system: the Deep Tunnel, the Thornton Reservoir, and the Calumet Water Reclamation Plant. These interconnected facilities serve large portions of Chicago and its south suburban communities. (MAS Context)

(All photos © Denis Cherim)

With an eye for unusual juxtapositions and serendipitous moments where the universe seems to synchronize itself just so, photographer Denis Cherim is there with his camera seeing what the rest of us do not. The ongoing series called the Coincidence Project incorporates a wide variety of photographic approaches from landscapes to street photography and occasionally portraiture. Gathered here are some of our favorites from the last few years, but you can see hundreds more photos by Cherim over on Flickr and Facebook. (Colossal via Booooooom) 

(Photo by Jeff Elkins)

An outpouring of joy rippled through the design community when the AIA announced last December that Denise Scott Brown, Hon. FAIA, and Robert Venturi, FAIA, would receive the 2016 Gold Medal. Everyone knew that Venturi and Scott Brown—Bob and Denise, to their legions of admirers—had produced more than enough work of historic importance over their decades-long partnership to merit the honor. But more than that, the award is significant in two respects: This is the first time a living woman has received the Gold Medal, and it’s the first time that two individuals have received it together, following a rules change by the Institute in 2013.

On Saturday, June 4, 2016, MAS Context is organizing the third edition of MAS Context : Analog, our one-day event of talks, exhibitions, and an onsite pop-up bookstore in Chicago. The event is organized in collaboration with AIGA as part of Chicago Design Week and it will be hosted at Studio Gang Architects.

MAS Context : Analog will gather a group of emerging and established practitioners within the field of design who will discuss their work based on four proposed themes: Food, Domesticity, Exhibition, and Communication. The event will include talks by artists, curators, architects, photographers, graphic designers, industrial designers, and cartoonist.

Speakers include Lucas Daniel, José Esparza, Jeanne Gang, Martin Kastner, Norman Kelley, Klaus, Ann Lui, Noritaka Minami, Craig Reschke, Zoë Ryan, Rick Valicenti, Tricia van Eck, and Alisa Wolfson.

(Victory Christian Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. Photograph: Lisa Anne Auerbach)