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Criticalista

Rafael Gómez-Moriana's architecture blog

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Tag: popular culture

Love-You Architecture

“The envy and hostility of Wall Street leads many to a common goal: to amass enough money so as to … More

corruption, fuck-you money, inequality, love-you architecture, Panama Papers, politics, popular culture, tax havens, Wall Street

Ice Fishing in Gimli, a book project by Rob Kovitz

One of my favorite publishers, Treyf Books, is celebrating its 25th anniversary. To mark the occasion, Treyf is offering, for the first time, Ice … More

art, Canada, Manitoba, popular culture, Rob Kovitz, theory, Treyf

A Whimsical Water Tower in…Barcelona?

I spotted this fantastic water tower the other day while walking around Poble Nou, Barcelona’s industrial graveyard. Claes Oldenburg and … More

Barcelona, concrete, monument, popular culture, tower, water

Collective Intelligence or Collective Stupidity?

The above image is circulating on the internet representing all sorts of cities on all sorts of continents, showing us … More

authenticity, cultural identity, ethics, flexibility, interactive, internet, photography, politics, popular culture, site-specificity, social class, urbanization

Pop Architecture

Ordinary, everyday objects — that’s what most popular nicknames for buildings refer to. A gherkin, a paperclip, a typewriter, a … More

architecture, art, Claes Oldenburg, popular culture, semiotics

Holiday greetings

Vienna, 2009

fashion, popular culture

W: what is it good for?

A building has been going up–or did it come from outer space?–on Barcelona’s Sant Sebastià Beach that is popularly refered … More

activism, Barcelona, beach, ethics, George W. Bush, hotel, popular culture, Ricardo Bofill, seashore, tourism, war

Everyday Camouflage in “The Visitor”

The story told by Tom McCarthy in his highly commendable film The Visitor, which deals, among other things, with the … More

architecture, camouflage, film, popular culture, prison, urbanism

Us and Theme

If Venice, the Wild West, or Asia can be themes for parks, casinos, or hotels, then why not contemporary architecture? … More

design, hotel, popular culture, spectacle, theming, total design, tourism, Zaha

Lighten-Up in the Mies Pavilion

The installation by SANAA (Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa) at Barcelona’s Mies van der Rohe Pavilion is simple, subtle, and … More

Barcelona Pavilion, installation, Mies, monument, pavilion, popular culture, SANAA

Welcome to the Hotel Barcelona

In case anyone hasn’t noticed, Barcelona is in the tail-end of a hotel construction boom. And Barcelona being “Barceloooooonaaaaaa” means, … More

Barcelona, branding, highrise, hotel, leisure, popular culture, total design, tourism

Benidorm: The Pursuit of Pleasure by the Most Efficient Available Means

Benidorm is a city in southeastern Spain with an urban morphology that is highly unusual for Europe: it is a … More

Benidorm, coast, cultural identity, highrise, leisure, Onsite Review, popular culture, pragmatism, strategy, theory, tourism, urbanism

Less and More

[Originally published in HUNCH 6 / 7  109 Provisional Attempts to Address Six Simple and Hard Questions, in which 109 … More

architecture, education, ethics, HUNCH journal, manifesto, politics, popular culture

From White Cube to Big Box: Three Exurban Themes in the Work of Kim Adams

“Non-places are the real measure of our time; one that could be quantified…by totaling all the air, rail and motorway … More

adhocism, agriculture, art, automobile, Biennale of Sydney, countryside, D.I.Y., exurbia, installation, Kim Adams, popular culture, sculpture, suburbia, urbanism

Kitbashing, Street Remakes, and Bisexual Architecture: A Conversation with Kim Adams

Rafael Gómez-Moriana: Kim, you gave a talk in 1988 at the Christiane Chassay Gallery in Montreal in which you showed … More

adhocism, art, C Magazine, D.I.Y., Kim Adams, popular culture, prefab, sculpture, strategy

Winnipeg: One Great Situation-Normal (1)

[Originally published in Winnipeg Art Gallery exhibition publication Sit(e)ings: Trajectories for a Future] “Incredible…one can actually order ‘a cup of coffee’ … More

art, authenticity, cultural identity, D.I.Y., housing, popular culture, WAG, Winnipeg

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Criticalista collects Rafael Gomez-Moriana's writings on architecture and the built environment. All photographs by the author unless indicated otherwise.

©2014 Rafael Gomez-Moriana. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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