Why Climate Adaptation Must Become Architecture's Central Project
'Architecture must reorient itself not as resignation, but as an act of creative resistance,' says 2025 Venice Biennale Curator Carlo Ratti.
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Bloomberg
5 hours ago
- Bloomberg
Why Climate Adaptation Must Become Architecture's Central Project
'Architecture must reorient itself not as resignation, but as an act of creative resistance,' says 2025 Venice Biennale Curator Carlo Ratti.
Washington Post
13 hours ago
- Washington Post
Carolyn Hax: Why can't sister-in-law just take their mother's advice in stride?
Dear Carolyn: You mentioned the importance of people feeling heard and what a difference it can make. I agree, but I'm a constant witness to my sister-in-law, 'Jane,' not extending that kindness to my mom. My mom is a super homemaker; no one cooks or cleans like her. She knows that, so she tends to offer advice. It can be a little annoying but also completely harmless and well-meaning. When she does it to me, I always say her way sounds better and agree to give it a try. To her credit, she never points out that I rarely follow through; she's happy if I just agree with her. After a recent holiday, she offered suggestions to Jane about the dinner. If you're wondering why not my brother instead, it's because if it had been up to him, we'd have had takeout on paper plates. Later, she did offer him a suggestion about how he was washing dishes, which he handled like I do. The things my mom said to Jane weren't mean or malicious, and it wouldn't have taken any effort for Jane to agree that the tablecloth would have looked better if it had been ironed, that the salad vegetables were a little underdone, that loose tea is better than bags. But my sister-in-law answers as if she said something else. Like when my mom said the tablecloth needed to be ironed, Jane said, 'Yes, we got that in France. Isn't it lovely?' It's weird and hurtful. My brother said he thinks Jane's way is 'clever,' but it's not to my mom. She even talked on the way home about how Jane ignores and 'talks down to' her. Can I try discussing this with Jane, since she is not the sort to be deliberately hurtful? — Constant Witness Constant Witness: An hour in this kitchen, and you'd witness me smashing crockery. Jane is a saint. Not just because of the oh-no-we-are-NOT-doing-this gaslight job you did with the storytelling. But let's talk about that: Since Jane prepared a holiday dinner for her husband's family on her own initiative, clearly, can we agree she undertook a lot of labor for love? Then your mom thanks her with three criticisms that couldn't hope to get any pettier. Oh. My. Floofing. Dog. You call them 'suggestions' that are, oh kayyy, 'a little annoying'! But 'completely harmless, 'well-meaning'! and 'weren't mean or malicious.' !!! To nitpick your daughter-in-law's holiday hosting is dictionary mean in a few senses — not to get all definey on you. Do you know what is actually 'completely' without harm? 'Thank you for a lovely dinner.' It's also 100 percent annoyance-free, requiring no multi-paragraph contortionist interpretive dancing by hyper-compliant grown children, because it's kind on its face. You are a constant witness to your mother not extending that kindness to Jane. Flatly withholding. What is the point of homemaking, an honorable and important purpose, if not warmth? And support. Yet you see Jane as problematic because she won't join your group lie propping up the queen of this preening dysfunction. Part of my urge to smash things is that I know, I know, there's a heart here somewhere that's trying to find the right place. Through all the eerie over-justified homemaker-matriarch reverence is a vibe that you're protective of your mother. Like, everyone needs to be in on this performative awe at her expertise, and Jane's refusal to simper along puts a fragile person at risk. Whatever the motivation, your response to Mom's deathless faultfinding unsolicited corrections is a disingenuous 'Your way sounds better, I'll try it,' then seamlessly ignoring her — and I couldn't ask for a better example in the wild of talking down to someone. So, whew. Thank you for that. It is not 'hearing' your mother. It's humoring her. It's buying (lying) your way out of the hard work of honest communication. This means a couple of things. For one, minor, it means you owe it to Jane to be a whole lot less upset with her. I recommend non-upset. While you're talking down to your mother, she's merely talking past your mother's left elbow, a survival tactic she probably whipped up to keep from throwing crockery herself. (Or she got it from me, since I've advised it before.) You and your brother had lifetimes, remember, to learn how to absorb un! re! len! ting! disapproval from a mother who, I'm guessing, finds love-love too vulnerable. Next, major: It means recognizing this whole humor-Mother act is, in fact, an elaborately workshopped emotional survival tactic. It's not some effortless courtesy gesture. Following the good-intentions idea, I'll posit that your mom is in her own protective shell. She may have found perfectionism safer than emotional intimacy. What your family is protecting itself from, that's too far offstage for me to see. (Maybe not for you and a therapist.) I just see performance where honest connection could be. In a truth-telling family, for example, you'd respond to Mom in the car: 'I wouldn't want to hear what I did wrong after cooking all day. To bond with Jane, try, 'I'm so grateful [Son] found you.''
New York Times
a day ago
- New York Times
Nathan Silver, Who Chronicled a Vanished New York, Dies at 89
Nathan Silver, an architect whose elegiac 1967 book, 'Lost New York,' offered a history lesson about the many buildings that were demolished before the city passed a landmarks preservation law that might have offered protection from the wrecking ball, died on May 19 in London. He was 89. His brother, Robert, who is also an architect, said that he died in a hospital after a fall and subsequent surgery to repair a torn knee ligament. Mr. Silver's book — an outgrowth of an exhibition that he curated in 1964 while he was teaching at Columbia University's architecture school — was an indispensable photographic guide to what had vanished over many decades. It was published as the city's long-percolating preservation movement was working to prevent other worthy structures from being destroyed. 'By 1963, it seemed urgent to make some sort of plea for architectural preservation in New York City,' he wrote. 'It had been announced that Pennsylvania Station would be razed, a final solution seemed likely for the 39th Street Metropolitan Opera' — it was destroyed in 1967 — 'and the commercial buildings of Worth Street were being pounded into landfill for a parking lot.' He added, 'While cities must adapt if they are to remain responsive to the needs and wishes of their inhabitants, they need not change in a heedless and suicidal fashion.' He found images in archives of 'first-rate architecture' that no longer existed, including a post office near City Hall; Madison Square Garden, at Madison Avenue and 26th Street; the art collector Richard Canfield's gambling house, on 44th Street near Fifth Avenue; the 47-story Singer Tower, at Broadway and Liberty Street; the Produce Exchange, at Beaver Street and Bowling Green; and the Ziegfeld Theater, at 54th Street and Sixth Avenue. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
