Steven Holl Architects’ Experimental “Crinkle Concrete”

Developed for Washington DC’s John F Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, Steven Holl Architects’ experimental “crinkle concrete” treatment gives walls in the new expansion, known as The Reach, the appearance of crumpled paper. More than an aesthetic development of an ancient material, the cast-in-place concrete diffuses sound and offers additional acoustic support in performance spaces. In a detailed interview with CityLab, Garrick Ambrose, the project …

National Geographic on How Science Fiction Informs the Future

Word would travel of scientist Giovanni Aldini’s electric reanimation experiments on dead criminals in 1803 to author Mary Shelley before the 1818 publish of her book Frankenstein. It was an instance of science informing fiction. In turn, Shelley’s masterpiece would then inspire scientist Earl Bakken to develop the first wearable, battery-operated pacemaker. This is only one example of science fiction triggering the pursuit of scientific …

Farewell to Legendary American Photographer Robert Frank

Documentary photographer Robert Frank has passed away at 94 years old. Frank’s seminal book of photographs, The Americans pioneered a new direction for the discipline as he depicted seemingly ordinary scenes of people from various classes. As Alex Greenberger writes for ArtNews, “Frank’s unsparing eye sought to portray things as they really were—unaestheticized, somewhat plain, more than a little dour. Yet, for all the bleakness …