History Archives - Metropolis

all (97)
viewpoints (46)
profiles (10)
projects (35)
products (3)
events (1)
programs (2)

History

Products

In Collaboration with Teknion, SOM Reissues Designs from Its Archive

The new Ikon collection revisits work from SOM’s long-unsung interiors division, originally created for powerhouse clients, including Halston and IBM.
Products

From Skyscrapers to Chairs: Rewriting SOM’s American Design Legacy

An exhibition by Rarify reframes SOM’s philosophy of total design by reassessing decades of forgotten furniture and interiors.
Projects

Turkey’s Ephesus Experience Museum has Learnt History’s Lessons

With a building designed for disassembly and a cutting-edge virtual experience, this museum is the perfect response to Ephesus’s 3000-year history.
Viewpoints

The Politics of Adobe Architecture

Recent scholarship on earth architecture in America highlights larger issues concerning power, extraction, and Indigenous resistance to the settler state and capitalism.
Projects

Is Paris’s Olympics Architecture Right-Sized for our Times?

With its tight environmental targets, reuse of historic landmarks, and adaptable housing, Paris 2024 aims to make hosting the Olympics thrifty and useful to the city.
Viewpoints

How Dune and Poor Things Rely on Architecture History

This year's sci-fi and fantasy blockbusters are the latest in an ongoing relationship between architecture and science fiction.
Projects

How Midsize Cities Are Driving America’s Urban Transformation

Explore how American cities with populations under 1 million are reimagining themselves with bold projects and policies, and driving urban transformation and innovation.
Viewpoints

From Victorian Gardens to Corporate Biophilia, Nature Inside Unearths a History of Interior Plantings

Despite differences in motivation, context, and aims, Penny Sparke shows that bringing flora inside stands as a token of unspoiled nature, a reminder of what’s gone.
Profiles

Q&A: Mariana Mogilevich on New York City’s Path to a More Democratic and Diverse Civic Realm

Upon the release of her book The Invention of Public Space, the architectural historian discusses a little-known but pivotal chapter of urban history.
Projects

Finding Purpose in the Quotidian Relics of “Postmodernization”

A new book from the Canadian Centre for Architecture gathers the "obsolete artifacts" often overlooked by Postmodernism's historians.
Viewpoints

With the Reissue of Reyner Banham’s Classic, Tracing the Megastructural Moment

The recent reissue of Banham's Megastructure helps mine the typology's precedents and points toward the ambitious movement's contemporary heirs.
Viewpoints

The Task at Hand: 100 Years of the Adjustable Desk Lamp

A technological breakthrough and a little-acknowledged bellwether of Modernism, the task lamp finally gets its due.
Viewpoints

How Russian Architects Tried to Build a New Socialist World Using “America” as Their Guide

Americanizm , an exhibit at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, examines the USSR's ardent fascination with American technology and culture.
Profiles

Ken Isaacs Wanted to Retool the Way We Live

A new book revisits the designer's visionary work, which advanced everything from flexible, “living” structures to microhouses.
Viewpoints

That ’70s Thing: Why Young Architects Today Are Enthralled by Vintage Technologies

Designers have fixated on the visual culture that wrought Casio wrist watches and Superstudio. Mario Carpo explores the reasons why.
Viewpoints

In X-Ray Architecture, the Metaphor Escapes Control

Beatriz Colomina's new book overlooks the concrete cruelties of the designed environment.
Viewpoints

Sitting Alone in Public: How the Café Chair Defined Modern Urban Culture

Beginning with Thonet's innovations two centuries ago, the development of the café chair typology reflects upheavals in cities and design.
Projects

New Exhibition Explores Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic Architecture—and the Slaves Who Built It

In "Palladian Models, Democratic Principles, and the Conflict of Ideals," the uplifting content of early American civic buildings is offset by the reality of enslaved labor.
Viewpoints

Far from Being a Temple to Rationality, the Bauhaus Was a “Cauldron of Perversions”

Architectural historian Beatriz Colomina explores how the Bauhaus harbored deeply transgressive ideas and pedagogies.
Viewpoints

For a Time, Josep Lluís Sert’s Brawny Buildings Defined Modern Boston

Through his campus work, Sert left an incredible built legacy on the Boston area. But his building have taken some getting used to.