Essays & Criticism / JUSTIN R. WOLF

Common Edge • April 26, 2021

How Do We Solve America’s Housing Crisis?

The saga of the American suburb is a long one, often stained by blatant acts of poor planning, bad design, and outright racism. But the suburbs are key to the housing crisis conversation because fixing (not “abolishing”) the American suburb is a big part of the solution, whatever that may be.

Common Edge • March 23, 2021

Marschitecture: The Glory and Folly of Space-Age Manifest Destiny

Colonizing space has been the periodic obsession of governments, industrialists, and artists alike for decades. It’s not hard to realize why. What grander objective is there than conquering the infinite? It’s Manifest Destiny without a compass.

Common Edge • March 1, 2021

What -isms Can Tell Us About Architecture’s Preoccupation with “Human” Design

So if, suddenly, circa-2010, the “human experience” was the new bottom line, then we should inquire: What hole existed beforehand that (some) architects felt compelled to fill?

Common Edge • February 1, 2021

Elevated and Isolated: In Consideration of the Urban Skyway

It’s time for these anti-urban relics to go.

Common Edge • January 4, 2021

Should Architects Continue to Design Airports in the Age of Climate Change?

But the goal of climate commitments like Architects Declare, as well as ratings systems and certifications, is not to upend one’s business model; the goal is to be the North Star and facilitate a more rapid progression in due time.

Common Edge • November 23, 2020

Water Towers: Iconic Infrastructure, Underutilized Opportunity

"Water towers loom large, they sustain daily life, and occasionally they bisect our horizon. But there is no mystery to a water tower; there are no rich metaphors or tall tales one can summon. They’re anti-lighthouses."

Common Edge • October 19, 2020

Hallmark Urbanism and the Future of Small Town America

Coastal migration due to climate change might well spur a repopulation of small towns and cities.

Linked In • October 6, 2020

Defining workplace culture in the time of Covid

“Is returning to the office mission critical to your business’ survival, or is this urge to ‘return to work’ grounded in some perceived need to return to your workplace culture?”

Unpublished • January 1, 2016

It’s A Space Issue: Necessary Disorder in New York

The subways have always been a naturally occurring performance space, unsanctioned and unscripted, and made even more attractive to performers by their confines and mobility. Each car is a potential theater.

Siri Berg: Paintings: 1967-2013 • December 1, 2013

Catalog Introduction: Siri Berg Paintings: 1967-2013

She was not necessarily seeking perfection but perhaps a sense of closure, a cosmic equilibrium that successfully wed plasticity and nature.

Jason Covert: The Bridge (Exhibition Catalog) • November 1, 2012

Catalog Introduction: Every Mystery Needs Its Image (2012)

The Bridge brings to the fore a truth that most of us wish never to face: although we define ourselves by our memories, which often come from photographs, the truths we locate and settle upon are utterly relative.

Anderbo • August 1, 2010

How Do You Feel About Modernity?

Modernity embraces the idea that something “new” is still possible, and is, at the very least, the fathomable notion of the “New”; the conviction that pure archaism is not mankind’s prevailing legacy.

Gallery Crawl • May 12, 2010

DON’T MISS IT: Kate Gilmore’s “Walk the Walk” in Bryant Park

The park’s grounds were bathed in ample afternoon sunlight, but the hundreds who milled about all braced themselves against the unseasonably brisk winds running through. Most folks were there because it was just another stop in their usual routine, but on this day something kept them milling.

Gallery Crawl • April 1, 2010

“Remember That You Will Die: Death Across Cultures” at the Rubin Museum of Art

Memento Mori is the Latin-Christian maxim translated as “Remember that you will die.” It is altogether sobering and, in some perverted sense, comforting; it’s an epitaph for the masses—commoners and kings alike. It is also the subject of the ’s latest offering, of the same name, and although said offering is a modest one, this exhibition is, quite literally, breath-taking.

Gallery Crawl • March 14, 2010

Projects 92: Yin Xiuzhen’s “Collective Subconscious” at MoMA

Her goal was not to wash away collective memory, but to take her country’s aged loose ends and infuse them with a sense of hope. True to form, Xiuzhen has continued this practice of converging old and new with Collective Subconscious, which consists of a bisected minivan – front and back – joined together by an enclosed tube constructed out of stainless steel and scraps of used clothing.

Flavorwire • October 15, 2009

Kandinsky and Kandinsky: From Abstraction to Gemism

The Vasily Kandinsky show is a trip back in time to when the Guggenheim first opened its doors, to when Frank Lloyd Wright’s building was still considered a subtle slight on urban architecture.

Flavorwire • October 12, 2009

Maya Lin’s New Landscapes: Sculptural, Actual, and Environmental

Cruder models of mountainous terrain sit on stacks of cardboard boxes, topographical maps of terraced ravines are cut out of atlases and old phone books, and colorful orbs of varying size rest, almost cautiously, on the gallery floor.

Flavorwire • October 2, 2009

Bauhaus at the MoMA: A Very Long Essay That Develops a Proposition

While there’s certainly a finite amount of space on the sixth floor, it would be nice if Bergdoll and company further separated themselves from the Berlin show, and reserved a little slice for that side of history that says the Bauhaus didn’t die.

Canon Magazine • October 1, 2008

Grandiloquently and Clearly: The Mind of the Scrawler

But in the very act of writing down what Spiller happened upon, these people brought what could be called renegade academia to life, contributed to the unheard manifesto, and made objects that may have been better left unfound. Duchamp would've been proud.

JUSTIN R. WOLF

JUSTIN R. WOLF

ESSAYS & CRITICISM

How Do We Solve America’s Housing Crisis?

Marschitecture: The Glory and Folly of Space-Age Manifest Destiny

What -isms Can Tell Us About Architecture’s Preoccupation with “Human” Design

Elevated and Isolated: In Consideration of the Urban Skyway

Should Architects Continue to Design Airports in the Age of Climate Change?

Water Towers: Iconic Infrastructure, Underutilized Opportunity

Hallmark Urbanism and the Future of Small Town America

Defining workplace culture in the time of Covid

It’s A Space Issue: Necessary Disorder in New York

Catalog Introduction: Siri Berg Paintings: 1967-2013

Catalog Introduction: Every Mystery Needs Its Image (2012)

How Do You Feel About Modernity?

DON’T MISS IT: Kate Gilmore’s “Walk the Walk” in Bryant Park

“Remember That You Will Die: Death Across Cultures” at the Rubin Museum of Art

Projects 92: Yin Xiuzhen’s “Collective Subconscious” at MoMA

Kandinsky and Kandinsky: From Abstraction to Gemism

Maya Lin’s New Landscapes: Sculptural, Actual, and Environmental

Bauhaus at the MoMA: A Very Long Essay That Develops a Proposition

Grandiloquently and Clearly: The Mind of the Scrawler