September 2024: I.M. Pei, Black Mountain College, and Teaching Emerging Technologies
Plus, you can now support Scratching the Surface through our new Substack paid tier!
In August, we rebroadcasted two more favorite episodes from the archive: our 2021 conversation with artist and architectural historical Esther Choi and our 2022 conversation with architect, writer, and former Dean of the Yale School of Architecture Robert A.M. Stern.
EDITOR’S NOTE
Hi friends,
If you are like me, the summer ended abruptly, the first day of classes seemingly arrived out of nowhere. As always, the summer felt much too short yet it feels good to be back in the classroom. Back-to-school season also means new episodes of Scratching the Surface return on September 11! I’ve recorded the first batch of episodes already and am excited to share them with you.
I’m also excited to announce that you can now support Scratching the Surface right here on Substack. For $5/month or $50/year you will help support our show and our ongoing efforts to build a platform for a new type of design writing. Supporters will be able to get our bonus interviews (with folks like Jessica Helfand and Jonathan Hanahan) right in your inbox each month. Now that we’re up and running on Substack, we have more bonus content coming too! Stay tuned.
Thanks, as always, for listening, reading, and following along. If you have pitches, guest suggestions, or want to chat, you can always leave us a note.
Until next month,
Jarrett
SCRATCH
Recent essays, interviews, and stories published on our Scratch platform.
Jessica Helfand on painting, faces, and research as artistic practice
For Patreon subscribers, we caught up with the designer, teacher, and researcher to hear about the intersection of emerging technology and design practice.
PAST GUESTS
Recent work, writing, and news from former guests of Scratching the Surface.
🛹 For CityLab, Alexandra Lange on how skateparks are growing up. (Alexandra also announced her next book, Making Do.)
🚫 For The Architect’s Newspaper, Aaron Betsky reviews The Atlas of Never-Built Architecture (we featured the book on Scratch in May).
👍 Dan Hill thinks you should read the new book by Justin O’Connor, Culture is Not An Industry.
😱 Paul Goldberger has architecture criticism in 2024 is defined by “shouting and not a lot of clarity.”
🎵 It’s Nice That talks to Mary Banas about her designs for Mitski’s album covers.
📚 Michael Rock interviewed Irma Boom for the Chanel Connects podcast, where they talked about the role of the book.
😇 Mimi Zieger wrote about John May’s Harvard studio course “The Temporary Contemporary: Assembling a Public in Downtown Los Angeles.
🚢 For The Nation, Karrie Jacobs considered the transformation of Gowanus.
⌨️ Michael Cina launches Cina Sans, a highly personal but very usable san-serif typeface.
🏠 Michael Kimmelman on two housing projects that point to solutions and challenges in California’s homelessness crisis.
BOOK ROUNDUP
Recent books that have arrived in the studio. All links are Bookshop.org affiliate links. If you order through Bookshop, we get some money to help support the show!
The Cities We Need by Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani (MIT Press)
Where would you take someone on a guided tour of your neighborhood? In The Cities We Need, a book of prose and photographs that reveals the way everyday places support our shared belonging, photographer and urbanist Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani introduces us to the complex, political, and eminently personable stories of residents who answered this question in Brooklyn, New York, and Oakland, California
I.M. Pei: Life is Architecture by Shirley Surya and Aric Chen (Thames & Hudson)
I. M. Pei (1917–2019) was one of the world's most influential architects whose legacy includes the realization of some of the most high-profile projects of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, from the modernization of the Louvre in Paris to the design of the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha. Going beyond the usual building-by-building format of most architectural monographs, I. M. Pei: Life Is Architecture (co-edited by former StS guest, Aric Chen!) is organized thematically, exploring Pei's life and work through six topics that were central to his unique approach to architecture: transcultural identity, urban redevelopment, art and civic form, material and structural innovation, politics and patronage, and regenerating cultural and historical archetypes.
Double Vision: The Cinema of Robert Beavers by Rebekah Rutkoff (MIT Press)
Double Vision is a beautifully written work of biography and criticism that tells the inside story of Robert Beavers (b. 1949), a major American avant-garde filmmaker. Until now, Beavers's dramatic life of itinerancy and resistance to commercial circulation has obscured his recognition as one of today's most significant living filmmakers. In Double Vision, Rebekah Rutkoff, the first scholar to have full access to Beavers's writing archive, sheds light on this deeply original underground figure and reveals the way Beavers's films explore nonoptical seeing--awareness itself--as an outcome of cinematic sight.
Here: Where The Black Designers Are by Cheryl D. Holmes-Miller
Celebrated designer, writer, activist, and educator Cheryl D. Holmes-Miller's memoir of a life in advocacy and her journey to answer the question "Where are the Black designers?" Holmes-Miller traces her development as a designer and leader, beginning with her own family and its rich multiethnic history. She narrates her experiences as a design student at Rhode Island School of Design, Maryland Institute College of Art, and Pratt, leading up to her oft-cited Pratt thesis examining barriers to success for Black designers.
READ/WATCHED/HEARD
Articles, books, videos, and other ephemera that caught our eye this month.
📢 Monument Lab launches “Bulletin”, a new public art and history print journal.
POSTSCRIPT
During a short family trip to Asheville, NC this month, I was excited to finally get to visit the Black Mountain College Museum. BCM has been a touchstone for me for the last fifteen years or so and its influence on my own thinking feels like it has only increased. (I even used it for content for a publication project in graduate school!). It was a real treat to finally get to the museum and get another view on the exciting, experimental school.