PLATFORM
@platformspace.bsky.social
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PLATFORM
@platformspace.bsky.social
· Dec 5
Platform is a digital forum for conversations about buildings, spaces, and landscapes. Join us for timely, provocative, and diverse discussions on the built environment!
This week, Megan J. Sheard examines the remains of convict brick & timber industries Macquarie Harbour in Tasmania through a landscape-based method. She suggests a way to rethink colonial historiography through Australian Indigenous conceptions of Country. www.platformspace.net/home/bricks-...
PLATFORM: Bricks and the Body, Timber and the Tide: Architectural Traces at the Macquarie Harbour Penal Station
At the summit of Grummet Island, a sandstone outcrop in the dark tannined waters of Macquarie Harbour, lutruwita/Tasmania, is a brick with an idiosyncratic thumbprint pressed deeply into the red clay ...
www.platformspace.net
October 26, 2025 at 6:04 PM
This week, Megan J. Sheard examines the remains of convict brick & timber industries Macquarie Harbour in Tasmania through a landscape-based method. She suggests a way to rethink colonial historiography through Australian Indigenous conceptions of Country. www.platformspace.net/home/bricks-...
Last week, Marco Salazar Valle examines tolas, Indigenous monuments found in northern Ecuador. Tolas, he argues, are landmarks of a colonial legacy of destruction, a legacy that has been challenged by contemporary Indigenous preservation strategies. www.platformspace.net/home/tolas-i...
PLATFORM: Tolas in the Northern Andes: Plinths for Contesting Meanings
In March 2025, one of the retaining walls at the Inka site Malqui Machay in La Maná, Ecuador, fell down during an intense and atypical rainy season in Perú and Ecuador. Just like the growing human...
www.platformspace.net
September 22, 2025 at 1:12 PM
Last week, Marco Salazar Valle examines tolas, Indigenous monuments found in northern Ecuador. Tolas, he argues, are landmarks of a colonial legacy of destruction, a legacy that has been challenged by contemporary Indigenous preservation strategies. www.platformspace.net/home/tolas-i...
In installment #2 (also published in Chinese) Cole Roskam, Wang Chun-Hsiung, & Wu Kwang-Tyng continue their discussion of the state of Taiwanese architecture & the geopolitical context that has shaped its professional contours. Read more at the link! www.platformspace.net/home/curatin...
PLATFORM: Curating “Modern Life” and Architecture in Taiwan, Part 2
如需阅读本文的中文版，请点击此处。 This is the second part of a two-part conversation about an exhibition organized at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum last year. Co-curated by Wang Chun-Hsiung, Wu Kwang-Tyng, and Wang ...
www.platformspace.net
July 18, 2025 at 12:21 PM
In installment #2 (also published in Chinese) Cole Roskam, Wang Chun-Hsiung, & Wu Kwang-Tyng continue their discussion of the state of Taiwanese architecture & the geopolitical context that has shaped its professional contours. Read more at the link! www.platformspace.net/home/curatin...
This week, Francesca Piazzoni focuses on migrant older women in Liverpool to challenge narratives on urban demolitions, revealing them as tools for self-empowerment. She emphasizes the need to interrogate assumptions to promote justice-centered practices.
www.platformspace.net/home/unlearn...
www.platformspace.net/home/unlearn...
PLATFORM: Unlearning as Research: Lessons from Migrant Women in Liverpool
This is an installment in our series on migration. Click here to read the introduction to the series. Cities and buildings are seldom designed to satisfy the needs of migrants—people who come ...
www.platformspace.net
June 22, 2025 at 9:08 PM
This week, Francesca Piazzoni focuses on migrant older women in Liverpool to challenge narratives on urban demolitions, revealing them as tools for self-empowerment. She emphasizes the need to interrogate assumptions to promote justice-centered practices.
www.platformspace.net/home/unlearn...
www.platformspace.net/home/unlearn...
Up this week: Adam Nussbaum considers #palestine solidarity protests alongside his architectural education. He offers a lesson for architecture students: try opening your studios to outside collaboration and see what emerges. www.platformspace.net/home/archite...
PLATFORM: Architecture Studio after the Encampments
“Abolition calls on us to be great imaginists. You have to be a big dreamer. So, use your imagination to figure out how we do this.” --Stevie Wilson, from an interview with the author on April 14, ...
www.platformspace.net
May 20, 2025 at 12:57 PM
Up this week: Adam Nussbaum considers #palestine solidarity protests alongside his architectural education. He offers a lesson for architecture students: try opening your studios to outside collaboration and see what emerges. www.platformspace.net/home/archite...
At the #venicebiennale, Mexico is represented by the project Chinampa Veneta. This week, Sergio Beltrán-García, Elis Mendoza, & Daniel P. Gámez argue that the exhibit mistakenly represents the chinampa as an autonomous object, severed from Indigenous traditions. www.platformspace.net/home/chinamp...
PLATFORM: Chinampa Veneta: A Scenography of Extractivism at the Venice Biennale
In the run-up to the 19th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale, the Mexican National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature (INBAL) has announced the Mexican pavilion, "Chinam...
www.platformspace.net
May 13, 2025 at 12:39 PM
At the #venicebiennale, Mexico is represented by the project Chinampa Veneta. This week, Sergio Beltrán-García, Elis Mendoza, & Daniel P. Gámez argue that the exhibit mistakenly represents the chinampa as an autonomous object, severed from Indigenous traditions. www.platformspace.net/home/chinamp...
This week, David Monteyne follows the architecture of quarantine as it transitioned from being a spatial approach to public health to becoming a politicized practice of migrant detention--the forerunner, he suggests, of today's detention archipelago. www.platformspace.net/home/quarant...
PLATFORM: Quarantine: An Architecture of Waiting, From Public Health to Political Limbo
This is the second installment in our series about migration. To read the introduction to the series, click here . Our recent Covid-19 pandemic reintroduced many to the concept and the experien...
www.platformspace.net
May 7, 2025 at 1:19 AM
This week, David Monteyne follows the architecture of quarantine as it transitioned from being a spatial approach to public health to becoming a politicized practice of migrant detention--the forerunner, he suggests, of today's detention archipelago. www.platformspace.net/home/quarant...
This week, we reissue 5 articles we previously published to think through carceral formations. From the history of quarantining practices to prison design, these articles invoke architectural histories to probe the spatial parameters of carceral ideologies. www.platformspace.net/home/carcera...
PLATFORM: Carceral Formations
This week we reissue five articles previously published in PLATFORM to help us think through carceral formations. Invoking architectural histories at the intersection of liberalism, minoritization, ca...
www.platformspace.net
May 1, 2025 at 2:25 AM
This week, we reissue 5 articles we previously published to think through carceral formations. From the history of quarantining practices to prison design, these articles invoke architectural histories to probe the spatial parameters of carceral ideologies. www.platformspace.net/home/carcera...
This wk, Jessica Sewell shows how buildings, cities, & things participate in gendered systems of power & shape what is possible for individuals. Through reading our environment, we can understand how these norms are enforced & imagine more equitable cities. www.platformspace.net/home/explori...
PLATFORM: Exploring Difference and Power in the Built Environment
All too often, explorations of diversity and difference in the built environment have started from segregated spaces, whether Black freedom towns in the Southern United States, Hispano towns in New Me...
www.platformspace.net
April 22, 2025 at 3:54 AM
This wk, Jessica Sewell shows how buildings, cities, & things participate in gendered systems of power & shape what is possible for individuals. Through reading our environment, we can understand how these norms are enforced & imagine more equitable cities. www.platformspace.net/home/explori...
In the 2nd installment of PLATFORM's migration series, Arijit Sen critiques the tendency of architectural history to overlook the contributions & lived experiences of immigrant communities, esp. people of color, who haven't left permanent marks on the landscape. www.platformspace.net/home/writing...
PLATFORM: Writing Architectural Histories in Dark and Cruel Times
For the introduction to PLATFORM's new series on Migration, click here . In the years leading up to the current elections in the United States, I have felt a deep sense of turmoil about my r...
www.platformspace.net
April 20, 2025 at 7:31 PM
In the 2nd installment of PLATFORM's migration series, Arijit Sen critiques the tendency of architectural history to overlook the contributions & lived experiences of immigrant communities, esp. people of color, who haven't left permanent marks on the landscape. www.platformspace.net/home/writing...
This week, Andrew M. Shanken reflects on the meaning of the US penny. Recently an image of the #lincolnmemorial was replaced by a shield, supplanting a potent symbol of struggle, emancipation, & civil rights with a generic symbol of defense. www.platformspace.net/home/farewel...
PLATFORM: Farewell to the Penny
The impending death of the penny offers an opportunity to reflect on its meaning in American culture and in particular some of the implications of its imagery. Americans have debated the penny’s fate ...
www.platformspace.net
April 8, 2025 at 12:30 PM
This week, Andrew M. Shanken reflects on the meaning of the US penny. Recently an image of the #lincolnmemorial was replaced by a shield, supplanting a potent symbol of struggle, emancipation, & civil rights with a generic symbol of defense. www.platformspace.net/home/farewel...
In November 2024, a canopy collapsed in a landmarked railway station in Novi Sad, Serbia, sparking protests across the country. Maja Babić argues that the collapse is a symptom of the state's neglect of its Yugoslav urban heritage & a catalyst for activism.
www.platformspace.net/home/the-des...
www.platformspace.net/home/the-des...
PLATFORM: The Destruction of Heritage and the Power of Student Protests
On November 1, 2024, in Novi Sad, a city in northern Serbia, the city’s main railway station’s concrete canopy collapsed and killed fifteen people . The reconstruction of the station had been complet...
www.platformspace.net
April 1, 2025 at 1:12 PM
In November 2024, a canopy collapsed in a landmarked railway station in Novi Sad, Serbia, sparking protests across the country. Maja Babić argues that the collapse is a symptom of the state's neglect of its Yugoslav urban heritage & a catalyst for activism.
www.platformspace.net/home/the-des...
www.platformspace.net/home/the-des...
PLATFORM is launching a new series on migration, planned by Sarah Lopez, Ming Kyung Lee & Arijit Sen. The 1st post presents the series' goal to “recenter the movement of people, objects, & knowledge” as the “primary modality of placemaking.” Stay tuned! www.platformspace.net/home/writing...
PLATFORM: Writing Migration Now
Before a person is deported, they are arrested from somewhere—the front seat of their car on their way to get groceries, the back of house where they cook, a restaurant table where they eat with frien...
www.platformspace.net
March 25, 2025 at 1:18 PM
PLATFORM is launching a new series on migration, planned by Sarah Lopez, Ming Kyung Lee & Arijit Sen. The 1st post presents the series' goal to “recenter the movement of people, objects, & knowledge” as the “primary modality of placemaking.” Stay tuned! www.platformspace.net/home/writing...
This wk: Zohreh Soltani examines the symbolism of Tehran's #azadimonument within the context of the #womenlifefreedom movement. Soltani focuses on the monument’s role as a spatial marker in protest graphics to question the materiality of architecture itself. www.platformspace.net/home/in-betw...
PLATFORM: In-Between Dimensions: Architecture, Digitality and Protest through the Azadi Monument in Tehran
In the fall and winter of 2022, a wave of striking images flooded global media. Women tying up their hair in fierce poses, schoolgirls pulling down their headscarves in defiance, and protestors cuttin...
www.platformspace.net
March 21, 2025 at 3:23 AM
This wk: Zohreh Soltani examines the symbolism of Tehran's #azadimonument within the context of the #womenlifefreedom movement. Soltani focuses on the monument’s role as a spatial marker in protest graphics to question the materiality of architecture itself. www.platformspace.net/home/in-betw...
Noah Allison & Victor Cano Ciborro map the practice of street hustling by an unhoused LA resident to discuss the challenges the marginalized face in navigating cities. The authors reflect on how street improvements would better support the unhoused. www.platformspace.net/home/street-...
PLATFORM: Street Hustling in Los Angeles
In the early months of the pandemic I, Noah Allison, was waiting to order tacos al pastor from a truck at a gas station in my neighborhood when a tall, dark, muscular man approached me. He had a big s...
www.platformspace.net
March 5, 2025 at 2:12 PM
Noah Allison & Victor Cano Ciborro map the practice of street hustling by an unhoused LA resident to discuss the challenges the marginalized face in navigating cities. The authors reflect on how street improvements would better support the unhoused. www.platformspace.net/home/street-...
This wk, Kateryna Malaia & Philipp Meuser write about their book on the history of mass housing in #ukraine. In view of the war's destruction, they convey the value of documenting the typologies of Ukrainian housing & the need to write a book for Ukraine at war. www.platformspace.net/home/mass-ho...
PLATFORM: Mass Housing in Ukraine: War, Past, Future
Housing is the most ubiquitous urban typology. Housing is also the essential armature of the human condition. Perhaps more than any other architectural types, housing determines how city dwellers cons...
www.platformspace.net
February 24, 2025 at 2:14 PM
This wk, Kateryna Malaia & Philipp Meuser write about their book on the history of mass housing in #ukraine. In view of the war's destruction, they convey the value of documenting the typologies of Ukrainian housing & the need to write a book for Ukraine at war. www.platformspace.net/home/mass-ho...
New post alert 📰 In the aftermath of the LA fires, Anousheh Kehar explores what it means to build collective futures. She discusses the history of cultural burning & how Indigenous fire practitioners have been working with the state to alter fire regimes in CA. www.platformspace.net/home/fire-an...
PLATFORM: Fire and Collective Futures
The LA fires have drastically amplified the features of climate collapse in the fire-prone terrain—not least the tragedy of people losing loved ones, communities, and homes. Meanwhile, media co...
www.platformspace.net
February 19, 2025 at 1:45 PM
New post alert 📰 In the aftermath of the LA fires, Anousheh Kehar explores what it means to build collective futures. She discusses the history of cultural burning & how Indigenous fire practitioners have been working with the state to alter fire regimes in CA. www.platformspace.net/home/fire-an...
Online personal data increasingly influence access to essential services like housing. Roger Burrows argues for policy interventions to ensure that tenant-referencing systems and other similar platforms promote fairness instead of digital discrimination. www.platformspace.net/home/finding...
PLATFORM: Finding a Place to Live in an Ordinal Society
Let’s begin with three vignettes, each featuring a young person in a different city—London, York and Sydney—all navigating the challenges of finding a private rental property in a global housing marke...
www.platformspace.net
February 16, 2025 at 9:11 PM
Online personal data increasingly influence access to essential services like housing. Roger Burrows argues for policy interventions to ensure that tenant-referencing systems and other similar platforms promote fairness instead of digital discrimination. www.platformspace.net/home/finding...
New post 📰 Alex Sayf Cummings reflects on #TheBrutalist. It tells the story of Bauhaus architect László Tóth, who moves to the US after the Holocaust. Is the film, she wonders, about world-historic trauma, or is it just about an artist insisting on his vision? www.platformspace.net/home/the-bru...
PLATFORM: The Brutalist and the Nightmare of the American Dream
This article was originally published on Tropics of Meta . The French philosopher Simone Weil once said that “the beauty of the world is like the mouth of a labyrinth.” She went on to tell ...
www.platformspace.net
January 31, 2025 at 2:02 PM
New post 📰 Alex Sayf Cummings reflects on #TheBrutalist. It tells the story of Bauhaus architect László Tóth, who moves to the US after the Holocaust. Is the film, she wonders, about world-historic trauma, or is it just about an artist insisting on his vision? www.platformspace.net/home/the-bru...
Up now 📰 Sony Devabhaktuni & Joanna Mansbridge examine current planning efforts in Hong Kong. They focus on the Northern Metropolis, a future-oriented development at Hong Kong’s northern border & the way it gives shape to political & economic abstractions. www.platformspace.net/home/from-ci...
PLATFORM: From City to Metropolis: Planning without Politics in Hong Kong
In a New York Times article on the “For-Profit City” of Próspera, Rachel Corbett situates this new techno-bureaucratic venture off the Honduran coast in relation to nearly 5,400 special economic z...
www.platformspace.net
January 26, 2025 at 6:02 PM
Up now 📰 Sony Devabhaktuni & Joanna Mansbridge examine current planning efforts in Hong Kong. They focus on the Northern Metropolis, a future-oriented development at Hong Kong’s northern border & the way it gives shape to political & economic abstractions. www.platformspace.net/home/from-ci...
Platform is a digital forum for conversations about buildings, spaces, and landscapes. Join us for timely, provocative, and diverse discussions on the built environment!
December 5, 2024 at 2:16 PM
Platform is a digital forum for conversations about buildings, spaces, and landscapes. Join us for timely, provocative, and diverse discussions on the built environment!
NEW 📰 Dijana Apostolski argues that by omitting ornamentation, undecorated spaces inhabited by enslaved people in early modern Italian villas disregarded their occupants’ "humoral" health, affixing their bodies to their exploitable societal roles. www.platformspace.net/home/undecor...
PLATFORM: Undecorated: Early Modern Italian Villas as Racial Casts
When they were not preoccupied with laborious errands, early modern domestic workers and enslaved peoples recuperated in the basements, mezzanines, and garrets of their patrons’ opulent palazzi and vi...
www.platformspace.net
December 4, 2024 at 2:02 PM
NEW 📰 Dijana Apostolski argues that by omitting ornamentation, undecorated spaces inhabited by enslaved people in early modern Italian villas disregarded their occupants’ "humoral" health, affixing their bodies to their exploitable societal roles. www.platformspace.net/home/undecor...
Alexandra Camille Schultz explores the role of water in the design & downfall of Hassan Fathy's village of Qurna. While Fathy blamed the project's demise on recalcitrant peasants & bureaucrats, its failure can also be traced to dissonant conceptions of the function of water. tinyurl.com/5x9kjtr5
PLATFORM: Water Infrastructure and Resistance at Qurna: Re-reading Hassan Fathy’s Architecture for the Poor
“My father avoided the country. To him it was a place full of flies, mosquitos, and polluted water, and he forbade his children to have anything to do with it.” – Hassan Fathy[1] During two recent...
www.platformspace.net
November 27, 2024 at 1:58 PM
Alexandra Camille Schultz explores the role of water in the design & downfall of Hassan Fathy's village of Qurna. While Fathy blamed the project's demise on recalcitrant peasants & bureaucrats, its failure can also be traced to dissonant conceptions of the function of water. tinyurl.com/5x9kjtr5
PLATFORM is now on Bluesky! Follow us here for provocative, timely, and diverse conversations on the built environment!
November 20, 2024 at 1:36 PM
PLATFORM is now on Bluesky! Follow us here for provocative, timely, and diverse conversations on the built environment!