Architectural Digest (May 9, 2023) – Today Architectural Digest brings you to Finland’s capital Helsinki to tour Löyly, a remarkable public sauna designed to blend in with nature.
Perched on the city’s rugged coastline, architects Anu Puustinen and Ville Hara designed Löyly to resemble a rock formation on the shore. Sustainability and community are at the heart of this unique space – using only FSC-certified materials to create a unifying holistic environment for current and future generations.
Buildings account for approximately two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions in New York City and Mayor de Blasio has pledged to address these emissions as part of his plan to make the city carbon neutral by 2050.
Local Law 97 is one of the most ambitious plans for reducing emissions in the nation. Local Law 97 was included in the Climate Mobilization Act, passed by the City Council in April 2019 as part of the Mayor’s New York City Green New Deal.
Under this groundbreaking law, most buildings over 25,000 square feet will be required to meet new energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions limits by 2024, with stricter limits coming into effect in 2030. The goal is to reduce the emissions produced by the city’s largest buildings 40 percent by 2030 and 80 percent by 2050. The law also established the Local Law 97 Advisory Board and Climate Working Groups to advise the city on how best to meet these aggressive sustainability goals.
Local Law 97 generally covers, with some exceptions:
Buildings that exceed 25,000 gross square feet;
Two or more buildings on the same tax lot that together exceed 50,000 square feet;
Museo Picasso Málaga (May 9, 2023) – is the first major exhibition in Spain devoted to this facet of Picasso’s work. The selection of pieces is intended to underline the central role played by the representation of the human body, taken as both a whole and as a fragment, in the Málaga-born artist’s œuvre.
Picasso’s sculptures were seemingly overshadowed by his paintings and played a secondary role in his prolific artistic career. The first exhibition devoted chiefly to them did not take place until 1967, at the Tate Gallery in London, and until then his three-dimensional work had barely received any critical attention. However, sculpture was not a secondary concern for Picasso but a form of expression on a par with painting. According to Pierre Daix, ‘he was at least as great a sculptor as he was a painter, and for him these two aspects of his work were always complementary, for he had discovered very early on that the switching from one to the other enabled him to determine precisely what painting is and what sculpture is’.
London Review of Books (LRB) – May 18, 2023 issue: The War in Khartoum, Vermeer’s Waywardness, Palestinians in Paraguay and Claire Hall on Anaximander.
In London, I had taken A Young Woman Standing at a Virginal for a dependable rest point on strolls around the National Gallery. In Amsterdam, relocated to join 27 other Vermeers in the Rijksmuseum exhibition, its strangeness re-emerged. This canvas, executed towards the end of Vermeer’s relatively brief career (some four years, perhaps, before he died aged 43 in 1675), commits to a tactic he had earlier only toyed with: to set an internal picture as a wholly self-contained block within his own composition, uninterrupted by foreground forms.
For more than a decade, two “recovering” anthropologists have brought documentary closer to the human experience. Now they’ve made the camera part of our flesh and blood.
ArtReview (May 2023 Issue) – Featuring Frida Orupabo, Isaac Julien, Sarah Pierce, Kahlil Robert Irving and Christina Quarles; columns on faltering art markets and questions of what art should do for a society; and much more
Art has long looked to the recent past for inspiration, but might the return of post-Internet art just be too much, too soon?
Frida Orupabo, on the cover of ArtReview May 2023, mines images sourced from colonial archives, film, fashion and family albums to create collages that carve representation and empowerment from stereotype. Her visual references, ranging from clips of singers like Nina Simone and Billie Holiday, to the art of Carrie Mae Weems and Kara Walker, are incorporated into multilayered works, some pinned with metal tacks to look like the kind of vintage paper doll whose appendages are manipulable. The sense of ‘reclaiming the power to choose how a woman’s body, and more specifically Black female sexuality, is presented and received’, writes Fi Churchman, ‘is a central theme of Orupabo’s work’.
VernissageTV (May 8, 2023) – The opening reception of the Swiss artist Stephan Hostettler. Stephan Hostettler was born in 1988 in Unterseen, Switzerland.
After training as a metalworker, he attended the preliminary design course in Bern and graduated from the specialist class for graphics in Biel. He presented his works for the first time in 2019 at the Jungkunst exhibition in Winterthur. Hostettler lives and works in Bern.
“At its core, my work is about how we humans live or could live in this world. It offers a humorous but critical perspective on our actions as a society and aims to trigger discussions that contribute to a positive development. I wish for a world in which we treat each other with respect, we live with nature, take care of it and in which no one has to live in fear.”
Stephan Hostettler Solo Exhibition in Bern (Switzerland). Vernissage, May 6, 2023.
BBC (May 8, 2023) – Sir David Attenborough was born in London on May 8, 1926 and educated at Wyggeston Grammar School, Leicester, and Clare College, Cambridge where he took an honours degree in Natural Sciences. He did two years National Service in the Royal Navy and then spent some time on the editorial side of the University of London Press.
Sir David’s broadcasting career spans over 50 years. It began in 1952 when he joined BBC Television as a trainee and then became a producer working in the studios of Alexandra Palace in north London, from which the world’s first television service was broadcast.
Insider Business (May 7, 2023) – Nigeria grows 63 million metric tons of cassava (also known as yucca) every year, but most of the country’s supply is eaten locally as fufu or garri. Experts say Nigeria could be missing out on billions in exports of lucrative cassava products like bubble tea pearls, starch, or ethanol.
Video timeline: 0:00 Intro 1:48 History of cassava 2:58 Growing issues 5:42: How garri and fufu are made 6:54 Transportation issues 7:36 How cassava is processed 10:06 Global demand is so high for cassava
Challenges along the country’s entire supply chain have caused hundreds of millions of dollars in cassava spoilage. But one entrepreneur, Yemisi Iranloye, thinks she has the solution. She’s introduced higher-yielding seed varieties and moved processing plants closer to farms.
Now, her farmers earn four times more for their product, and her cassava starch and sorbitol have landed her clients like Nestle and Unilever. Could Yemisi’s model be the way for Nigeria to feed itself and cash in on exports?
CBS Sunday Morning (May 7, 2023) – First published in France in 1900, The Michelin Guide has been awarding stars to restaurants for about 100 years. Today, it rates the work of chefs around the world, including in the United States.
Correspondent Kelefa Sanneh talks with an anonymous Michelin restaurant inspector, and with chefs at a restaurant with a coveted Michelin star.
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