FRIDAY5 – May 24, 2019

In the mid-2000s, the idealogy of architecture and well-being gained momentum and continues to be a topic of interest today.  A new exhibition from the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), with the curation of Francesco Garuitti, further explores this idealogy and how the “happiness industry” has controlled every aspect of contemporary life after the 2008 financial crash.

Our Happy Life, Architecture and Well-being in the Age of Emotional Capitalism is a non-archival show that exhibits work from architects, artists, and photographers.  Garutti discusses the notion behind the exhibition, social media, and architecture’s new spaces of meaning here.
 

We looked at the best-designed building in every state, but what about the most quintessential of American building types, the ballpark, and how it can be used as a lens for looking at the broader culture of cities?  In Paul Goldberger’s new book titled Ballpark: Baseball in the American City, he postulates that ballparks do parallel, to a remarkable degree, trends in American urbanism.  

After writing about Yankee Stadium and Citi Field for the New Yorker in 2009, Goldberger realized how the history of baseball parks is also the history of American cities.  He goes on to say that “it’s a mirror to how we’ve viewed our cities and what we think about them.  Baseball parks are a significant part of the public realm; they’re a public experience, in an age when so much is pushed toward a private and virtual experience.”  Read more here and learn which beloved park from the golden age of baseball almost didn’t survive.