Arthur Erickson, one of Canada’s most prominent architects, is dead. Even Washingtonians who don’t know his name know his work: The Canadian embassy, certainly the most prominently displayed foreign embassy in the nation’s capitol. It sits on the Mall, just down the hill from the Capitol, and it is a building loved and hated [...]
May 21, 2009
The Architecture of Authority
I think this show is better than it might seem on superficial first glance. Richard Ross’s photographs of institutional spaces include interrogation rooms, prisons and execution chambers. But also high-school corridors, hotel phone booths and religious spaces. If you take these connections too seriously, it seems like Ross is making silly, agit-prop connections. But if you stand [...]
