Laura Raskin

2 weeks ago | archpaper.com | Laura Raskin |Kristine Klein

“It’s impossible to work on marriage and collect recipes, investigate gardenias, observe behaviors of pregnant women, think about the education of children, the managing of a house, gardening, holidays and everything that I’ve been doing with half my mind and all my heart—and at the same time to work just hard enough to be paid.” While this sounds, eerily, like many of the texts I’ve fired off to friends in the last five years, it is an entry from the 1943 diary of Mary Coss Barnes, an...

1 month ago | metropolismag.com | Laura Raskin

The Mellon Foundation’s Humanities in Place grant-making program is transforming communities through storytelling, conservation, and design. In the past four years, the Mellon Foundation’s Humanities in Place grant-making program has given more than $200 million for 263 grants, mainly in the United States.

Nov 13, 2024 | metropolismag.com | Laura Raskin

The following schools, labs, and incubators are focused on contributing innovative solutions to contemporary issues to make change both down the street and around the world. In the past decade, and certainly since the pandemic, there has been a palpable, if subtle, shift: Architects and architecture schools are making more concerted efforts to inspire the non–architects or design-minded among us to think about why and how the built environment matters.

Nov 3, 2024 | architecturalrecord.com | Laura Raskin

Last year, a niece of mine transferred from a state university in her hometown to a private East Coast college, one of the “Seven Sisters”—a dream deferred. Though she began this big transition with pride, excitement, and a resolve to throw herself into activities, classes, and new friendships, she quickly felt lonely and sidestepped, as ongoing relationships and rituals seemed to flow on around her. There was no coordinated effort to help her and any other transfer students establish community.

Jul 16, 2024 | architecturalrecord.com | Laura Raskin

In the 15-minute 1966 film The Devil’s Toy (Rouli-roulant), producer Claude Jutra takes to the streets to document the dawn of skateboarding in Montreal. Teenagers in turtlenecks, thick sweaters, and trench coats couldn’t look more innocent as they careen down sidewalks and Mont-Royal Park paths, no doubt exhilarated by the speed and freedom. But the police crack down, absconding with four boards and telling the kids that they can retrieve them at an indoor ice rink.