Failed Architecture

2 weeks ago | failedarchitecture.com | Shafiur Rahman

This article is part of the FA special series Everywhere Walls, Borders, Prisons. The Rohingya people have faced waves of persecution and displacement from Myanmar since at least 1978, when the military launched Operation Dragon King to root out so-called “foreigners” from Rakhine State. Since then, repeated campaigns of violence have forced hundreds of thousands to flee across the border into Bangladesh, only to be met with further marginalisation.

1 month ago | failedarchitecture.com | Daniel Roche

This article is part of the FA special series The Climate Changed.   In 1996, French architects Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal were approached by developers with a pretty standard request. That year, their office was tasked with creating a development scheme for a small empty lot outside Bordeaux’s city center that locals were using as an ad hoc park. What followed was revolutionary: Nothing. Zilch.

Aug 13, 2024 | failedarchitecture.com | Nasreen Abd Elal

This interview is part of our special series Besieged: Home, Land, Time, Water, which is about the spatial politics of settler colonialism in Palestine, to raise funds for mutual aid groups in Gaza. You can see the full program here. Ghost Hunting was screened in Los Angeles at 2220 Arts + Archives on August 13, 2024 in collaboration with Mezzanine to raise funds for The Sanabel Team.

May 1, 2024 | failedarchitecture.com | Martin Weiner

“We have to specify something!” An exasperated partner at a well-known design firm said to me recently. The material at issue? Synthetic flooring. Inescapable, ubiquitous, unsexy: flooring lacks even the marquee presence of wall and ceiling finishes, with which it shares “minor” status among architectural components (as much as any multi-hundred billion dollar industry can be said to have “minor status”).

Jun 8, 2023 | failedarchitecture.com | Maitri Dore

In May 2022, a court-mandated survey of the Gyanvapi Mosque in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, in northern India, yielded findings of the supposed presence of a former Shiva temple lying buried under the mosque. This bolstered the claims of the group of Hindu petitioners baying for access to the mosque, encouraging them to even try to storm in and worship the Shiva deity.