William Menking

The actor Bob Hoskins was the star of the 1980 film, The Long Good Friday, a London gangster movie that reflected on major anxieties, opportunities, and economic changes taking place in the U.K. In 1982 Hoskins led Barry Norman and the BBC on a riverside walk along the South Bank,…

The home of the Brant Foundation’s new East Coast gallery is in the old Con Ed transformer station, built in 1920–21. When it closed in 1980, it was bought by artist Walter De Maria and served as his home and studio until 2013. After it was purchased by…

Times Square, always a hub of intense street life, with 350,000 to 450,000 visitors a day and an overload of images, is about to become a site for “design talks, installations, and performances.” Design Pavilion, the centralized public hub for New York’s fourth annual design week (May 10–22…

Lawrence Halprin and William “Holly” Whyte both published books in the 1960s that highlighted the ad hoc and often bottom-up design decisions that make cities successful for their users and inhabitants. Facing the massive Nieman Marcus–emblazoned steel and glass street wall that greets visitors entering Hudson Yards from…

Wayne Troyer, FAIA, one of New Orleans’ most distinguished and engaged architects, died on May 3. Troyer battled against pancreatic cancer for nearly three years but continued to produce projects with his firm studioWTA that were his hallmark: modernism merged with New Orleans distinctive urbanism and historic structures. A…

Want to buy a classic modernist gas station? How about one designed and fabricated in 1969 by one of the pioneers of prefabrication, Jean Prouvé? The French auction house Leclere is auctioning off a two-story Prouvé “SUCY’ station on Wednesday, April 3, at 6:00 p.m., Paris time.…

It's coming right down to the wire for the group hoping to save Arakawa and Madeline Gins's extraordinary Bioscleave House in East Hampton, New York. According to the deceased designers, the one-of-a-kind residence promises to "reverse the effects of aging and transform the personal well-being and longevity…

We have heard from multiple sources that the search to replace Mohsen Mostafavi as dean of Harvard’s Graduate School of Design has narrowed to a short, short list. The Cambridge school, like the other Ivies, seems determined to finally have a female leader. We have been told that…

Carriage Trade Gallery at 277 Grand Street, New York, New York, is holding a book fair this weekend that will feature books, ephemera, and zines that will undoubtedly hold gems for those interested in architecture and design. The second-floor gallery just hosted an exhibition of Denise Scott…

The U.S. Department of State and the National Endowment for the Arts Design Program has announced a call for proposals to organize and curate the United States pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2020. The United States government has been gradually increasing the amount…

Vienna has long been a leader in public housing, and 60 percent of its current population lives in city-built residences. The grand socialist Hofs of the late 1920s, like the Karl Marx and George Washington, have long been influential for affordable housing advocates. But Vienna is still building,…

Empire of Ice Cream is an exhibition of 13 meticulously filled graph paper drawings and three small sculptures created by Sam Jacob at Betts Project in London. The carefully drawn images in the gallery are generated from “remnants of architectural plans gathered from an assortment of historic…