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Archive for the 'Geography' Category

Columbusi

( Geography )

Stella investigates: The New Acropolis Museum

( Art and Conflict and Geography )

Stella was recently on call in Athens to step into the middle of a raging architectural controversy.

The Acropolis is a site of global import and for a century or more, a small and inadequate museum on the Acropolis itself housed its excavated treasures, but everyone agreed that a world-class 21st century museum was needed.
The Building
The [...]

Sleeping with the city

( Geography and Life and Whatever )

I just moved into a fourth floor condo in D.C.  The bedroom has a fabulous window on to a cityscape.

The window is huge—it’s about 6 feet by 5 feet.

I have no shades or blinds, so every night I go to sleep with the city.

I’ve always lived in small places with views on to modest spaces…the [...]

Why Olafur Eliasson’s waterfalls are so great even though nobody but me thinks so

( Art and Geography )

Nobody I know really likes them, those four artificial waterfalls lining the Brooklyn side of upper New York Harbor. They’re the summer art blockbuster that fizzled. “Underwhelming,” one friend pronounced. “They don’t stand up to the scale of the Brooklyn Bridge, let alone the whole city,” an acquaintance elaborated. “I don’t know — they just [...]

Thursday favorites: Wacky destinations

Having been on the road for a couple of weeks, I’m struck once again by the fantastic number of truly wacky things there are to see out there. Not just cow chip bingo, but the many other random monuments to kitsch, creativity and questionable taste.
Herewith, a few notable examples from recent travels, and some from [...]