1. ArchDaily
  2. Amanda Williams

Amanda Williams: The Latest Architecture and News

MoMA Launches Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America

The Museum of Modern Art has launched Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America, the fourth installment of the Issues in Contemporary Architecture series. Investigating the intersections of architecture, Blackness and anti–Black racism in the American context, the exhibition and accompanying publication examine contemporary architecture in the context of how systemic racism has fostered violent histories of discrimination and injustice in the United States.

MoMA Launches Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America - Image 1 of 4MoMA Launches Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America - Image 2 of 4MoMA Launches Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America - Image 3 of 4MoMA Launches Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America - Image 4 of 4MoMA Launches Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America - More Images+ 2

How Hip-Hop Architecture is Making its Own Space

How Hip-Hop Architecture is Making its Own Space - Image 1 of 4
PHAT’s (Nathaniel Belcher, Stephen Slaughter) Harlem Ghetto Fabulous, 2003. Image via Metropolis Magazine. Image Courtesy of Courtesy PHAT (Nathaniel Belcher, Stephen Slaughter)

This article was originally published in Metropolis Magazine as "Hip-Hop Architecture's Philip Johnson Moment".

More than 40 years after it emerged from South Bronx house parties, hip-hop has become a once-in-a-lifetime concussive force reshaping global cultural. But at its most elemental and foundational, hip-hop is a direct, powerful confrontation with the built environment. “Broken glass everywhere / People pissing on the stairs, you know they just don’t care,” Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five rapped on their seminal 1982 track “The Message.” “I can’t take the smell, can’t take the noise / Got no money to move out, I guess I got no choice.”

Chicago Works: Amanda Williams at The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago presents the first-ever museum exhibition of breakout Chicago artist Amanda Williams, featuring a new addition to her highly acclaimed project, Color(ed) Theory, which debuted at the first Chicago Architecture Biennial. The bright, monochromatic houses painted as part of Color(ed) Theory bring attention to the overwhelming number of vacancies on Chicago’s South Side, reflecting Williams’ perspective that architecture serves as a microcosm for larger social issues. Together with new works such as A Dream or Substance, a Beamer, a Necklace or Freedom? -- where Williams invited Englewood-based collaborators to gild a room in imitation gold leaf in the same proportion of a Chicago lot, and then sealed off the room with just a small gap for viewing the gleaming interior -- Williams’ solo debut creates an experience that comments on race, class, and urban space. Chicago Works: Amanda Williams is organized by MCA Curatorial Assistant Grace Deveney and is on view from July 18 to December 31, 2017.

Studio Gang, Diller Scofidio + Renfro Among Exhibitors Selected for US Pavilion at 2018 Venice Biennale

The curatorial team for the U.S. Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale have announced the seven designers who will create the pavilion’s main exhibitions. Consisting of architects, landscape architects, artists and designers, the group will produce responses to the theme of Dimensions of Citizenship, exploring “the meaning of citizenship as a cluster of rights and responsibilities at the intersection of legal, political, economic, and societal affiliations.”

The seven exhibitors include:

Video: Amanda Williams On Color(ed) Theory

In an effort to spark new ideas for "zero value landscapes," Amanda Williams has been painting abandoned houses in Chicago's South Side with a "palette of culturally coded, monochromatic colors" to "explore how academic and theoretical definitions of color map across veiled language used in American media/popular culture to describe racially charged city spaces... Think a female Gordon Matta-Clark parading around as a Black Josef Albers," says the artist.

Watch the video above, commissioned by the Chicago Architecture Biennial and produced by Spirit of Space, to learn more.