Sam Jacob

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“MIPIM is one big performance with the purpose of speaking cities into existence”

Is it possible to speak buildings into being? The exhibitors at annual property fair MIPIM may try, but they need to come up with far more extreme fictions, says Sam Jacob in his latest Opinion column. “The beginning, as every one knows, is of supreme importance in everything, and particularly in the founding and building of a city,” so says

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“We could imagine nationhood as a design project”

Opinion: in the aftermath of the EU referendum, Britain has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to redesign itself as a coherent, relevant and functioning nation for the 21st century, says Sam Jacob. You know that feeling when you break something? When that thing, which you didn’t even need to think about when it ran smoothly, is now in pieces? Well, that was More

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#architecture

“The copy in contemporary culture is both despised and feared”

Opinion: by walking out of Berlin’s Neues Museum with an illicit 3D scan of the bust of Queen Nefertiti, a pair of artists has forced us to question whether conservation is an act of care or a radical form of repression, says Sam Jacob. Conservation is often misunderstood as a practice concerned with the past. More

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“Chicago boldly imagines its own definition of what a biennial might be”

Opinion: the Chicago Architecture Biennial stands out from an avalanche of pointless events by doing things its own way, says Sam Jacob. But can it be sustained? This is the age of “inalification”. Every city, every form of creative practice – at vast expense and even greater effort – mounts gigantic productions that celebrate… well, what […]

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#architecture

“The destruction of the ancient city of Palmyra is an assault on human culture”

Opinion: by destroying ancient architecture, ISIS is waging an ideological war on cultural history – it is our responsibility to respond with yet more culture, says Sam Jacob.  The destruction of the ancient city of Palmyra is a crime, a terrible crime against us all, an assault on human culture, on the very idea of civilisation. […]

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#architecture

“The destruction of the ancient city of Palmyra is a crime”

Opinion: by destroying ancient architecture, ISIS is waging an ideological war on cultural history – it is our responsibility to respond with yet more culture, says Sam Jacob.  The destruction of the ancient city of Palmyra is a crime, a terrible crime against us all, an assault on human culture, on the very idea of civilisation. […]

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#architecture

“Postmodernism’s real qualities are mean and difficult, yet also psychedelically positive”

Pomo summer: could there be anything more ridiculous than the idea of a Postmodern revival? It depends what you mean by Postmodernism, says Sam Jacob, in his column for Dezeen’s summer season on the controversial movement. A Postmodern revival, huh? Can you imagine a more absurd idea? Or anything that could characterise the sheer vacuous […]

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#architecture

“The Garden Bridge is a magic bullet for a certain idea of the contemporary British city”

Opinion: the now-defunct architecture firm FAT proposed a garden bridge for London’s River Thames in the 1990s as a form of social criticism. Now life is imitating art with “Lumleywick’s” bridge, FAT co-founder Sam Jacob feels an apology is necessary. Sorry folks, but I think this might all be my fault. Here’s my mea culpa, […]
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