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At the advent of the the green architecture movement in the 1960s, the US artist and architect James Wines noticed a problem – he thought that many of the designs were so ugly that no one would want to preserve them, and so they ultimately wouldn’t be so ‘sustainable’ after all. In response, Wines developed his own distinctive architectural aesthetic, sketched out in drawings, and centred on creating designs that incorporated and responded to nature. Part of a video series titled Built Ecologies from the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, this short documentary explores the work of the architecture and environmental arts studio Sculpture in the Environment (SITE), which Wines founded in 1970 after getting his start as a sculptor. In particular, the video focuses on a SITE project to provide eye-catching designs for nine BEST big-box stores between 1972 and 1984 as part of an unconventional project to ‘put art where you least expect to find it’.
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Stories and literature
Robert Frost’s poetic reflection on youth, as read in his unforgettable baritone
5 minutes
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Film and visual culture
‘Bags here are rarely innocent’ – how filmmakers work around censorship in Iran
8 minutes
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Language and linguistics
Closed captions suck. Here’s one artist’s inventive project to make them better
8 minutes
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Thinkers and theories
A rare female scholar of the Roman Empire, Hypatia lived and died as a secular voice
5 minutes
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Architecture
The celebrated architect who took inspiration from sitting, waiting and contemplating
29 minutes
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Subcultures
Drop into London’s eclectic skate scene, where newbies and old-timers find community
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Rituals and celebrations
A whale hunt is an act of prayer for an Inuit community north of the Arctic Circle
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Music
The peculiar beauty of a song caught between composition and improvisation
3 minutes
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Rituals and celebrations
A beginner’s guide to a joyful Persian tradition of spring renewal and rebirth
3 minutes