the network architecture lab @
the columbia university
graduate school of architecture, planning, and preservation
Announcing the New City Reader
The Network Architecture Lab announces the New City Reader, a newspaper on architecture, public space and the city, produced in collaboration with Joseph Grima and published as part of The Last Newspaper, an exhibition running at the New Museum from 6 October 2010‒9 January 2011.
The New City Reader will consist of one edition, published over the course of the project with a new section produced weekly by alternating guest editorial teams within the museum’s gallery space. These sections will be available free at the New Museum and—in emulation of a practice common in the nineteenth-century American city and still popular in parts of the world today—will be posted in public throughout the city for collective reading.
The New City Reader kicks off with a detailed graphic produced by the Netlab that recounts the 1977 New York City blackout and its effects on failing city to reveal the interdependence of infrastructure, information, and social stability. If the challenges of that era map to the difficulties facing both the country and the city today, the New City Reader will inquire into these parallels.
Conceived by Joseph Grima (Domus) and Kazys Varnelis (Netlab), this newspaper’s content derive- from a series of discussions, debates, interviews, and research into the spatial implications of epochal shifts in technology, economy, and society today. Each issue of the New City Reader will be guest edited by a contributing network of architects, theorists, and research groups who will bring their particular expertise to bear on the sections.
The guest contributing networks include:
| City | Network Architecture Lab |
| Editorial | New City Reader Editorial Staff |
| Culture | School of Visual Arts D-Crit Program |
| Sports | Jeannie Kim and Hunter Tura |
| Entertainment | Beatriz Colomina and Program for Media and Modernity |
| Food | Park (Will Prince, Krista Ninivaggi) and Nicola Twilley |
| Real Estate | Sideprojects (Mabel Wilson + Peter Tolkin) |
| Business | Frank Pasquale and Kevin Slavin |
| Legal | Eyal Weizman, Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London |
| Local | Nugu (Gediminas and Nomeda Urbonas) and Saskia Sassen |
| Politics | common room |
| Style | Robert Sumrell and Andrea Ching |
| Music | DJ Enron and DJ Rupture |
| Science | David Benjamin and Livia Corona |
| Weather | C-Lab (Jeffrey Inaba) |
| Obituaries | MOS (Michael Meredith) |
| Classifieds | Leagues and Legions |
Joseph Grima is the current editorial director of Domus magazine and the former director of the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York. Kazys Varnelis is an historian, the director of the Network Architecture Lab at the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and a co-founder of AUDC.
Sponsors include The New Museum, Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, Joe and Nina Day, Anonymous Donors, and the Willametta K. Day Foundation.