Smoky Hill Weapons Range Target: Tires, September 30, 1990. Photo © Terry Evans, Courtesy of the Artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery

After spending eight years photographing Kansas’ (tiny but still hanging-in-there) virgin prairie, Terry Evans felt stuck. ”It wasn’t that I was bored [with it],” says the artist. “It was just that I had photographed it to the limits of my vision.” But then she came across an image that made her see the Great Plains in a completely new way. The photo in question, of an abandoned atomic bomb test site in the Pacific, reminded Evans of an aerial view of the Konza Prairie, near her home. And with that she grabbed her camera, climbed into a four-seat Cessna 172, and took to the sky.

The resulting photographs, taken between 1990 and 1994, are on view in “The Inhabited Prairie,” which runs through July 3 at the Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York City. The exhibition presents a complex, often contradictory view of the American Heartland, and of our relationship to it. “I wanted to show all the layers of the prairie,” Evans tells Architizer, “how time and history and human development is embedded into the land. And to do that I really needed to look at it from above.” See more photos below.

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Architects who take Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) commissions sure don’t have it easy. William Pereira’s original 1965 design for a museum floating above a landscape of pools and fountains promised an exalted place for art in LA—until tar underneath the site began oozing in and the pools had to be paved over. Two decades later, a 1986 addition stuck out sorely after it was only partly integrated with Pereira’s buildings. And in the early 2000s, Rem Koolhaas’s unifying vision of pavilions under a transparent Mylar roof fell through for want of funds. Renzo Piano has been the lone starchitect to get away with actually building something on the LACMA campus: He completed the Broad Contemporary Art Museum in 2008, followed by the sawtoothed Resnick Pavilion in 2010.

Now the Pritzker- and RIBA-decorated Swiss architect Peter Zumthor has sidled into the tricky tapdance of politics, finances, and miscellaneous architectural allegiances that define the LACMA campus. In an unusual move, Zumthor and museum director Michael Govan have been developing the design privately over the past six years. Everyone, from the art-loving public to potential donors, will see it for the first time when a new exhibition about Zumthor opens this Sunday, June 9. The centerpiece of the show is a 30-foot model of what LACMA has dubbed “the Black Flower.” If Zumthor is permitted to work his magic, this curvilinear lily pad in dusky concrete will spare us the current boxy layout—and may even transform the museum experience into something at once more casual and more meditative. Here is your sneak peek!

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In 2010, Turkish artist Mehmet Ali Uysal decided to install a hill on a flat expanse of verdant lawn. This effort, as you might expect, was no ordinary landscaping gig: Uysal erected an oversized, Claes Oldenburg-style clothespin that appeared to pinch the grassy terrain, creating a cheeky illusion that encouraged a heightened awareness of the environment. The artist’s latest works exhibit the same whimsical sense of humor by appearing to peel off the white walls of Istanbul’s Nesrin Esirtgen Gallery. More photos below.

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According to the United Nations, there are approximately 3 million sunken ships around the globe resting on our oceans’ floors. Shipwrecks vary in cause and category, ranging from captivating treasure troves straight out of story books, to botched naval missions, to the catastrophe of the Titanic. Overtime, these doomed vessels transform into fossilized fragments of history entombed at the bottom of the sea, enticing scientists and becoming home for micro-ecosystems of sea life. However, one sunken vessel on the floor of the Caribbean has taken on an unbelievable role that gives a whole new meaning to underwater exploration.

The fossilized submarine USS Vandenberg, located off the coast of Florida, was recently home to a breathtaking underwater photography exhibition. Combining his mastery of photography and passion for deep-sea diving, Austrian artist Andreas Franke transformed this man-made shipwreck into a subterranean gallery 130 feet below sea level. Accessible only by scuba diving, Franke’s surreal photographs decorated the outer-walls of the Vandenberg, breathing new life into the haunting silence of the ruined majestic vessel. More photos below!

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The Gothic is a dramatic style. Its monumental vaults, soaring colonettes, complex tracery, and detailed ornament have made the religious fervor of the Middle Ages palpable even to this day. Though it is unequivocally dated, its essential impulse to shock and mesmerize with wild manipulations of form is not unlike the one motivating many contemporary architects: The contorting facades of today’s computer-aided designs exhibit a similar ostentation, though notably detached from spiritual doctrines. Belgian artist Wim Delvoye has seemingly collapsed centuries of history and brought the two architectural styles together with his laser-cut metal sculptures that look like outrageously twisting Gothic structures. More after the break.

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James Turrell
Rendering for Aten Reign, 2013
Daylight and LED light
Site-specific installation, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
© James Turrell
Rendering: Andreas Tjeldflaat, 2012 © SRGF

On June 21st, one of three simultaneous James Turrell retrospectives will open at the Guggenheim in New York. Titled quite simply James Turrell, the exhibition will feature not only Turrell’s greatest hits, but also a new site-specific installation, “Aten Reign.” Using both natural and artificial light, “Aten Reign” brings light down from the museum’s oculus, filtering it through five LED-lit cones and allowing it into the depths of an artificial structure suspended in the atrium.

Like in most Turrell work, the installation hides its apparatus from view, allowing visitors to concentrate fully on the affect of the piece. Hidden symbolism abounds—not surprising for an installation named after an Egyptian sun god (worshipped during a brief period of monotheism in ancient Egypt) and opening on the summer solstice.

See more images of “Aten Reign,” as well as of other work by the legendary light artist, below.

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Figolu, 2005–11. Photo: Jerry L. Thompson/Courtesy of Storm King Art Center

We’re closer than we’ve ever been (and now we’re even closer!) to the SFMOMA expansion, which will break ground on May 29. The official last day to appreciate the Mario Botta building’s intactness is June 2, at the close of a four-day countdown celebration with free admission for everyone.

To kick off its series of off-site programming, which must carry SFMOMA (and the rest of us) through early 2016, the museum fittingly went with something monumental. Director Neal Benezra organized a retrospective of Mark di Suvero’s large-scale steel sculptures at Crissy Field, a former airfield on the waterfront near the city’s Marina district. The show doesn’t officially open until Wednesday, but joggers and pedestrians will be forgiven for noticing the eight enormous steel assemblages hulking over their usual dog-walking routes. Read more!

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Frank Gehry’s Monaco Urbanisation En Mer project model, 2007. Photo: Gehry Partners

Story by Zach Edelson

Architect Frank Gehry needs no introduction, though you may not have met his models. Well, luckily, between now and June 29, you can meet these beauties at Leslie Feely Fine Art in New York City. ”Frank Gehry: At Work” offers a unique opportunity to see this master builder’s craftsmanship and approach up close and personal. More after the jump!

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If Renaissance architects like Filippo Brunelleschi had had lasers at their disposal instead of ink, they might have made entire 3D perspective environments out of light—perhaps something like Vanishing Point, a light installation by the London art collective United Visual Artists (UVA). On view at Olympus Photography Playground through the end of this month, the work uses the rules of perspective to create immersive architectural spaces defined by shooting beams of white light. Who needs a colonnaded Urbino when a few reams of black cloth and laser diodes can entertain us for hours on end?

Actually, we should probably be glad that Renaissance artists and draftsmen were stuck with ink wells and pencils, because a da Vinci tricked out with UVA’s setup might have been too distracted to get any work done on his flying machine. Man is the measure of all lasers! Photos after the jump.

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Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, Oxley Woods Houses, Milton Keynes, Bucks, UK, 2007. Street view. Image © 2013 Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners LLP.

By Sabrina Wirth, a candidate for the M.S. Critical, Curatorial, and Conceptual Practices degree in Architecture at Columbia University’s GSAPP.

According to the most recent US Census data, this is the first time since before the 1950s that more people are moving into New York City than are moving out—bringing the estimated population to a record high of 8,336,697. Now that is high density. So it is only fitting that we should start directing our focus toward different housing models that accommodate the city’s changing need for space. (Mayor Bloomberg’s micro apartments, anyone?)

A new exhibition opening tonight at the Center for Architecture, and co-sponsored by the Institute for Public Architecture, provides a good starting point. “Low Rise High Density,” examines the history of a typology that sprung up 40 years ago, when the need for space and better living conditions led to alternatives to high-rise public housing. Read more.

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