Design critic Alexandra Lange will give a virtual talk going beyond the aesthetic elements of Marimekko clothing by exploring the meaning their designs had for feminist icons.

In this talk, inspired by her 2017 New Yorker article “Jane Jacobs, Georgia O’Keeffe, and the Power of the Marimekko Dress,” Lange will offer a history of the artists, writers, and designers who chose Marimekko as their uniform from the 1960s onwards, describing how the dress designs aligned with their cultural politics and expanding opportunities for women.

6:30PM ET. This is a virtual event, tickets available here

August 2 – August 17

To mark the end of summer, we present a series that attends to the social and cultural phenomenon that is the suburban shopping mall. At once a sanctuary and a prison, the mall was a fixture of American life (and cinema) in the 20th century. In recent years, it has become a bastion of nostalgia for generations – now steeped in the internet – who long for human interaction, no matter how superficial and mundane. Perhaps it is that very sense of the mundane – rendered charming through time and distance – that has elevated the placidness of the escalator, the sparkling of indoor fountains, and the airy echoes of Muzak into something so beguiling now.

Alexandra Lange, author of Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall will introduce the screening of Frederick Wiseman’s THE STORE on Sunday, Aug 6.

Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Ave., New York.

Co-hosted by the MIT Architecture’s History, Theory and Criticism Program and Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism at MIT.

The roundtable discussion No, We Don’t Hate Everything with Alexandra Lange and Mark Lamster, moderated by Garnette Cadogan will be in the Long Lounge (7-429) for members of the MIT community; register for webcast here

Alexandra Lange is a design critic and the author, most recently of “Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall” (Bloomsbury USA, 2022). Her essays, reviews and features have appeared in New York Magazine, the New York Times, the New Yorker and a plethora of design publications including Bloomberg CityLab and Curbed. She is also editorial advisor to New Angle: Voice, a podcast on American women in architecture produced by the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation and supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Graham Foundation.

Mark Lamster is the architecture critic of the Dallas Morning News and a lecturer the Harvard Graduate School of Design. His biography of the late architect Philip Johnson, The Man in the Glass House (Little Brown), was a finalist for the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography. In 2021, he was awarded the $50,000 Rabkin Prize for arts journalism.

Garnette Cadogan is an essayist whose research explores the promise and perils of urban life, the vitality and inequality of cities, and the challenges of pluralism. Named by the literary magazine Freeman’s as one of 29 writers from around the world who “represent the future of new writing” in 2017, he writes about culture and the arts for various publications.

5:30PM ET, Long Lounge, 7-429, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.

Join the Ball State College of Architecture and Planning for a lecture by Alexandra Lange, a New York-based design critic and author, at 4 p.m. Monday, Nov. 28, in Architecture Building Room 100.

Her recent book Meet Me By the Fountain – on a topic of much interest throughout the Midwest – is an architectural and cultural history of the shopping mall, from Victor Gruen’s suburban sidewalk cafe to food courts reborn as classrooms, with stops at pedestrian streets, festival marketplaces, and Camp Snoopy. 

Join Alexandra Lange for a presentation on her recent book Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall as part of the 20th anniversary convening of the Wisconsin Book Festival.

12PM CT, Madison Public Library, Madison, Wisconsin.

Join the Michigan Chapter of Docomomo US and our friends at the Southfield Public Library and the Southfield Historical Society as we partner with Docomomo US for Tour Day 2022 to explore the history and future of shopping malls across the nation, including Michigan’s iconic Northland Center in Southfield.

The evening will start with a recorded talk by architecture critic Alexandra Lange, author of the newly released book Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall (Bloomsbury Publishing, June 2022).

Following the recorded presentation, Lange will join us on Zoom for a conversation in the library featuring short in-person presentations by Megan McAdow and Bruce Kopytek on the past, present and future of the Northland Center site and a moderated panel discussion.

6PM, Southfield Public Library, 26300 Evergreen Road, Southfield, Michigan. Free; register here