Social Engineering
Facebook plans to release two updates for its Gear VR platform. The more radical of the two, dubbed Rooms, will allow participants to spend time with their friends in virtual reality.
[The Verge]
Street Style
Nike and Adidas have both opened New York City storefronts. In the age of online shopping, these stores indicate a new importance for real-life retail environments.
[Fortune]
Lifetime Achievement
The Writers Guild of America East has named filmmaker John Waters this year’s winner of the Ian McLellan Hunter Award. “Time and again, on film and in prose and eventually on Broadway, he has celebrated the very American notion that there is, in fact, no normal,” said David Simon, a television writer who will present the award to Waters.
[Vulture]
Visual Smarts
Veteran art dealer Marian Goodman—whose gallery is about to enter its 40th year—offers insights and some words of warning.
[The New York Times]
Urban Additions
Michael Kimmelman of The New York Times presents a year’s worth of New York City’s architectural achievements—from an innovative park on Governors Island to the reinvented Met Breuer. The list, Kimmelman writes, is a “belated thank you note for a few projects that kept faith with architecture’s ideals and the city’s better self.”
[The New York Times]
Going to California
Brett Steele, director of the Architectural Assn. School of Architecture in London, will be the new dean of the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture. Steele will oversee the school’s museums, the Fowler and the Hammer, in addition to its academic programs.
[Los Angeles Times]