Category Archives: USA

North America architectural (reading) guide

By benbansal Posted in Architecture, New York, USA Leave a reply

In what feels like half an eternity away, I lived in the States for two years from 2013-2015. Having caught the architecture bug in Tokyo before, I set out to explore the places I lived in and traveled to with an eye for important buildings and their stories. There is probably no better place in the world to satisfy these passions than New York. During countless rectilinear walks, I tried to learn about the city via its architecture. I did so from our base in Harlem, which then became the blog’s mainstay for a while.

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Southwest tourings

By benbansal Posted in Travel, USA Leave a reply

Having lived in the US for two years, we only found the time to do some road-tripping towards the tail end of our stay. My knowledge of the States had hitherto been limited to some of the bigger cities; New York, DC, Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago. And although we had planned a coast-to-coast trip as early as last summer, we ended up postponing it. Then a friend approached us several months back with the idea to do a loop starting from Denver. It didn’t take long to convince us.

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En route from Denver, towards the Rocky Mountains

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New York in July

By benbansal Posted in Architecture, New York, USA Leave a reply

We just got back from a short weekend trip to New York and I wanted to jot down some notes from the things we did and saw in the sweltering heat. With this, I hope to return to blogging a little bit more regularly.

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Model of Clorindo Testa’s Banco de Londres in Buenos Aires

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Former Iranian Embassy

By benbansal Posted in Architecture, D.C., History, USA 5 Replies

I have been living in D.C. for a good eight months now, and make a habit of zooming down Embassy Row when cycling into the centre. I always pass this abandoned building on my left, just a little past the British Embassy and its waving Winston Churchill statue. Why did I only find out yesterday that this is the former Iranian Embassy?

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Piketty’s trickery?

By benbansal Posted in Economics, USA Leave a reply

Watching Thomas Piketty’s book “Capital in the 21st Century” make waves in this country has been fun and insightful, albeit time-consuming. The controversy the book has caused is telling of the political climate in this country. Perhaps this comes out “best” on Amazon and on Forbes.

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21st-century capital

By benbansal Posted in Economics, Future ideas, USA 1 Reply

Seldom does a book create such buzz as Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the 21st Century” and rarely has a book faster been lauded as one of the decade’s defining books on economics. Much of the silence on this blog can be explained by engaging with Piketty’s magnum opus. I wanted to wait before posting anything before I would see the French economist speak at Columbia yesterday. What follows are some notes on the book and on issues beyond.

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Thomas Piketty (left), with panelists Suresh Naidu, Victoria de Grazia and Thomas Edsall

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Afrofuturism

By benbansal Posted in History, USA 1 Reply

Living in Harlem has offered the great chance to connect with black culture. This involved reading up on the district’s vibrant twentieth-century history as well as visiting the local Studio Museum on 125th Street a few times. Here, a recent exhibition on Afrofuturism was a highlight.

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