Recommended Sunday Reading—February 19

Italian architect in Shanghai conjures ‘forest cities’

Boeri described the idea behind his shrub-shrouded structures as simple, not spectacular: “What is spectacular is the nature, the idea of having a building that changes colour with each season. The plants and trees are growing and they are completely changing.” “We think – and we hope – that this idea of vertical forests can be replicated everywhere. I absolutely have no problem if there are people who are copying or replicating. I hope that what we have done can be useful for other kinds of experiments.” In The Guardian.

India waiting for these 8 international foods

Koji, a popular Japanese health food is really just rice, but it's got a bit more pizazz than that. It’s rice that has been inoculated with the koji mold—a fermentation culture, Aspergillus oryzae—and is great for our gut. Koji is traditionally used to make miso paste and soy sauce and is the base for umami. It's the ultimate way to add flavour to a dish without any additional salt. In TheQuint.

Universities researching RSS, Modi and BJP

Eulogising Modi in research papers is a growing trend too. Scholars in BHU are writing papers on the "Role of Modi in the empowerment of Muslim women," and "Modi and (US President) Trump-a case study of the two personalities vis-a-vis their elections". In Gujarat University, researchers are working on papers such as "Improvement in India-US relations, post Modi", and "Emergence of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in national politics, post Modi". In The Telegraph.

Can Facebook help humanity take the next step?

Merely making the world “more open and connected” turns out to be insufficient, and in some contexts, dangerous. An open and connected world can become an angry, fractured world. For the global community Zuckerberg sees as humanity’s next step to manifest, all that openness and connectivity need to be guided towards common understandings and cooperation. In Vox.

When conditions are harsh, can art be pretty?

First, beauty is not considered possible when dealing with pain, angst, cruelty, poverty, injustice, ecological damage and so on. Second, having enthusiastically embraced as art a urinal that Duchamp exhibited under the title The Fountain as a challenge to the establishment’s notion of what art is, beauty could no longer be a valid criterion for art. In Scroll.in.