Sixteen categories ought to be more than enough for any blog so the plan had been to merge MEDIA and MARKETING as who can tell the difference anymore anyway? I’d wanted to make a place for something I’ve called The Architecture of Architectures. Instead, I’m going to file it under THEORY because that’s what it […]
Well before the middle of last century there was a tradition of photographing the interiors of houses as idealised worlds where everything was tidy and and befitting whatever architectural message the house was meant to convey. We haven’t really moved on. Then came the following photograph that upped the ante and made the very lives […]
It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law.“ This […]
A couple of years back there was a spate of Waste As Art and since then it has spread across the architectural universe. I fear something similar is now happening with Living and that any benefits individuals might gain from the act of inhabiting a space that is art will get sidelined in the scramble to use […]
If houses are art then what is or should be the content of that art? We have many answers to a question nobody’s ever asked. If houses by definition enable the act of habitation, then any meaning they have as Art ought to incorporate this somehow for, if it didn’t, it wouldn’t be a house. The problem […]
Tall food is a nineties restaurant plating affectation that came and went. Whatever was destined by looks or flavour to be on the same plate was stacked as high as it could be. The tall food in the feature photograph has the following layers that are, as far as I can ascertain, from bottom to […]
What is architectural theory anyway and why does it exist? What’s it do? In non-architectural fields we have theory and the application of theory. In this sense, theory is a synonym for a knowledge base that becomes larger and more solid over time, along with its application. This has served us well. We don’t have […]
![“Everything is Architecture” [a rant]](https://i0.wp.com/misfitsarchitecture.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/00s.jpg?fit=300%2C200&ssl=1)
Physicists can rightly say everything is physics and chemists can rightly say everything is chemistry and we’d all agree that everything at some level is one of them, both of them, or some combination of them. Some undiscovered grand theory may prove them to be two different names for the same thing and, when it does, […]
Yess – it’s The French Revolution! In his book, Russian and French Revolutionary Architecture, Adolf Max Vogt saw a parallel between what happened to French architecture after the French Revolution and what happened to Soviet architecture after the Russian one. In Architecture in the age of Stalin: Culture Two, Vladimir Paperny put it like this: This next example is a Soviet example of those […]
Poetry is strange and poetic language is strange. Some words make pleasant or interesting sounds. Other words may sound peculiar while others may be similar – or different – in special ways. Still other words occur in unexpected positions or with some new role or roles. All these poetic devices fall under the general concept […]
A vernacular of performance … Microprocessor research and technological application is always concerned with the pursuit of higher performance for the same or lower energy input, manufacture using simpler and fewer mechanical and chemical processes, the discovery of processes having higher degrees of tolerance, the elimination of ecologically unsound and toxic processes, the search for […]
Fireplace is one of those reliable English language words that don’t leave you guessing. This abridged history begins with the traditional European fireplace of mediaeval times. The one in the image on the left, below, is from a house The Black Knight once stayed in circa 1400, hence the insignia on the mantel – or at least that’s […]
“We believe in a nutritious architecture that does the shelter thing well, makes us feel good because it is good for us, doesn’t cost the earth or cost us the earth.” This has been at the top of this blog for five years now. It’s a statement of priorities – about getting the physical things about our […]
“Architecturally, nothing can be said about it” is what we hear when there’s no fallback context. For most people this is a truism but it’s really only a tautology. Not having a context for understanding a building as architecture means it can’t be architecture. This’d be no problem if it weren’t for the inconvenient fact that buildings with no value as Architecture can still have value for humanity. […]
