If buildings are meant to be for everybody, then everybody is surely entitled to have an opinion on them and any aspect of them – goes one line of reasoning. However, trying to identify buildings that have a degree of public recognition independent of their degree of architectural recognition is like trying to detect neutrinos in […]
Houses can have more than one staircase for a variety of reasons. More often than not, it’s to enable two different classes of people to not meet each other, such as in this house with its “front” staircase and servants’ staircases. There’s actually also a third staircase connecting the footpath with the basement and used […]
Houses having only one stair going from the hallway to the upper floors seem like a hangover from houses such this one where, upon entering, guests were immediately ushered upstairs to the drawing room. Even before neo-Palladianism, having the staircase in front of the front door was probably an affectation owing something to the European […]
The first second thought has to do with orientation. At approx. 45°N, Villa Rotonda has no problems with view and no problems with illumination although the last of the setting sun in winter may be blocked by those trees to the south west and that are known as the Southwest Grove. They were intentionally planted, […]
According to the New York Times, the architects of Reversible Destiny Foundation believe that comfort is a precursor to death and that what they design is intended to lead their users into a perpetually tentative relationship with their surroundings due to multiple levels, oddly angled switches, uneven floors, and a riot of colour. I agree […]
An investment manager, a property developer and an architect walk into a room full of people wanting to hear what the architects have to say about co-living. Co-living had been a thing around 2016 but, come 2020 and Covid19, everyone shuddered at the thought of touching doorhandles other people might have touched, let alone sharing […]
At the end of what turned out to be the first part of this three-part post, I wondered how to downsize those access/street-threshold relationships Riken Yamamoto had embedded into his Pangyo Housing project. Part two made me think of voids and how they create a seemingly desirable physical and psychological separation between the outside with […]
Ever since Rafael Vinoly’s 432 Park Avenue [c.f. Moneymaking Machines #1: 432 Park Avenue] and the ensuing ruckus over planned supertalls casting shadows over Central Park, we’ve known of Central Park Tower at 225 West 57th Street that some people insist on terming “Billionaire’s Row” as if it was a good thing, apt though it […]
Ralph Rapson’s Case Study House #4 was the only Case Study House that promoted a different, less glamorous kind of lifestyle. It was also the only one that didn’t get built. A large skylight covers an indoor garden cultivated for what looks like food. It’s a good idea even if it’s not clear what’s supposed […]
This post is a supplement to the last post I wrote about stepped terrace buildings in 2022. Stepped Terrace is as good a name as any and I’ll continue to use it as long as it’s not confused with terraced mat buildings that step up a slope instead of stepping up from flat land. The […]
Some time ago now, Misha in Canada emailed to ask why so many residential buildings in South-East Asia have only one fire stair. He asked why do building codes in East Asia allow one exit stair in tall buildings? This is not the case in the Anglo world or in codes inspired by them, but […]
Buildings with double height spaces have existed for as long as there have been haylofts, minstrels’ galleries and artist’s studios, but the history of making more efficient use of the height inside residential space is about a hundred years. Many of the first proposals were entries to the 1926 Comradely Competition for Communal Housing organized […]
Holes in buildings have been around for a while – at least since 1982 when Arquitectonica’s The Atlantis was completed and most definitely since 1984 when the building was featured in the opening credits of Miami Vice that ran for five seasons from 1984. I just read that one of the five founding members in 1977 […]
This is another of those posts from misfits’ prehistory, this time from August 1999. The description on the site https://www.tomorrow.city/a/freedom-ship says: “Designed by the engineer Norman Nixon at the end of the ’90s, the “Freedom Ship is a 25-story high megaship that is 1,371.6 meters long, 228 meters wide and 106.68 meters high. The vessel is too […]
