This introduction follows on last week’s post and segues into this one because I continued to think about why that particular treatment of old buildings so disturbed me. If you remember, I preferred the treatment given to these buildings. I think it has something to do with setting rather than context even though both can […]
Buildings come and go. Some overstay their welcome and some only appreciated when they’re gone. This post is about those buildings whose departure is protracted yet partial. All my examples are from the city of Perth, Western Australia but this post isn’t about Perth because every city will have its examples. Instead, it’s about history […]
Extrapolating, the endgame of contemporary techniques seems to be a naturalistic architecture largely designed by yet wholly made by machines.
The architectural media likes an anniversary and 2019 is the year we’re meant to be grateful for The Bauhaus and all it did for us. Last week I suggested the real legacy of The Bauhaus lay in legitimizing the idea of design as a standalone activity isolated from manufacture because once design could be valued […]
I can’t say Ludwig Kurz was representative of all craftsmen any more than I can claim Anton Hofer represents The Bauhaus but this post is not about individuals – it is about two different approaches to education, design and production that coexisted once. Ludwig’s Kurz’s formal education took place over the three winters of 1922-23, […]
An important step in Le Corbusier’s career as an architect was the 1912 house he designed for his parents – he charged them a fee. The house was too expensive to maintain so they sold it in 1919. By then, Charles-Édouard had already decamped to Paris, bigger fish to fry. Little wonder his mother always preferred his brother Albert. […]
The Free Plan featured in an earlier post and Pilotis will feature in a future one. Roof Gardens have been mentioned and not much can be said about Horizontal Windows. The Free Facade always seems to come last. At the time, it meant nothing more than external walls having the potential to be arbitrarily penetrated by openings preferably sideways but, of the Famous Five, […]
Like me, you probably first heard about the free plan in connection with this sketch by the man his mother knew as Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris. Or maybe it was this 1929 house with a basement. Let’s take a closer look at that famous plan, free to wriggle around inside its cage. POINT #1: Freedom has little meaning when the cage is so accommodating. […]
The kickoff for this post was an infovertisement in June’s Architectural Review. Ostensibly, the issue was about criticism but there wasn’t much on show. Elsewhere, Michael Sorkin contributed a very long article criticising criticism. I’m still trying to digest it and when I do I’ll write an article criticising that. If ever it’s proved that architecture is actually […]
Confession Time. Some years ago, I used to work for a large multidisciplinary company as their staff writer, their architectural editor, as it were. My primary task was to write about that company’s buildings as architecture because this was something that had never been done before. The premise of the job was that if buildings are […]
This post is a collection of gas/petrol stations designed by famous architects. It’s not an original topic since the same theme is explored by a few slideshows and articles floating around the internet. Here’s one, for example. What interests me is that many of these articles and blogs excuse or apologise for the architect involved […]
