Architecture Talk

Erich Gutmorgeth’s speciality is difficult locations. The architect advises his client to find a site that nobody else wants to obtain, because these plots are mostly available at a low price. Then, the saved money is meant to improve the building A detached home near Innsbruck shows the result, which can be achieved with this strategy here, the view had to be shielded from the mundane, neighbouring structure in country house style Gutmorgeth therefore covered the house with a second skin of perpendicular slats, set apart from the facade at a small distance and creating an intermediate zone, which is used as a terrace. The terrace extends over two floors up to the roof, so that it is both protected from rain and appears particularly spacious. The external layer filters the view towards the outside: if the resident looks through the facade vertically, the surroundings become visible, but if he directs his gaze at a tangent across the slats, they close and block out the neighbouring area The second skin breaks up in some places and allows well-calculated views of the charming Tirolian hills in the distance.

Tags: Funicular, House, Zaha Hadid

Villa Neuendorf in Mallorca, Spain

The dialogue between building and landscape is the central theme of a villa in the south of Mallorca. Like a medieval castle it overlooks the spacious site with such a natural air as if it had always been there. Since Claudio Silvestrin, the architect had earth pigment from this area worked into the plaster, its mainly closed walls are in the same brownish colour as the dry earth of the surrounding environment. A dead-straight narrow path, which is paved with natural stone typical for the region, leads over a stretch of one hundred meters up the slightly rising site towards the building, where a vertical slit Just 83 centimetres wide dramatically cuts through the façade and provides access to the interior. Via this loophole, the visitor enters a courtyard. Whereas as he approached, he was still wondering how many rooms might be included in the imposing villa, now it turns out that the largest part is occupied by a quadratic, external room, which is embodied in the building volume It measures 12 by 12 meters and is certainly not over furnished—only a bench, made of local stone, invites the guest to sit down. On one of the remaining facades of the villa there is a pool that is directly joined to the building and, as a horizontal element like the path, merges the villa with its surroundings.

Tags: Villa Neuendorf

Our Lady of Loreto, Prague, begun 1721

Nearer the forms of rococo, the facade of the sanctuary of Loreto - made beginning in 1721 on a design by Christoph Dientzenhofer and completed by his son Kilian is especially wide and has austere architectural forms emphasized by the elegant colouring of the cornices, with subtly undulating movement only in the two higher side bodies and in the decorative bell tower.

The Bohemian late baroque was among the richest and most original artistic periods in the history of 18th-century Europe. The initial predominance of Italian taste, French stylistic elements, and the proximity of Vienna resulted in a harmonious and heterogeneous blend of forms that was unique in Europe. Prague again rose to rank among the most lively and dynamic cities, and its architectural verve was reflected in several important undertakings, from the domes of churches to new noble palaces and finally to major complexes, such as the sanctuary of Loreto.

The architectural face of the city and its region was in large measure a result of the work of a family of architects - the Dientzenhofers - whose creations are characterized by an insistent use of curving lines and complex plans composed of spatial cells derived from Guarini. Around 1700, they were responsible for the last great flowering of baroque ecclesiastical architecture.

Of particular importance were the churches of St Nicholas in the Little Quarter (Mala Strana) of Prague and St Margaret at Brevnov, near Prague, both works by Christoph Dientzenhofer. These two splendid churches present similar forms derived from the application of Borromini and Guarini principles, such as spatial juxtaposition and the large curved cornice on columns or pillars, also known as the `Dientzenhoferian motif’. The churches by Dientzenhofer are composed of oval cells that interpenetrate following lines of expansion or contraction - a system called spatial syncopation or syncopated interpenetration - combined with the Central European system of mural pillars, which expresses the aspiration for strong plastic and spatial integration, while the external walls are generally treated as neutral surfaces. The space is presented as an ‘open’ system to which it is possible to add cells at will, following the principle of ‘pulsating juxtapositions.

James Wyatt, Fonthill Abbey, 1795-1807

Designed and built for the eccentric William Beckford, Fonthill Abbey had an enormous cruciform plan with a panoramic gallery more than 100 metres long, some of it presented in the state of ruin, the rest put to domestic uses Wyatt created a visionary delirium that proved, however, to be structurally weak the giant 84 metre high tower ended up collapsing one night in 1825, destroying most of this romantic fantasy, leaving only the north wing.

Tags: Fonthill Abbey

The reworkings of urban areas that took place during the 17th century were almost always related to overall systems of defensive fortifications, and these systems evolved steadily in terms of form and type. In response to the increased power of artillery, bastions became lower and wider, and ditches and moats were introduced on such a scale that they represented an element of transition between the city and the surrounding countryside.

Military constructions, most of all fortifications, presented one of the major expenses faced by a baroque state in Europe, and the military geography of modern Europe came into being in part because of the varying ability of states to pay their bills. The more or less constant pressure of warfare between the emerging powers of the young modern Europe induced many cities to pay for avant-garde fortifications. Excellence in planning such fortifications was originally an Italian monopoly, but it shifted northward in the wake of the conflicts.

In 1667 King Louis XIV of France began a series of aggressive campaigns against the Spanish Netherlands and the Rhineland, thus providing the opportunity to make an ambitious programme of fortifications along France’s northern and eastern borders. The pre-eminence of French military architecture results as much from the munificence of its sovereign as from the excellent qualities of its greatest military architect, Sebastien Leprestre de Vauban, who designed a series of revolutionary and ingenious fortifications, along with new cities, using ideas dictated by the pragmatic breaking of academic rules. He worked out an easy compromise between the 16th-century Italian obtuse- angle bastion and the 17th-century Dutch acute-angle bastion and reintroduced, in the Alps and the Pyrenees, the citadel, bastioned towers with blockhouses.