Archive for modernism

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Klein Penthouse

LOT-EK’s best-known rooftop project is the Guzman Penthouse in midtown New York. Constructed partly from a reclaimed truck container, it is an iconic image of Modernism returned to its industrial roots mixed with the spirit of Post-Modern reappropriation and New York’s famously bohemian loft culture. The project included extensive technological gadgets, most notably a vertically [...]

Intentions in Architecture

Intentions in Architecture by Christian Norberg-Schulz – Published within a few years of Aldo Rossi’s Architecture of the City and Robert Ventun’s Complexity and Contradiction, Christian Norberg-Schulz’ (b 1926) Intentions in Architecture is equally a reaction against Modernism, in particular as realized after the War. Norberg-Schulz begins the book with an extended argument suggesting [...]

Haus Trub

Haus Trub

Haus Trub is designed by Agps Architecture (Marc Angehl, Sarah Graham, Manuel Scholl, Reto Henninger, Hanspeter Oester). The design of Haus Trub in Horgen, Switzerland took inspiration from conceptual artist Gordon Matta Clark who enlisted remnants from abandoned buildings. In his method of art making, Matta Clark sought out a culinary analogy. He [...]

“Falling Water” by Frank Lloyd Wright

“Falling Water” designed by famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright is often referred to as the most beautiful and inventive modern house in the world. Originally it was designed as a weekend house for a wealthy client, Edgar Kaufmann Sr. Today it is a much visited landmark building which straddles a precipitous site combining the familiar [...]

Patriarch

Patriarch

The building is influenced by the architecture from the turn of the last century as well as Stalinist classicism.
The architectural character of the environs has rubbed off on this new building. A corner edifice, it has incorporated the dominant style of the immediate surroundings. The building takes on a quality embodied in its high [...]

Firth of Forth Bridge, Edinburgh

Firth of Forth Bridge, Edinburgh

The bridge is composed of three giant units supported by pylons over a total length of about 2,500 meters; it was perfectly suited to the many visionary works of the period and was immediately popular Very few people criticized the bridge’s appearance, but among them was William Morris, one of the fathers of modernism, who [...]

Post-War Architecture

The past four decades have seen one of the largest building programmes in the history of architecture. The world has literally been reshaped. This extensive building programme began with the need to rebuild, renew and reinstate after the ravages of the Second World War. Housing took priority, and from an architectural point of view, it [...]

New Tendencies in the History of Architecture

In the history of Architecture, freedom and liberation were the passwords of the 1960s counter-culture, and that meant freedom to act, sing, draw and design in any way one pleased. This “hippie” era saw the emergence of designers like Buckminster Fuller and Paolo Soleri as cult heroes. Free forms and bright colours were characteristic of [...]

The Search for Style in the history of architecture

Architectural form combines both instrument and emblem in the history of architecture. Its instrumental role is that of allowing certain human action to take place within it, which the building will either encourage or limit in specific ways. Its emblematic aspect is the way in which the building’s imagery and quality of surface and [...]

Farnsworth House by Mies van der Rohe

In 1946, Mies van der Rohe designed a weekend retreat for Dr. Edith Farnsworth in Plano, Illinois, near Chicago. A number of architects including Richard Neutra and Buckminster Fuller had grappled with the practical problems of using metal-framed structural systems for domestic design but no one idealized the concept to the degree Mies did in [...]