While I am waiting for further clarifications from Edgar Martins on the NY Times Magazine kerfuffle (don’t worry, they will come), Alan Rapp (a photography and architecture book editor - who, for example, edited the BLDGBLOG book) talked to four architectural photographers about the complex.
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Via art collectors I found these useful art gallery terms. Some very funny, such as “Limited edition” meaning “Generally, art produced in sufficient quantities that its practical availability will be unlimited.” (“Isn’t that cute, isn’t that true?” - Dusty Towne) or “Secondary market”: “The art world equivalent of a used-car lot, where work is sold with no benefit to the artist, except the rise or fall of his reputation.”
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You can certainly wonder whether blogs should really be called blogs, but they are here to stay. To a large extent, this is due to the efforts of a few truly outstanding individuals whose blogs have become beacons of quality. People like Josh Marshall come to mind, or Ed Winkleman, and, of course, there is Geoff Manaugh and his blog BLDGBLOG.
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As much as I like to look at modern architecture - well, at least some of it - I’ve recently noticed that one of its problems appears to be that the some of the buildings develop very mundane problems (often right from the start).
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Yale University’s “Rudolph building, designed and constructed from 1958 to 1963, shares a vertiginous history with another important mid-20th-century landmark, Boston’s City Hall, a competition-winning design by Kallmann, McKinnell & Knowles also built in the 1960s. Initially celebrated and subsequently reviled, both buildings are in the same Brutalist style. The name Brutalism — from the French béton brut, the raw concrete used by Le Corbusier and favored by modernists — is more commonly used today as a term of opprobrium by a public that profoundly dislikes the style’s rough textures and powerful forms.” - story
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Somebody shares this blogger’s disdain for soulless concrete architecture: “Le Corbusier will do for me. This vain, mercurial megalith of Modernism wouldn’t have given the average architect a glance. Only a fool would attempt to emulate his work. Thousands have - the public calls it ‘Modern Architecture’, a concrete desert where simple souls bend to an architect’s arrogant will.” - story
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It’s a rainy Saturday morning, and you might want to waste a few hours looking at photos of unusual architecture, but you’re sick and tired of seeing the same old Gehry buildings (let’s face it: If you’ve seen one Gehry building, you’ve pretty much seen them all), so where can you go? Well, unusual-architecture.com might work for you.
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Turns out the father of brutalism was an extremely interesting character.
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As much as I detest (yes, detest) some of the architecture that went up in the 1960s and 70s - I mentioned brutalism earlier - when it comes to tearing it down I actually am very much opposed to it. There lately has been a discussion in Britain about a place called Robin Hood Gardens, a thoroughly disgusting piece of architecture, which, it has been determined, is not worth protecting (as “English Heritage”).
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“No PR firm would have dreamt up the word ‘brutalism’. The term was derived from Le Corbusier’s “Breton brut” [sic! - should be “Béton brut”] - French for “raw concrete”, the movement’s preferred material - rather than anything to do with brutality, with which it has sadly become better associated. In the popular imagination, brutalism is synonymous with harsh, hostile, ugly architecture (or death metal). […] Maybe, sometime in the near future, we’ll realize that brutalism wasn’t so bad after all. Perhaps it just needs a new name.” (story) Turns out “Higher Education Redux”, the final addition to my project Higher Education, centers on brutalism on US university campuses and its hideous effect on what are supposed to be areas of creativity and learning.
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“Four months ago the architect Daniel Libeskind declared publicly that architects should think long and hard before working in China, adding, ‘I won’t work for totalitarian regimes.’ His remarks raised hackles in his profession, with some architects accusing him of hypocrisy because his own firm had recently broken ground on a project in Hong Kong. Since then, however, Mr. Libeskind’s speech, delivered at a real estate and planning event in Belfast, Northern Ireland, has reanimated a decades-old debate among architects over the ethics of working in countries with repressive leaders or shaky records on human rights. […] Architects face ethical dilemmas in the West too. Some refuse to design prisons; others eschew churches. Robert A. M. Stern, who is also Yale’s architecture dean, drew some criticism last year when he accepted an assignment to design a planned George W. Bush Library in Dallas.” (story)
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“The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has filed a negligence suit against world-renowned architect Frank Gehry, charging that flaws in his design of the $300 million Stata Center in Cambridge, one of the most celebrated works of architecture unveiled in years, caused leaks to spring, masonry to crack, mold to grow, and drainage to back up.” (story)
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“These photos are from a small book called ‘Bauten der Arbeit und des Verkehrs’ (buildings of work and transport) 1925, one of ‘Die Blauen Bücher’ (the blue books), a series of thin paperback books on art and architecture. Apart from depicting interesting expressionist or mordernist architecture, the pictures also seem to have a great ‘Neue Sachlichkeit’ appeal.” - link
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“With its dramatic angles, Daniel Libeskind’s new art gallery is lighting up Denver. There’s just one problem: you can’t hang much on those walls.” - story
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I hate to tell you this but this page was the only one I could find that shows some of Frederic Chaubin’s photos of unusual architecture in the former Soviet Union.
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For people who love “best of” lists - don’t we all, as cheesy as they might be? - here is C.C. Sullivan’s The World’s 12 Best New Buildings; some more images can be found at Ed Winkleman’s art blog.
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I’m filing this under architecture even though strictly speaking it’s “just” a car factory. But then have a look at VW’s new Gläserne Manufaktur (Transparent Factory), where the workers wear white overalls. Larger photos can be found here.
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It seems Germany’s Deutsche Bahn changed the original plans for Berlin’s new main train station a bit too much. This being Germany, it almost goes without saying that there’s a lot of fuss generated about it. No surprise really for a country that contributed words like weltschmerz to the English language.
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Here’s a treat of a special kind: Listen to Ian Parker’s narration about Dubai’s new architecture and watch breathtaking photos by Robert Polidori. When I saw one of the photos in the magazine, I first thought “Hey, that’s a cool illustration” - until I realized that it was a photo.
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In An Anatomy of Megachurches, Witold Rybczynski looks at and discusses large, contemporary American churches - and let’s really call those places churches and not “places of worship”, because there are so many more “places of worship”, which, officially, are not churches at all.
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“‘Deutschlandscape’ – may well confound preconceived notions of the contemporary architecture scene in Germany. The fresh overview of over 38 built projects throughout Germany dating between 2000 and 2004 is a deliberate shift in focus away from metropolitan urban centres to the more peripheral areas on the urban fringe.”
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“Most people think of Boston as a dense city, and it is, especially by American standards. TodayÂ’s city is, however, a pale shadow of the medieval maze that was Boston before large-scale modern planning and spatial concepts entered the picture.” Have a look at photos showing Boston’s change. Just imagine what kind of charm Boston would have today if they hadn’t destroyed the old center to replace it with those architectural monstrosities. This is particularly ironic in the light of the awe expressed by Americans when they come back from Europe: If Europeans had given their own cities the same treatment, all the old stuff wouldn’t be around there any longer, either. (seen at thingsmagazine, which contains more links for this topic)
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I’m going to be visiting Frankfurt - one of my favourite German cities - in not quite two weeks; and I just came across a website that describes how Frankfurt was rebuilt after WWII. Unfortunately, it’s in German only. The photos are here, and it’s more or less straightforward to look through the photos, given the dates next to the links. There are also links that show some of the places today. For that, click on the yellow links next to the photos that say “heute”. Highlights: Reconstruction of the city center (with drastic photos of the destruction and the replacement of those destroyed quaint houses with hideous 1950’s blocks), technical reconstructions (with cool/weird 1950’s technology), the shopping district, and - especially cool: “modern” architecture 1949-53, 1954-59, and 1960-66.
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“Since 1995 synagogues that were destroyed by the Nazis in 1938 have been reconstructed on the computer in the Department CAD in Architecture at the Technical University of Darmstadt. The project stems from a student initiative in 1994, a year in which hostility towards foreigners and anti-Semitic commentaries noticeably increased.”
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“Architect Pierre Koenig, a leader in the Modernist movement that became emblematic of progressive postwar America, has died.” - story (links thru thingsmagazine.net)
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The DataBase of Urban Exploration’s goal is “to promote industrial archaeology and architecture”. (thru sublimate)
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Julian Thomas sent me the link to Heavy Metal Madness, noting that if you put together those postcards of industrial buildings you’d end up with something that looks very similar to what the Bechers have been doing with their photography. Isn’t that interesting?
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Daniel Libeskind, the architecturial head behind Berlin’s new Jewish Museum has his own website. In the US, he’s probably only known as the architect behind the new World Trade Center, unfortunately a megalomaniac hideousness.
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“Architecture is frozen music,” said German philosopher Schopenhauer. “Music is molten city halls,” replied German comedian Max Goldt about a century later. Regardless of how you look at it it’s tempting to connect architecture and music - and only because it’s fun. German electronic musicians To Rococo Rot (also see this earlier entry) composed music for an architectural project called Kölner Brett. Read a review of the result here. (this entry was inspired by Scores for Stores which I found thru 990000.com) PS: Amazon.com doesn’t carry To Rococo Rot’s “Kölner Brett.” If you live in the US use mail-order through the fabulous forcedexposure.com.
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A nice page with lots of photos. Not even close to being really there I guess.
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