Nice brick addition. Notice the various coursings: soldier (vertical), stack (grid) and running (alternating). More here.
Co-Housing Model - Nordic Pavilion at Venice Arch Biennale
This full scale model by Helen & Hard of Norway will be on display in Venice through Nov. 21, 2021. Following the Biennale, this environment is slated to become a co-housing space is Norway.
An example of shared tool space - a system after my own heart.
MuMa Hut
Tiny simple hut in the Romanian countryside by WeWilder.
Frida Kahlo & Diego Rivera Houses/Studios (Mexico)
Designed by their friend, Juan O’Gorman - architect/painter. Home from 1934 - 1940. Rivera’s is the larger white box, while Kahlo's is the blue one.
I love how the two volumes abstractly capture the physical and maybe emotional relationship between this couple. The buildings are linked by a walkway, visually reflecting their joined but separate lives. I’m guessing the space between the buildings was not great enough and the cactus fence is a great touch.
Kahlo looks so unlike her typical depiction in this photo.
450sf steel box Lemmo Architecture & Design
Such a good size. Check out more here by this Austin, TX based firm.
Homes for Homeless Children in India - Anupama Kundoo Architects
These domes were constructed and then fired in-place to harden the material (see images below). This highly experimental project is an example of radical thinking that is being explored in an effort to address affordability of housing for all, and is integrally sustainable in all its aspects. More here.
Overgrown Industrial Building into Residence in Melbourne (Architects EAT)
Some beautiful craft in this project. More here.
Texture, Space and Artifact
These are a few of my favorite things…
Mole House - David Adjeye
British modern artist, Sue Webster, acquired this dilapidated house the previous owner had obsessively tunneled through and under. It, of course, would have been easiest to scrape this train wreck but I love that Webster and Adjaye found a way to preserve, highlight and modify this derelict structure. More here.
Casa Tejida or Woven House by ZuloArk Architects (Colombia)
A beautiful project that sits lightly and embraces material connections on a family coffee plantation. More here.
Stair Landings
I like how in other countries (Mexico, in this instance) the codes arounds stairs are so relaxed that you don’t need rails and spindles but can trust a dog to “child proof” potential danger zones. Who’s a good boy?
Paris from the Air
Jeffrey Milstein (architect/photographer/publisher) highlights the beauty of the city’s geometry, in a new book of photographs. Find it at (or request it from) your local bookstore.
Milstein took his first aerial photographs from a Cessna 150 in 1961 when he was 17, shortly after he got his pilot's license by sweeping a Southern California aircraft hangar in exchange for flight time.
I.M. Pei's 1989 Pyramide du Louvre
CANGGU GARDEN by Stilt Studios
I like how the geometry of this dwelling nicely mimics that of the surrounding plants and trees.
Happy Sunday
Lovely Spring day in Denver. This image is from a modern home in France I believe.
The Woolworth Building
Officially opening April 24th, 1913 (108yrs ago, today), this is an early American skyscraper designed by architect Cass Gilbert and located in lower Manhattan, New York. Amazingly, it was the tallest building in the world from 1913 to 1930, with a height of 792 feet (241 m) and still remains one of the 100 tallest buildings in the US.
Bonus points go to the one that can name (in comments below) which famous skyscraper stripped the Woolworth Bldg of title in 1930…no cheating.
Carpenter Center for Visual Arts (Cambridge, MA)
Completed in 1963, Corbusier’s only US project. He would never visit this project due to ailing health and would die in 1965 at 77. I can only imagine he had his most trusted people overseeing its execution, as It is beautifully three dimensional and complex and holds up to the test of time.
Also, worth checking out are Transparent Drawings by Kurt Ofer - a way of thinking about drawing/painting that embraces space.
High Park House (Toronto)
Clearly a modern infill house by Batay-Csorba Architects, however, the scale, overhang and boxed story connect surprisingly well with the older homes next door.
3D Printed Clay House (TECLA) - near Bologna, Italy
Somewhat mimicing a mud dauber wasp home, TECLA (technology and clay) is a nearly zero-waste project using recyclable & reusable materials (clay). The hope is to provide a new means of efficient and elegant affordable housing in response to the increasingly serious climate emergency and the need for sustainable dwellings. More here.
'Lost Golden City' (Egypt) - Unearthed 2021
Built 3,400+ yrs ago, the mud brick rooms and artifacts reveal much about daily life of the time through discovered tools, scarabs and colored pottery (containing hieroglyphic inscriptions). More information here.
Salk Institute - Louis Kahn (La Jolla, CA) 1960
This is one of those places that is bigger conceptually than I had ever imagined (having only looked at photos and having read about it for years). First of all, it’s important to note that Jonas Salk is the person that developed the vaccine for polio in 1954. It’s believed Polio had killed over 500,000+ people worldwide (over a 50 year period) and left tens of millions with debilitating paralysis or physical deformities.
The institute is situated on the edge of the Pacific Ocean and in a grand gesture both frames the wide optimistic sky above and opens it’s arms to the teaming-with-life sea below. Kahn somehow captured the weight of Salk’s accomplishment and gracefully honored it with these mirrored stacks that house tiny wooden monk-like cells for devoted academics, encouraging them to reach high. A channel of water runs along the center uniting a public space for researchers to congregate and share ideas (there are even slate boards at the base of each stack for chalked ideas to freely be displayed, discussed and debated) with clear pools (of metaphorical knowledge) that tier at the West end and return the water back to the start of the fountain.
It’s a sacred place that remarkably blends the spiritual and scientific. It felt more like a cathedral than any cathedral I’ve visited. If you ever get the chance…go experience it.
