Saturday, 30 January 2021

ferienhaus

Some property-scouting from Things Magazine directs our attention to the estate agents who have recently placed a MidCentury Modern vacation village on the market. This ensemble of chalets with amenities are part of a campground on the Italo-Swiss border outside of the community of Cremenaga with seventeen of the twenty-seven units (plus communal buildings and facilities) designed by renowned Zรผrich lecturer and architect Justus Dahinden (*1925 - †2020), whose other works include some iconic, Brutalist concrete sacred buildings, a ziggurat-inspired clinic and numerous community centres, multi-purpose halls and holiday resorts. Much more to explore at the links above. 

Wednesday, 25 November 2020

dantooine is too remote to make an effective demonstration

Conservationists and connoisseurs of Brutalist architecture have found allies in Star Wars fandom—whether or not the iconic outline of the Hรดtel du Lac of Tunis directly informed the sandcrawler of the Jawas on Tatooine (some sources disagree, saying that Ralph McQuarrie had come up with the mobile fortress well before location scouting) to help preserve the historic structure from perhaps imminent destruction. Scenes of the first instalment of the saga were in any case filmed in the deserts of Tunisia, the name and ancillary building style of the moisture farm after the governorate of Tatouine, Tiแนญแนญawin, โตœโต‰โตŸโตŸโดฐโตกโต‰โต. The presently abandoned (closed to guests since the early 2000s) and in a severe state of disrepair structure was built in the early 1970s and designed by Italian architect and painter Raffaele Contigiani (*1920 – †2008) as an inverted ziggurat and those room windows have their blinds strategically drawn to spell out Non ร  la demolition (ู„ุง ู„ู„ู‡ุฏู…) in Arabic.

Wednesday, 6 May 2020

bรฉton brut

Beginning with an overture on aesthetic differences immortalised in in the 007 franchise, 99% Invisible (both in written form and as a podcast) presents an excellent and comprehensive look at the landmarks of Brutalist architecture.
Aside from the distinct pleasure of revisiting a selection of these sometimes reviled yet unrivalled masterpieces of formalism that often courted condemnation as fallout shelters, urban blight or Soviet-era slab with a guided tour—sadly prompted by the premature loss of two architects synonymous with the vernacular—rather than the utopian and optimistic impulse the construction medium brought. Much more to explore at the link above.

Wednesday, 3 April 2019

5x5

villa göth: six introductory videos on the architectural style of Brutalism (previously)

underdogs: a funny Apple advertisement manages to cover its entire suite of devices

murder she drew: an interview with talented, veteran courtroom artist (see also) Marilyn Church, via Boing Boing

no conclusion: Trump is now vacillating on releasing the Mueller Report to the public

xarabank: Malta’s unique and colourful fleet of buses recently retired make a comeback fully electrified 

Thursday, 13 December 2018

brutalist brussels

Renown for his portfolio of works that includes a pavilion on the flora and fauna of the Congo created for the venue’s 1958 l’Exposition universelle (the one the Atomium was built for) and the city’s cinema museum, Belgian-Polish architect Constantin Brodzki also designed an iconic headquarters for Cimenteries CBR (acquired by HeidelbergCement in 1999) in 1967—comprising seven hundred fifty-six prefabricated oval concrete modules that give it its distinctive faรงade. Abandoned for some time, the historic building has been restored and conserved—retaining many of the original elements and built-in furniture units—and is reopening as a multistorey coworking and conference space. The revival is being called Office Boitsfort/Bosvoorde, after the Brussels municipality, and you can see more at Curbed at the link above.

Thursday, 6 December 2018

5x5

betamax xmas: we get reintroduced to a nostalgic, internet classic—via Waxy

optician sans: a sleek free font from ANTI Hamar and Fรกbio Duarte Martins

i heard you on the wireless back in ‘sixty-two: a whole universe of pre-MTV music videos

premiรจre arabesque: guitarist Kyle Schaefer arranges and performs Claude Debussy’s early masterpiece in progressive rock style

modernistmas: an updated gallery (previously) of Brutalist and Post Modernism gingerbread houses for the holidays 

Thursday, 29 November 2018

6x6

snow globes: a new holiday tradition to us—sending Street View Christmas cards

ammartaggio: a for the nonce Italian Word of the Day in tribute to the InSight touchdown

appellation d’origine contrรดlรฉe: a detail world atlas to explore gustatory landscapes in detail—via Pasa Bon!

condominium: a library straddling the US-Canadian border has become a venue for emotional family reunions for those (we all are) affected by the Trump administration’s immigration policies—via Super Punch 

orden mexicana del รกguila azteca: the Mexican government presents Trump’s son-in-law with its highest honour reserved for foreign dignitaries

jantar mantar: an incredible eighteenth century Indian astronomical observatory whose architecture previsions Brutalism 

Tuesday, 26 June 2018

narthex

Listed as a historic and protected building since 2000, the Brutalist-style Cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul of the Bristol ward of Clifton has just undergone a major refurbishment to restore it to its original 1970 vision by architect RJ Weeks in collaboration with the Vatican. See a whole gallery of images of this geometric marvel and learn more at the link above.

Thursday, 31 May 2018

little birdhouse in your soul

Nag on the Lake acquaints us with Frankfurter clock-maker Guido Zimmermann who showcases his talents in a series of custom traditional cuckoo chimes housed in Brutalist, Plattenbau architecture—as a commentary on social housing gentrified and priced out of the range of its intended resident. His cuckcoo blocks also reference the original conceit of the clocks, not stowed away as a souvenir, were symbolic in themselves as a middle-class (spieรŸbรผrgerlich) signal of success. View a video of the whole range of his designs at the links above.

Thursday, 26 April 2018

block party

Lukas Valiauga, designer of interactive installations and digital interfaces, pays a playful homage, we learn via Present /&/ Correct to the game of Tetris, but instead of the traditional tetrominoes, the geometric pieces are composed of the faรงades of Brutalist apartment towers. Players are invited to demolish or build up blocs as they see fit.

Tuesday, 10 April 2018

6x6

never just a car: a supercut of automotive movie cameos

blue state: an exhibit in Los Angles structured around colour examines the many ways of casting shade

india pale ale: find out what which beer you’re partial to says about you, via the ever-brilliant Nag on the Lake

le bรฉton brรปt: with greyscale Lego bricks, a man and his son create miniature Brutalists architecture, via Present /&/ Correct

paleo-futures: 1926 interview with Nikola Tesla predicting our fraught relationship with our gadgets

midsweden 365: secret tunnels excavated in the granite mountains near the town of Gรคllรถ repurposed as a underground, year-round skiing range

Monday, 19 February 2018

rรฉfectoire

Inscribed on UNESCO’s list of World Heritage in 2016, the priory on the hillside in ร‰veux near Lyon was commissioned by the local order of Dominican monks from architects Le Corbusier and Iannis Xenakis back in 1953—construction concluding in 1960, with the compound Sainte Marie de la Tourette coming to represent one of the most exemplary structures of the late Modernist and Brutalist style.
Its one hundred cells and study halls still serve an active though declining population of friars but the with the convent having become one of the pilgrimage destinations of adherents of iconic architecture, it still attracts many visitors and offers overnight accommodations to help offset the costs of upkeep.

Friday, 2 February 2018

choux de crรฉteil

Completed in 1974, Messy Nessy Chic acquaints us with the Brutalist concrete ensemble of apartment towers dubbed Les Choux (the Cauliflowers) due to the distinctive balconies, which residents were encouraged to grow gardens on in hopes that the community would become a self-sufficient utopia.
Indeed the neighbour that architect Gรฉrard Granval created for the south-eastern suburb of Crรฉteil had everything that its dwellers could want for—a cinema and a shopping centre—and was designed to uphold principles of minimising one’s ecological footprint and discouraged gentrification by admixing a population of students with people of various income levels and social support reliance. In 2008, the Ministry of Culture recognised the group of ten cylindrical buildings as piece of architectural heritage. See a vintage promotional video of the grounds and a few other structures created by Granval at the link above.

Sunday, 28 January 2018

ultraviolence

Failed Architecture presents an interesting case-study of Thamesmead Housing Estates, one of the primary filming locations of Stanley Kubrick’s 1972 adaptation of A Clockwork Orange, and how the community has battled that cultural reference since and tried to divorce itself from modernist architecture’s (largely unfounded) associations with unsuccessful social experiments and indeed post-industrial wastelands.
Before the compound was saved from the wrecking-ball a decade ago—a fate that has befallen too many other housing projects, only exacerbating the crisis of affordable living accom- modations whether or not terrorised by Droogs, its demolition was hailed by Greater London and beyond as “the end of ultraviolence,” even though the building was eventually spared and Thamesmead is not a net-exporter of crime nor contributor to delinquency and truancy. The estate will undergo a different type of transformation at the hands of private developers, however, that is suspected to exploit the property’s prime-location and reform its image ultimately through gentrification—which does not help the availability of affordable homes in the end either.

Friday, 26 January 2018

deconstructivism

We rather enjoyed this survey of buildings that signal the resurgence or rather endurance of the Postmodern architectural style by student and expert Adam Nathaniel Furman.
Typified by exaggerated reference to touchstones of place reimaged, the once-maligned icons of the age (think the Sydney Opera House or the Petronas Towers), constructed in the past decade, like this residential complex it Amsterdam that evoke both pyramids and the traditional brick townhouses of the Netherlands are symbolic and routes for trying to reconcile the classic and familiar when placed in a new context, the playful over the arch and austere. Some of the examples have had previous appearances (like here and here and here) illustrate how meaning and messaging has become a rather fraught and unforgiving matter but I suppose that each generation, with intervening input and interloping, goes through these moments when culture and artefact resonate or clash.

Tuesday, 7 November 2017

bierpinsel

Via Messy Nessy Chic, we learn that after proving itself to be unviable as a commercial venue, the forty-six metre “beer brush” tower in Berlin will be on the auction block as a residential property.
The Brutalist, protected monument was originally conceived as suggestive of a tree was opened as a nightclub and restaurant in 1976 and after a succession of owners shut down finally in 2006 and remained vacant, later becoming an officially sanctioned canvas for graffiti artists. For the lucky winner, they’ll be in possession (hopefully as an actual abode and not some vanity backdrop for tourists) of a twelve thousand square metre, four room, four bath home.

Sunday, 30 April 2017

bio-beton

Researchers at the Delft University of Technology are engineering a rather brilliant form of self-repairing structural concrete by mixing spores of calcifying (limestone-producing) bacteria into cement paste. Once cracks occur, the oxygen wakens the bacteria and triggers the healing process and after a few weeks the rift is again sealed.
In addition to vastly reducing the cost, the bacteria also leech carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in the process.

Forscher von der Delfter Universitรคt der Technologie arbeiten eine ziemlich brillante Form von selbstreparierendem Beton. Sporen von verkalkenden (kalksteinbildenden) Bakterien werden in eine Zementpaste gemischt. Wenn Risse auftreten, wacht der Sauerstoff die Bakterien auf und lรถst den Heilungsprozess aus und nach einigen Wochen wird der Riss wieder versiegelt. Neben der erheblichen Reduzierung der Kosten, nehmen auch die Bakterien auch Kohlendioxid aus der Atmosphรคre.

Monday, 13 March 2017

concrete feats

Via Dezeen we discover Spanish illustrator Marta Colmenero celebrating some of the distinctive landmarks of Brutalist architecture from across Europe and north Africa, including the iconic public housing estate Balfron Tower, completed in 1967, designed by Hungarian extract Ernล‘ Goldfinger. Such residential towers saw the rise of the high-rise and it was Goldfinger’s early pioneering solutions limited urban space that really started the process, and caused one objector to the demolition left in the building boom’s wake, Ian Flemming, to name his Bond arch-villain after the architect. Goldfinger threatened the author with legal action but relented when Fleming offered to rename the character “Goldprick.”

Friday, 18 November 2016

time and tide

Via Colossal, we are treated to wonderful, modern and almost brutalist at times sandcastles of sculptor Calvin Seibert. Spending part of the summer beachcombing at Rockaway in New York, Seibert reflected on the nature of his temporary edifices and how their construction is a race against time that defies advanced planning and develops rather organically. Explore more of Seibert’s amazing geometric sculptures at the link above.

Thursday, 30 May 2013

alchemie oder mayence

An international team of alchemists have proven their metal and have explained in a repeatable and applicable way how liquid cement (Beton) can be magicked into a liquid glass-like conductive material.

The substance, refined at laboratories in Japan, is being called mayenite, after the English exonym for the city of Mainz where the potential was accidentally first discovered. It's in the cooling and compression that determines how the cement congeals and compounds crystallize that makes a spot of pavement a hot-wire. This is pretty interesting news in material engineering, making ideas like electrifying roads to charge hybrid vehicles or harness kinetic energy or turning passive surfaces into dynamic ones seem not so far-fetched or ambitious.