Archinect - News

Hood Century's solitary quest to preserve Black modernist heritage is spurring social media users to action

2023-01-18T13:20:00-05:00

Jerald Cooper, who lives in Cincinnati, wants to recognize and help preserve modern architecture and interior design that have added to the aesthetic and culture of many Black communities. His aim is to make architecture and design more accessible by using layman’s language to break down barriers typically set up by white academics with advanced degrees, and educate more people who are now empowered through social media to comment on the structural beauty of a modernist tower.

The music industry marketing consultant started the passion project after a treasured local West End church was demolished in order to make room for Populous’ $250 million new Cincinnati F.C. stadium in 2019, an act which he calls “infrastructural trauma.” Since then, he has grown an online audience of more than 83,000 followers with his Instagram account Hood Century, offering analysis that breaks down Black modernism into three categories: made for, handed down, and claimed.

The effort places him in line with others, such as the newly-funded Conserving Black Modernism project from the Getty and National Trust for Historic Preservation. Jerald Cooper represents the potential for social media adept architecture aficionados to combat what he called a “lack of knowing” in their own communities. As the former USC architecture dean Milton Curry says, “the complex story of Modernism cannot be fully revealed without new research on its impacts in and on the Black communities that it has t...

What is Tropical Modernism, and how did it find its way to Hawaii?

2019-01-11T15:46:00-05:00

The weather in Hawaii is fickle, always shifting depending on the island, the time of day, and the direction of the trade winds. How to design a building in such a place? One must account for the abundant sunshine, the humidity of the air, the salt of the sea, and the damp layers of maritime fog that settle around the smoky mountain peaks. For Vladimir Ossipoff, whose brand of midcentury modernism would define Hawaiian architecture, the answer lay in simplicity.

Though Vladimir Ossipoff may not be a household name in the continental United States, his work has become the stuff of legend in the Aloha State. Producing over 1,000 buildings in Hawaii throughout his 60 year career, Ossipoff championed a style of architecture now described as 'Tropical Modernism.'

Thurston Memorial Chapel, by Vladimir Ossipoff. Photo by Chris Mottalini

The work of Ossipoff neatly fits into the category of Critical Regionalism as well, a movement the critic Kenneth Frampton associated with architects from different corners of the globe, such as Alvar Aalto, Glen Murcott and Jørn Utzon. To battle the "war on ugliness" he famously announced in a speech against the mass-produced buildings that grew in popularity by the mid-century, Ossipoff designed his building as a blend of elements from Japanese, Hawaiian and American Mid-century design.

Robert Wenkam Ossipoff House in Lanai. Courtesy of Tad Wenkam and Ossipoff, Snyder and Rowland Architects.

Is it possible to resu...

Michigan's central role in the Modernist movement leaves lasting impacts

2018-09-07T13:51:00-04:00

If Michigan isn’t the first place that comes to mind when considering [the Modern era] — unlike, say, Germany or France in the 1920s — it should be. The presence of Ford in the city and Booth in the country was enough to make Michigan ground zero for the Modernist experiment [...] making the state home to perhaps the most diverse and best-preserved collection of early Modernist experiments in the world.

A look at Michigan's history in the Modernist movement and the story it tells for our future. M.H. Miller traces three main convergences in the state: Henry Ford's first Model T factory, the Cranbrook school's presence, and numerous influential architects most notably Albert Kahn and Minoru Yamasaki. While this all leaves Michigan with several noteworthy sites, Detroit and surrounding areas are also cautionary markers of modernism's relentless pursuit of "progress" for future generations.

Le Corbusier's influence on Japanese modernism

2018-08-09T15:31:00-04:00

Thanks to the overwhelming clarity of [Le Corbusier's] positions, the bewitching nature of his epigrammatic style and the already-powerful international movement for Modernism, the impact he had on a rising generation of Japanese architects would prove to be immense. But it would be the nature of that impact to be felt only in conditions of overwhelming ambivalence.

Nikil Saval traces Japan's modernism back to Le Corbusier citing influences on Kunio Maekawa and Kenzo Tange. Japan was the earliest country in all of East Asia to engage with Le Corbusier's work in the late 19th century, and by the 1930's many of his books has been translated into Japanese.

The piece navigates conflicting views in Japan with the introduction of modernism and the “Japan tradition debate”. Saval explores the struggle around a desire to embrace global modernity while also retaining a sense of tradition or “Japaneseness” in the culture.

AIA gold medal winning library is now boarded up and covered in graffiti

2018-03-05T14:54:00-05:00

Taking his inspiration from a Chestnut Street shoe store designed by architectural pioneers Oskar Stonorov and Louis Kahn, Martin produced a diaphanous glass jewel box, two stories tall and 35 feet wide. Large shop windows separated by the thinnest possible aluminum strips offered passersby views of the library’s bookshelves and clusters of comfortable reading chairs.

Sydney E. Martin's Mercantile Library was awarded the gold medal in 1954 by the American Institute of Architects (AIA). Inspired by modern retail buildings, Martin designed the library with a transparent glass facade to display the books as merchandise. This innovative design is hailed as one of the 1950's most daring modernist buildings by historian Jeffrey L. Baumoel. So why is it boarded up now?

Google Maps street view of the former Mercantile Library on Chestnut St. in Philadelphia. Image: Google Maps.

The branch was shut down in 1989 by the Free Library due to asbestos contamination concerns. The interior has been gutted and the roof has reportedly caved in. The building is now owned by Brickstone Realty, known for several historic renovations. Hopefully the Mercantile Library will be given new life so visitors can once again experience this important modernist building.

The Getty completes major renovation project of Kahn's Salk Institute

2017-06-29T12:22:00-04:00

It’s heralded as one of the major masterpieces of American modernism, but its ocean-adjacent location has made conservation difficult. Today, the Getty Conservation Institute announced that a major renovation project of Louis Kahn ’s Salk Institute in La Jolla has been completed.

The project centered primarily around restoring the complex’s teak window walls. Set within the monolithic concrete walls of the study towers and offices, they had weathered to a non-uniform appearance and were deteriorating. While prefabricated, the windows have a “hand-crafted quality” due to the detailing. Over the years, they suffered surface erosion and had accumulated a fungal biofilm.

Salk Institute for Biological Studies, photos by Elizabeth Daniels

“Restoration of the teak wood presented a number of challenges,” says Kyle Normandin, Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc. project manager and associate principal. “The success of the project is that we were able to save so much of the original materia...