Archinect - News

Beloved architectural historian, scholar, and academic Anthony Vidler passes away at 82

2023-10-20T15:16:00-04:00

Princeton University has shared news of the passing of beloved longtime School of Architecture faculty member Anthony Vidler yesterday, October 20th, after a short battle with illness. He was 82.

Vidler was known throughout academia as a formative mentor and thought leader who shaped the development of architecture from within the apparatus of higher education, inspiring thousands of students into both teaching and professional practice during his over 50-year career.

Born in England, Vidler studied at the University of Cambridge and Delft University of Technology before coming to the United States to teach as Princeton's William R. Kenan Jr. Chair of Architecture. It was there, in 1965, that he became the SoA’s first-ever History and Theory Ph.D. program director, steering it for a period of 30 years before he departed to serve as the Dean of Cornell University's College of Art, Architecture and Planning. He would later go on to be appointed Dean of The Cooper Union Irwin S. Chanin...

A 12th-century Scottish monk may have invented modern architectural drawing techniques, new research claims

2023-09-22T17:30:00-04:00

Research from a professor at the University of Aberdeen has advanced evidence that the art and practice of architectural drawing may have been invented by a 12th-century Scottish clergyman working in Paris around the time of the construction of Notre-Dame Cathedral and other important Gothic structures.

Dr. Karl Kinsella is a lecturer in Medieval Art History at the institution. His new book, God’s Own Language: Architectural Drawing in the Twelfth Century, presents the idea that a previously unknown monk named Richard the Scot was likely the first person to use the term ‘plan’ for drawings, sections, and elevations he apparently made in order to demonstrate the vantage point of the prophet Ezekiel's visions using then-modern concepts of geometry.

Kinsella says: “This is the earliest evidence we have of a complete visual description of a building including several plans, elevations and sections, but they appear in this strange theological work instead of coming out of building sites...

French architect, historian, and academic Jean-Louis Cohen passes away at 74

2023-08-09T12:10:00-04:00

Jean-Louis Cohen, a renowned architectural historian, critic, educator, and curator, has sadly passed away in the Ardennes after suffering an allergic reaction from a bee sting, according to reports published this week in France and the United States.

As the Sheldon H. Solow Chair of Architectural History at the New York University Institute of Fine Arts and former Penelope Visiting Professor in Architectural History at the University of Sydney, Cohen was a beloved figure remembered by many one of his publishers, like Artforum, as being a “knowledgeable interlocutor, author, and professor, and a warm and generous mentor.”

Cohen was born in France in 1949 and began a successful career in academia following the completion of his doctoral studies and a thirteen-year tenure as the director of architectural research for France’s Ministry of Housing. Beginning in 1998, he was influential in the development of the Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine museum in Paris, which opened to the...

Architects comment on Le Corbusier's 100-year legacy

2023-06-26T15:36:00-04:00

Le Corbusier was to architecture what Picasso was to painting, a towering and egomaniacal creative force who transformed his discipline for ever. His buildings have inspired admiration, sometimes devotion. He is an icon, granted the nickname “Corb” or “Corbu” by architects. He has also been vigorously attacked, as a mechanistic fanatic whose ideas inspired inhumane tower blocks and concrete jungles.

In his latest Guardian piece, critic Rowan Moore remembers the 100-year anniversary of the seminal modernist manifesto Toward an Architecture by one of the profession's most revered and controversial figures, Le Corbusier.

Acknowledging that the book's thoughts about the future were now "firmly in the past," Moore asked acclaimed present-day architects about the impact Le Corbusier's work has had on them and which of his buildings was most relevant in their view.

Among the respondees are Pritzker Prize and Gold Medal winners Frank Gehry, Denise Scott Brown, Rem Koolhaas, Herzog & de Meuron's founding partner Jacques Herzog, Grafton Architects' Shelley McNamara and Yvonne Farrell, Yasmeen Lari, Kate Macintosh, as well as contemporary architects and designers Jayden Ali and Adam Nathaniel Furman.

Historian Amber Wiley to lead UPenn's Center for the Preservation of Civil Rights Sites

2022-09-19T09:00:00-04:00

Award-winning architectural and urban historian Amber Wiley has been announced by the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design as the inaugural Matt and Erika Nord Director of the Center for the Preservation of Civil Rights Sites (CPCRS).

The current Rutgers University assistant professor will also hold the title of Presidential Associate Professor and lecture primarily in the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation. Wiley holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from George Washington University in addition to degrees in Architecture and Architectural History from Yale and the University of Virginia.

From Wiley's 2021 CPCRS talk titled “The Revolution Continues.” Image courtesy UPenn.

She comes to the new positions highly recommended as the author of the forthcoming title Model Schools in the Model City: Race, Planning, and Education in the Nation’s Capital and curator of Collective Yearning: Black Women Artists from the Zimmerli Art Museum, now on view at Rutgers’ New Bru...

Oliver Wainwright explores the architectural history behind Saudi Arabia's planned The Line megacity

2022-09-13T09:00:00-04:00

It may now be seen as a dystopian nightmare, the far-flung folly of an autocrat desperate for global approval, but the idea of building a self-contained linear city has preoccupied the imaginations of architects and planners for generations. The Line might bill itself as a “never-before-seen approach to urbanisation”, but the principles behind it have been proposed many times over – though never successfully realised.

The Guardian critic writes that the outlandish NEOM project structure resembled a “habitable supercomputer” and cites a recent Bloomberg report that names Marvel Comics designer Olivier Pron as one of its many non-architect digital designers before pinning the massive project’s “ominous dystopian undertone” on Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman’s apparent penchant for cyberpunk aesthetics. “If ever there was an urban vision that embraced our end-of-days climate apocalypse,” he laments, “then this is it.”

Previously on Archinect: The Line, the largest part of Saudi Arabia’s ambitious NEOM project, looks like a total fantasy

Wainwright then turns to the architectural history books for further insights into the history of the linear megacity concept. Examples from a young Michael Graves/Peter Eisenman pairing, Superstudio, Kenzo Tange, Le Corbusier, Edgar Chambless, constructivist Mikhail Okhitovich, and 19th-century Spanish planner Arturo Soria y Mata, whom Wainwright claims invented the...

Now you can experience LA’s erstwhile Bunker Hill neighborhood thanks to a 3D reconstruction from USC

2022-07-15T14:26:00-04:00

Seven decades after it was razed to do away with what the federal government deemed “urban blight,” the University of Southern California’s Ahmanson Lab, working with the Bunker Hill Refrain Collaboratory, has created an interactive 3D reconstruction of Downtown Los Angeles’ Bunker Hill neighborhood. The initiative gives users a sense of what was lost when the area was turned over to developers and slowly remade into what is today an unrecognizable warren of commercial and luxury residential projects consistently fought over by some of the city’s most powerful names.

The 3D tour captures the area as it appeared between the late 1930s and the beginning of the government-led “slum clearance” initiatives that began in the last two years of the 1940s.

A typical Queen Anne style home in the neighborhood ca. 1940. Image courtesy USC.

Mayor Fletcher Bowron was the domineering political figure at that time, overseeing an unprecedented second wave of urban expansion in Los Angeles that inclu...

On the twisted development of Los Angeles' avoidable 'baked-in" freeway system

2022-06-14T11:15:00-04:00

Can you imagine a version of Los Angeles with even more highway veins pursed throughout its (formerly) Bohemian coastline, super-industrial downtown core, and crisscrossing network of foothills? The reality of what could easily have been (save for the opposition of several big-name celebrities and politicians) is being explored by the LA Times’ new editorial series called ‘‘Explaining L.A. With Patt Morrison.’

In last week’s edition, the writer took to the freeway for a delve into its post-war sources of federal funding (90% of the system here was underwritten through the Eisenhower administration’s nationwide interstate expansion effort), and potential alternatives that included multiple Parkway designs that caught on much easier in Northeast states like New Jersey, Maine, and Connecticut during the same period.

Figures like Randolph Collier and George Gordon Whitnall come into the fore to foil more practic...

An early drawing of the Golden Gate Bridge showcases a radically different design

2021-08-16T18:37:00-04:00

The single image published Dec. 8, 1922, resembles the industrial Carquinez Bridge, except at 20 times the scale. It’s the kind of bridge one designs when all they have to work with is Popsicle sticks and string.

An engineer turned newspaper editor named James Wilkins was the first to propose the bridge in a 1916 San Francisco Bulletin article. Joseph Strauss' early plans called for a cantilever-suspension hybrid but were later changed due to eight-figure cost concerns.

Illustration of the preliminary cantilever-suspension hybrid concept by Joseph Strauss in 1921.

The bridge has recently been put to use as an impromptu music prop after a 2020 retrofit added an unintended sonic feature. Car traffic on the bridge has also declined in a potential harbinger of pandemic-produced changes. The Chronicle has more on the unearthed early drawing here.

Writing Women Into History: A Curated Reading List Tackles the 'Imbalance' of Female Voices Within Architecture

2021-03-08T18:00:00-05:00

With information available at our fingertips, discovering resources like a list of female architects, for example, should be a breeze. However, like most professions, these texts and resources were often written and curated by male writers. In 2021, female writers and curators continue to reclaim their place within academia, architectural history, and professional practice by writing themselves into the canon they have been excluded from.

If you look up "female architecture writers" on Google, the first search result is a blog created by architect, writer, researcher, and academic Dr. Harriet Harriss titled "Women Who Write Architecture."

Featured on Archinect: New website champions the remarkable contributions made by 50 pioneering women in architecture. Alice Constance Austin, one of the women featured on the site, showing model of house to Llano del Rio colonists, May 1, 1917. Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

In 2019 I interviewed Dr....

Online architecture event recommendations for the week of March 3-10

2021-03-03T09:10:00-05:00

This week's list of featured online events from Archinect's Virtual Event Guide includes lectures, presentations, discussions, a conference, an award presentation, and a symposium.

Are you hosting a virtual lecture? Presentation? Tour? Interview? Happy Hour? Submit it for consideration by clicking here.

Are you an expert in an arena that's especially important right now? Let us know if you would like to work with Archinect to host an online event.

Lecture: Mark Lee | JOHNSTONMARKLEE
Wednesday, March 3, 2021 | 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM PDT
Since its establishment in 1998 in Los Angeles, Johnston Marklee has been recognized nationally and internationally with over 40 major awards and numerous publications. Projects undertaken by Johnston Marklee are diverse in scale and type, spanning fourteen countries throughout North and South America, Europe, and Asia.
Click here to attend and/or register

Mabel O. Wilson: Studio&: A Black Study
Wednesday, March 3, 2021 | 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM PDT
Mabel O. Wilson ...

Architectural historian and curator Irene Sunwoo joins Art Institute of Chicago as new Architecture and Design Chair

2021-02-15T20:19:00-05:00

Art Institute of Chicago names Irene Sunwoo the John H. Bryan Chair and Curator, Architecture and Design. Sunwoo's extensive background in architectural history, exhibition, and curatorial studies create an exciting chapter for the Institute and its leadership.

Sunwoo served as Curator of Columbia GSAPP's Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery and Director of Exhibitions since 2016 and curator of the Ross Gallery. Her writing has been featured in the Avery Review, Getty Research Journal, to name a few. She is in the process of writing two books focusing on Alvin Boyarsky and Arakawa and Madeline Gins' architectural experiments. Well-versed and heavily invested in Chicago's architectural history and curatorial community, Sunwoo served as Associate Curator and a key team member for the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial launch in 2015.

Sunwoo completed her undergraduate studies at New York University in Art History. She also holds two MAs from Bard College in History of Decorative Art...

The archived works of Cape Cod-style architect Royal Barry Wills are now publicly available

2020-03-13T13:08:00-04:00

Historic New England, one of one of the oldest and largest regional architectural heritage organizations in the United States, has announced that the archives of Boston-based architecture firm Royal Barry Wills Associates will be made available to the public for the first time. Founded in 1925, Royal Barry Wills, FAIA is famously known for its mastery of the iconic Cape Cod-style house, in addition to other notable projects reflecting Colonial Revival designs.

The collection was made possible by Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and Wills' son, who donated a majority of the firm's archives to Historic New England in 2013. Consisting of architectural drawings, photographs, negatives, and other firm documents dating between the 1920s and 2003, the collection is another example of organizations aiding in providing access to pieces of architectural history.

By digitizing and cataloging the collection, Historic New England will provide the public with an account of Wills' ...

Paulette Singley helps us understand 'How to Read Architecture'

2020-03-06T12:58:00-05:00

On this episode of Archinect Sessions Donna, Ken and I are joined by Paulette Singley. Paulette is a respected architectural historian, educator and author. Her writing and editing expands beyond the world of architecture, looking at connections within the culinary arts and film. In today's conversation we’re focusing on her latest book "How to Read Architecture: An Introduction to Interpreting the Built Environment,” a must read for architecture students, architects, designers and admirers of the built world.

The book's publisher, Routledge, describes the book as exploring three essential ways to help understand architecture: reading a building from the outside-in, from the inside-out, and from the position of out-and-out, or formal, architecture.

Consistent with Singley's approach to looking at architecture from outside of the traditional compartmentalization, this book coalesces related fields of interior design, landscape design, and building design, exploring concepts of ter...

Society of Architectural Historians launches survey of architectural history in higher education

2020-02-26T12:51:00-05:00

The Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) has launched the next phase of its ongoing SAH Data Project, a two-year study aimed at assessing the "status of the field of architectural history in higher education."

The latest phase of the project, which is led by postdoctoral researcher Sarah M. Dreller, includes the launch of comprehensive surveys geared toward administrators, faculty, and students that aim to gather first-hand information on a variety of topics related to architectural education from a broad population, including institutional type (public or private), enrollment size, student demographics, and relationship (if any) to design curricula.

The surveys will also dig into the experience of teaching and learning architectural history by asking questions relating to tenure-track or adjunct faculty status, the prevalence of social justice- and climate crisis-related topics in architecture history curricula, and whether student mentorship is offered in conjunction with ar...

Win a copy of “Trajan's Hollow” by Joshua G. Stein!

2019-12-03T13:13:00-05:00

“Trajan's Hollow” is a new book by Joshua G. Stein — founder of Radical Craft and co-director of the Data Clay Network — that sheds new light on the historic Trajan's Column, one of ancient Rome's great monuments that has been obsessively documented by archaeologists and historians for centuries and visited by tourists from around the world. Thanks to ORO, Archinect is giving away five copies of the book to our readers!

Intrigued by Piranesi's iconic engravings on the Column and “the perennial tension between classical geometry and picturesque ruin,” Stein compiled his research into a book that exposes and renders new material qualities of the Column that have long been overlooked. The book “proposes a new ethos of scanning and replication, saturating digital technologies with an expansive material awareness to amplify the projective capacity of historical inquiry.” Plus, it features written contributions from David Gissen, Michael J. Waters, and Michael Swaine.

Courtesy ORO Edition...

R.I.P. Shoji Sadao, the unsung force behind some of Buckminster Fuller and Isamu Noguchi's iconic designs

2019-11-15T12:42:00-05:00

“Shoji’s architectural background was instrumental to these large projects,” Thomas T.K. Zung, who became a partner of Mr. Sadao’s in the firm Buckminster Fuller, Sadao & Zung Architects, said by email. “Shoji’s accomplishment was his service to two geniuses, Bucky and Isamu,” Mr. Zung added. “Shoji was an architectural samurai — he understood them both and added to their mix, without need or benefit of self-glory.”

Architect Shoji Sadao, who played a major role in bringing some of the most famous designs by Buckminster Fuller and Isamu Noguchi into the world, passed away in Tokyo at the age of 92 on November 3.

As one of Fuller's most important collaborators, Sadao applied his mathematical and cartographic expertise for iconic projects like the Dymaxion Airocean World Map and the U.S. pavilion geodesic dome at Expo ’67. Some of the projects he worked on with Noguchi include the Hart Plaza fountain in Detroit and the production of the well-known Akari Light Sculpture. He led the design of the Noguchi Museum in Queens, for which he served as Executive Director from 1989-2003.

In 2006, Sadao authored the book, “Buckminster Fuller and Isamu Noguchi: Best of Friends,” an informal biography of the lasting friendship and shared influences between the two visionaries.

“During his life, Shoji was modest and reserved, keeping his name out of the limelight,” the Buckminster Fuller Institute wrote in an o...

University of Virginia's Rotunda transformed into a planetarium, sharing Thomas Jefferson's original vision for the building

2019-11-08T18:22:00-05:00

Neal Curtis, Samuel Lemley and Madeline Zehnder conducted some keen literary sleuthing to discover Thomas Jefferson’s original intentions for the Dome Room, and then harnessed modern digital technology to bring the planetarium to life in a way that the University’s founder could not have imagined. “The concave ceiling of the Rotunda,” Jefferson wrote in 1819, “is proposed to be painted sky-blue and spangled with gilt stars in their position and magnitude copied exactly.”

While planning the early stages of the University of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson envisioned a fantastical planetarium for the school's historic Rotunda. In 2019, that vision has been achieved as the Rotunda Planetarium, thanks to three Ph.D students from the school's English department, and a grant from the Jefferson Trust.

In addition to the temporary digital-projection installation, there is a related exhibition — which features books, specimens, and artifacts from the Rotunda’s early history — that is on view through February 18.

How do you critique a city? What is city criticism, and why is it important?

2019-10-29T11:18:00-04:00

Criticism: Everyone in architecture experiences it regularly. The importance of this consistent facet of the profession provides ongoing possibilities for discourse and improvement. However, like other areas where criticism plays a necessary part of establishing a significant impression or progression within society, it’s not always easy to have others detract or contradict the ideas embodied by your work.

Colin Marshall of the Guardian brings up a specific category within criticism that has particular relevance today, "the city critic." Marshall argues, "In our increasingly urban world, perhaps city criticism should be recognized as distinct and necessary." So, where does "city criticism" differ from "architecture criticism," and why should it be recognized as an integral part of understanding the built environment?

Jane Jacobs. Image via Wikipedia Commons.

Marshall speaks with critics and editors alike to help further understand and decipher what this distinct subject of criticis...

Ford Motor Co. to renovate Detroit's Michigan Central Station into “future mobility” research center

2019-07-18T16:48:00-04:00

This all makes what is happening now all the more remarkable. Last summer, Ford Motor Company announced it had bought the building, with plans to invest $740million to transform it into a world-leading research centre for ‘future mobility’. The very industry that signed the station’s death warrant in the first place is now set on resuscitating it as a beacon of sustainable transport.

Oliver Wainwright pens a piece on the upcoming renovation of the Michigan Central Station, which was a celebrated icon of Detroit when it first opened in 1913. After the station closed in 1988 and was abandoned, it became the epitome of the city's ruin porn.

After buying the building last summer, Ford Motor Company will transform the ground floor into a public market-style space, while offices in the upper floors and neighboring buildings will house their 1.2 million square-foot “future mobility” Headquarters and Research Campus, which Snøhetta is designing.

In the article, Ford's construction manager Richard Bardelli tells Wainwright that the renovation project aims to turn Detroit into “the mobility capital of the world”.

SAH Archipedia aims to chronicle America's built environment

2019-07-03T14:07:00-04:00

The Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) has unveiled a new "archipedia" website focused on extensively cataloging a wide range of structures and other facets of the built environment.

Dubbed SAH Archipedia, the online encyclopedia was developed by SAH and the University of Virginia Press. The site contains detailed historical information, interactive maps, photographs, and drawings for over 20,000 structures and places. To aid in research efforts, the database is tagged by subject, and includes indexes organized by architectural style, demographic and cultural information, location, and historical period.

Chronicled sites include Frank Lloyd Wright's Arizona Biltmore Hotel, the architecture and historical sites of Alaska, California's Spanish missions, breweries across the United States, and many others.

A view of the Pabst Brewery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Image courtesy of Paul J. Jakubovich, Wisconsin Historical Society, and SAH Archipedia.

The bulk of the information is dra...

The first architecture photography

2019-07-02T13:51:00-04:00

Shortly after the invention of photography, there was architecture photography. Generous natural lighting, a range of scalable details and a pride of place made architecture a primary subject in the understanding of photographic technology during the first half of the 19th century.

Paris' Boulevard du Temple (1839). Photo by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre.

The Daguerreotype was among the first photographic methods when it was invented by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre in 1839. An image of Paris' Boulevard du Temple taken by Daguerre in the same year is famous for being the first photograph of a person (visible near the lower left corner), but it is also among the first known photographs of an urban scene. Because the photo required a long exposure lasting several minutes, the traffic is rendered invisible while the buildings are reproduced in great detail, allowing them to become the primary focus.

Tuileries Palace (1841). Photo by Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey.

Cathédrale Notre-D...

How an obsession with illness shaped modern architecture, according to Beatriz Colomina

2019-05-06T18:49:00-04:00

Clean lines, white surfaces and indoor-outdoor living epitomise early modern architecture. Contrary to received wisdom, to Colomina this is less a machine aesthetic than a hospital aesthetic. Through the lens of disease, nervous disorders, sexuality and self-expression, Colomina’s fascinating interpretation of modern architecture suggests the motivating factors behind the architectural revolution were the need for health and cleanliness, hygiene and smooth, calming surfaces.

In light of her recently published book X-Ray Architecture, architectural historian Beatriz Colomina talks about the history of how illnesses shaped the clean aesthetics of 20th-century modern architecture.

‘‘In the 20th century architects from Le Corbusier to Mies van der Rohe to Alvar Aalto are all obsessed with illnesses,’’ Colomina tells The Sydney Morning Herald. ‘‘Corb says the old city has to be destroyed and a new architecture should emerge because it produces tuberculosis.’’

Buildings lost, forgotten, reimagined and transformed

2019-04-24T10:27:00-04:00

Though buildings are often symbols of permanence, as it may lend itself to the status of an icon for a city or an heirloom for a family, they can be rendered obsolete at any moment. According to Ruin and Redemption in Architecture, Dan Barasch's newest book published by Phaidon Books, abandoned buildings can either be Lost, Forgotten, Reimagined or Transformed.

1. Lost

Robin Hood Gardens, by Alison and Peter Smithson. Completed 1972, Demolished 2017.

"The Brutalist Robin Hood Houses in London featured innovative design elements including "streets in the sky," internal elevated passageways and alcoves that were intended to encourage social interaction and give shared amenity to residents.

After a period of decline and despite considerable attempts at preservation, demolition of the 252 apartments began in 2017. A new 1,575-unit housing development is now partly complete on the site, and a museum is plann...

The cultural and historic impact of Paris' Notre Dame Cathedral

2019-04-15T16:46:00-04:00

In light of the recent Notre Dame Cathedral fire, many have posted photos and stories remembering the historic landmark across social media. As news of the fire's progression airs around the world, we can not help but stay optimistic for the cathedral's recovery. Although the public eye may be focused on the structure's current state, let us take a moment to recall the historical and cultural importance of this famed Parisian landmark.

Notre Dame Cathedral - cross section. Image courtesy of pitt.edu

Considered one of the most notable structures in Paris, the 850-year old building is located in the center of the River Seine on a small island called Ile de la Cite. The name Notre-Dame de Paris, which translates to "Our Lady of Paris," began its construction in 1163 and took nearly 200 years to complete. It is recorded that the cathedral's completion took place during the reign of Kin...

Avant-garde architectural group Archigram sells archive to Hong Kong museum for £1.8 million

2019-01-25T16:07:00-05:00

Archigram, the architectural studio known for its avant-garde theoretical projects, has sold their archive for £1.8 million to the soon-to-open M+ museum in Hong Kong. Set to open later this year, the museum designed by Herzog & de Meuron will focus on 20th and 21st century design and architecture, moving image, and visual art from Hong Kong, Asia, and beyond.

Despite attempts to obstruct the sale, Britain's new cultural secretary Jeremy Wright has allowed the deal to move forward. This follows a decade long search on behalf of Archigram to find a buyer for their colossal archive of drawings and models.

The Man in the Glass House: new Philip Johnson biography traces the architect's Fascist past

2018-12-17T18:37:00-05:00

In “The Man in the Glass House,” Mark Lamster’s brisk, clear-eyed new biography of Johnson, we are asked to contemplate why the impresario of twentieth-century architecture descended into such a morass of far-right politics—and how, given the depths to which he fell, he managed to clamber his way not just out of it, but to the top. [...] Johnson managed to abjure his past and, on the march toward an exceptionally successful career, leave it behind.

The New Yorker reviews the new Philip Johnson biography, The Man in the Glass House by architecture critic and professor Mark Lamster, and examines how Johnson eagerly embraced Fascism before WWII and still rose to great fame as America's iconic 20th-century architect.

"Indeed, it is difficult to think of an American as successful as Johnson who indulged a love for Fascism as ardently and as openly," writes Nikil Saval in his The New Yorker piece. "His design for Father Coughlin’s rally had been inspired by his tours of Italian Fascist architecture—though the white stage was drywall, it was meant to look like marble—and, critically, by the 'febrile excitement' that attended his visit to a National Socialist youth event in Potsdam, in 1932."

A look back at the 60's "Minnesota Experimental City", the brainchild of South African futurist Athelstan Spilhaus

2018-11-06T13:43:00-05:00

In proposing his prototype 21st-century city, Spilhaus correctly diagnosed many of the shortcomings of the 20th-century one. He cottoned on early to concepts such as air pollution, even speculating that it was changing the Earth’s atmosphere.

The Minnesota Experimental City has been documented in the film The Experimental City. Watch the trailer below...

Architect David Romero brings Frank Lloyd Wright's unbuilt designs to life in these realistic renderings

2018-10-24T16:19:00-04:00

Out of the 1,171 architectural designs that Frank Lloyd Wright created in his lifetime, around 660 of them remained unbuilt. Using advanced visualization techniques, architect David Romero brings Wright's unbuilt designs one step closer to reality in a series of striking, computer-generated renderings. A longtime Wright enthusiast, Romero has been creating renderings of the legendary architect's designs since he launched the website Hooked on the Past in 2014.

Gordon Strong Automobile Objective rendering. Credit: David Romero.

Most recently, Romero worked with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation to create a series of renderings of Wright's unbuilt Gordon Strong Automobile Objective, which was a tourist attraction he envisioned in 1924 to be built at the top of Sugarloaf Mountain in Maryland. Romero has also recreated Wright's unbuilt designs for the Roy Wetmore Car Repair and Showroom, the Butterfly Wing Bridge, and the Valley National Bank, to name a few.

Rendering of the Butterfly Wi...

Revisiting John Portman's design legacy in his hometown of Atlanta

2018-10-22T14:46:00-04:00

Portman was a pioneer of the devices with which somber modernism was given glitz: mirror-glass, wall-climbing glass lifts, sky bridges, swooping curves. He described some gaudy candelabra he put around a piano stage in the Atlanta Marriott Marquis as a “homage to Liberace”. His buildings became known for their “Jesus moments”, those times when, emerging from a deliberately understated entry into some architectural emulation of the Grand Canyon, a visitor would reliably exclaim, “Jesus!”

Rowan Moore pens a piece on the lasting impact of the late John Portman's other-worldly buildings in Atlanta, which were known for eliciting “Jesus moments” from surprised visitors and also described as “Disneyland for adults” by less-impressed critics.