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Here's a heads-up for L.A.-based fans of Rudolph Schindler. Do not miss tonight’s premiere screening of Valentina Ganeva’s new documentary Schindler Space Architect at 7:30 p.m. in Beverly Hills. Ganeva recently spoke to KCRW about some of its insights, including the overlooked feminist... View full entry
Victor Lundy, the renowned modernist architect whose work leaned on fine art and espoused a more humane form of architecture for the masses, has died in Texas at the age of 101, the Sarasota Observer is reporting. A true man of his times, Lundy served in the U.S. Army’s 26th Infantry Division... View full entry
The personal vacation retreat that the late Myron Goldfinger designed for himself in New Mexico in 1996 is now for sale for $1.69 million from Sotheby’s International Realty near Santa Fe. The property sits on 29 acres in Santa Fe’s Los Caminitos subdivision with 2,100 square feet and a... View full entry
The fight to save Marcel Breuer’s former home on Cape Cod, the 1949 Wellfleet Cottage, has reached its conclusion after The Cape Cod Modern House Trust completed its purchase following a successful $1.4 million fundraising campaign. Breuer’s son Tamas was the homeowner at the time of the... View full entry
The Palm Springs Art Museum has shared an update on the future of the Aluminaire House three years after acquiring the Albert Frey and A. Lawrence Kocher masterpiece to its permanent collection. The home, which had been lingering in a local storage space since 2017, will now be reassembled and... View full entry
The home consists of three pavilions connected by a central passageway. The public areas are in two pavilions: one side is the living room, and the other, the dining room and kitchen, all adjacent to patios accessed through glass doors, which can be opened when entertaining. With clerestory windows, these rooms are bathed with light, creating a treehouse feel. — Nola.com
Nola.com's Sue Strachan takes a look at the Frances and Nathaniel C. Curtis house in New Orleans. Originally built in 1963, the home became the first Modernist-era home in New Orleans to earn a place on the National Register of Historic Places. Designed by maverick Modernist architects... View full entry
After a landmarked home in San Francisco's Twin Peaks neighborhood was illegally razed last year, the city has ordered the property owner to rebuild an exact replica. One of only five remaining homes in the city designed by the famed modernist architect Richard Neutra, the Largent House was... View full entry
In the construction of the new Yugoslavia, modernist thinking and design were deployed to guide the country’s rapid urbanization and industrialization as well as to unify the ethnically, religiously, and culturally diverse population. — Places Journal
In columnist Belmont Freeman's latest article for Places, he examines the exhibition “Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948-1980,” now on view at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and finds a rigorous and revealing survey of Yugoslavia’s extraordinary built... View full entry
Architect twitter account @robyniko known as 'the "schtick" haver' has started a thread where worlds collide locating iconic modernist architecture in Thomas Kinkade landscapes. Whether or not this should have ever been done is up for debate. These mashups may just be so terrible you can't look... View full entry
Across Hong Kong, where almost half the population lives in government-provided housing, public housing complexes have become wildly popular Instagram destinations. Locals and tourists have flocked to estates around the city, craning their necks to get that perfect social media shot and irritating residents in the process.
The estates have drawn professional interest as well, featuring prominently in marketing campaigns and even a music video by the Korean boy band Seventeen.
— The New York Times
Hong Kong's public housing, largely built in the 1960's and 70's, has attracted widespread public attention for its aesthetic appeal. These modernist style high-rises photograph beautifully with colorful displays of clean lined symmetry. While these buildings are visually engaging, they also play... View full entry
At Pioneer Works, in Brooklyn, the show “Gerard & Kelly: Clockwork” — photographs, text, installations, and live and filmed dance — references the three small structures and the intertwined careers of their architects: the Schindler House in West Hollywood, Calif., by R. M. Schindler; Philip Johnson’s Glass House in New Canaan, Conn.; and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House in Plano, Ill. — New York Times
Artists Brennan Gerard and Ryan Kelly's film Schindler/Glass uses three iconic modernist houses as the backdrop in which issues of gendered space and domestic intimacy are explored. The video piece is part of an ongoing series by the artists called “Modern Living". Shot... View full entry
Despite being recognized as an important architectural movement, many iconic examples of modernist architecture have been knocked down in the UK, and many more are threatened by alteration or demolition. From The Tricorn Centre in Portsmouth to Gilbey's Gin complex in Harlow, these illustrations... View full entry
Two researchers recently suggested that autism and post-traumatic stress disorder led to the minimalist stylings of Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius. Their questions and tools are useful, but there’s danger in mistaking one piece of a puzzle for its entirety.
The places we inhabit influence the way we see the world [...] Equally and inevitably, psychology has shaped architecture.
— citylab.com
Darran Anderson responds to the piece “The Mental Disorders that Gave Us Modern Architecture” by Ann Sussman and Katie Chen, arguing against their totalizing narrative of two influential figures and modernism as a whole. Sussman and Chen suggest modernist architecture originated from... View full entry
“Away with universal styles,” wrote Josef Frank. “Away with the idea of equating art and industry, away with the whole system that has become popular under the name of functionalism. Modernism," he was fond of saying, "is that which gives us complete freedom." — Places Journal
More than an architect and designer, Josef Frank was an “intellectual, who built ideas.” Christopher Long introduces Frank's 1958 essay, "Accidentism" — a humanist manifesto denouncing the banality of orthodox modernism and calling for a new pluralism in design. As Long explains, "the essay... View full entry
“Whether there is or is not a Northwest regional style of architecture is debatable,” said John Yeon in 1986, “but what is certain is that lot of people want to think there is.” — Places Journal
In "A Fortuitous Shadow," Keith Eggener is inspired by the Portland Art Museum's recent exhibition on John Yeon's life and legacy to explore the concept of regionalism in architecture, beginning with the doubts expressed by the architect long associated with Pacific Northwest regional modernism. View full entry
