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Esther McCoy is best known as the architecture writer who helped shape the story of Modernism in Los Angeles. Less known is the nearly year-long period she spent in Mexico in 1951. During this time, she wrote about key architectural developments in the country...
“The [“Passersby 02: Esther McCoy” exhibition] presents [McCoy] as this kind of bridge,” says Esparza, “from L.A. to Mexico and from Mexico to L.A.”
— Los Angeles Times
Architecture historian and critic Esther McCoy is the spotlight of a micro-exhibition called “Passersby 02: Esther McCoy”, which closes this Sunday at Museo Jumex. The exhibition investigates how McCoy's writings on key architectural developments in Mexico during her extended stay in... View full entry
It takes a certain audacity to move to rural-nowhere and erect a house from found materials, to grow your own food and carve, kiln or create whatever else you need. And the house itself, in its porous approach to its natural surroundings, exhibits a typically Californian philosophy of design. — NYT - T Magazine
Back in November Amanda Fortini profiled The Blunk House. Designed/built by the late multidisciplinary artist-craftsman J.B. Blunk in Marin County, the cabin is a holistic expression of an artistic life. View full entry
These buildings aren't from a distant galaxy far, far away. They're here on Planet Earth, specifically in Belgrade, Serbia. Locally based photographer Mirko Nahmijas wanted to give a new perspective to some of his hometown's historically-loaded Brutalist structures in his photo series... View full entry
No longer confined to collecting dust in storage rooms, over a thousand slides documenting modern architecture's emergence in Southern California have been digitized by the USC Library, and are now available to view for free online.The approximately 1300 slides were culled from the collections of... View full entry
Accepted wisdom has it that the continuing social unrest in the banlieues, as these suburbs are called, is a direct result of their built form: repetitive slabs and blocks of modern housing, often in large isolated estates. [...]
In fact, environmental determinism accompanied the very making of the French suburbs in the postwar period and the development of modern urbanism more generally.
Why is it that we assign so much power to buildings?
— blog.oup.com
Josef Albers’s Manhattan, a mural that enlivened the lobby of New York’s Met Life (previously the Pan Am) Building from 1963 until its controversial removal in 2000, could make a triumphant return to the city. Possible sites include the World Trade Center Transit Hub, The Art Newspaper understands. Finding a suitable home for the work is not the only obstacle: the original mural is in a landfill site in Ohio. — theartnewspaper.com
The only geodesic dome movie theater in the world, Becket’s design was inspired by Buckminster Fuller—and the nation’s midcentury obsession with landing on the moon. Built to resemble a giant spacecraft, the Dome boasted futuristic floating stairways—a first for any movie theater at the time. Simultaneously projected images using three 35mm cameras were so cutting-edge, the Dome’s own original projector—the Norelco Universal—would win a Technical Academy Award in 1963 [...]. — Los Angeles Confidential Magazine
Do you know what I love more? My children. And that is why I will never live in my MCM dream home. Because mid-century modern architecture is designed to KILL YOUR CHILDREN. (Also, moderately clumsy or drunk adults). — projectophile.wordpress.com
Red arrows show the direction of travel of children’s bodies It is pretty certain that none of these children reached adulthood intact. View full entry
Apartment 17-B, right, set decorator Claudette Didul said, is "in a high-rise that feels like it was built in 1960 with a white-carpeted sunken living room and a fascinating fireplace and a Case Study-style kitchen with two pass through windows."
It also sports walnut cabinetry with a built-in television set and one of those new-fangled-for-the-time push-button phones.
— latimesblogs.latimes.com
In 1958, Baghdad was featured in Time magazine—not as a hotbed of revolutionary, civil or sectarian strife, but for its ambitious plans for the world's most famous architects, among them Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier and Alvar Aalto, to recapture through their modern buildings the city's former glory. — online.wsj.com
Modern Tide: Midcentury Architecture on Long Island explores the work of the region’s best postwar architects and designers, including Albert Frey, Wallace Harrison, Herbert Beckhard, Frank Lloyd Wright, Horace Gifford, Edward Durrell Stone, Marcel Breuer, Andrew Geller, Philip Johnson, Charles Gwathmey, Barbara and Julian Neski, and others. The film features interviews with architects and historians, as well as friends, families and clients of these influential designers. — vimeo.com
This ad for mega-exhibition Pacific Standard Time has been floating around for a few days and the bad news is it's not an actual campaign image. The good news is that Ice Cube's celebration of Ray and Charles Eames is totally real. A rep for PST tells us this ad is "an unapproved rough concept" that was leaked, but she adds that "The ads for the campaign featuring Ice Cube and Eames will be released in the coming weeks." — la.curbed.com
Gotta love LA. View full entry
Designed by legendary architect Eero Saarinen, the J. Irwin & Xenia Miller House ranks (...) as a hallmark of Modernist design, (...) surrounded by some of the most beautiful Modernist gardens in the United States, created by landscape architect Dan Kiley. The interiors, a carnival of opulent colors and graphic patterns, are the work of Mad Men–era architect and textile designer Alexander Girard. — travelandleisure.com
This comes via modernista and docomomoist Jon, @jbuono View full entry
