Winter House

In 1967 John Winter built his own house on Swain’s Lane on a site of the former garden of the superintendent of Highgate Cemetery. It is split over three stories, with “quiet living” on top, sleeping in the middle and “noisy” at the bottom. Constructed around a steel frame, the outside of the house consists of large double-glazed units set within Cor-ten cladding. This was the first domestic use of the material in Britain, and the proportions of the house and the grid on which it was designed were set by reference to the dimensions of the standard, factory-produced Cor-ten sheet, so that nothing was wasted.

After the house was finished, Winter’s colleagues presented him with a plaque bearing the legend “Rust in Peace”

via themodernhouse

via telegraph

Sound: Darren Hayman

Ponte Tower

Ponte Tower is the tallest residential skyscraper in Africa designed by architects Hermer and Grosskopf. Structure was completed in 1975 and it is an example of apartheid-era thinking. The apartments facing the outside of the building were designated for rich white families while the inner apartments, in permanent twilight, were meant for their black servants. After the end of apartheid, many gangs moved into the building and it became extremely unsafe. Owners abandoned the structure to decay. 

via philipbloom
via subotzkystudio



Sound: Kalahari Surfers

PREVI

James Stirling project 1967

In October 2009 we visited the site of PREVI in Lima, Experimental Housing Project from 1969. The project was devised by Government of Peru and United Nations to deal with the growing problem of housing in Peru. Thirteen architects from Peru and thirteen international architects were invited to take part in this project. Among them was James Stirling, Aldo van Eyck, Atelier 5, Charles Correa and Japan trio Kikutake-Maki-Kurokawa. 

via architecturalpapers
via plataformaarquitectura - book El Tiempo Construye!

Sound: Nuve

Leonid Vesnin

photo: Richard Pare

In the 1920s and 1930s Baku (Black City), the capital of Azerbaijan, became a ground for modernist architectural innovations. Housing developement in a suburb of Baku in Shaumian Community is an early example of using standardized elements in construction. Here in 1929 Leonid Vesnin designed two worker´s clubs. Buildings are expressed by their vertical circulation on the exterior. Staircases create the columns framing the austere monumental facade. Although no longer used for its original purpose, the building has recently been renovated.  

via chicagomag
via moma

Sound: Хиазм

Suhrawardy Hospital

photo Larry Speck

Louis Kahn worked on developement of Dacca from 1962 till his death. In the remoted end of the Capitol Complex he proposed the Central Hospital as a massive building with enormous brick arches facing to the west. High waiting hall of out-patient department provides fresh air and merciful shadow for patients and visitors. I remember carpets on the floor and praying men in the setting sun and for a moment I felt there like not in a hospital but a mosque.

via domusweb
via larryspeck

Sound: Ahsan Sajid

Vann Molyvann

Vann Molyvann is a key figure of the New Khmer Architecture - architectural movement of the 1950s and 60s when Khmer culture was modernised under the patronage of king Norodom Sihanouk. From many of his work I especially admire the Olympic Stadium in Phnom Penh built in advance of the Southeast Asian Games of 1963, which were never held. Molyvann was inspired by temples of ancient Angkor and he transfered its monumental form into modern structure.

via vannmolyvannproject
via newkhmerarchitecture

Sound: Dead Kennedys

Stereo

David Cronenberg´s first full-length movie Stereo from 1969 documents an experiment with a group of young volunteers with telepathic abilities developed through sexual exploration in closed environment. It was shot at the location of Scarborough College designed by John Andrews in 1963. I really love long shots of the interior space with continuous streets and wide hallways lit from above.

more about the building via iqbalaalam

Sound: CFCF

Preston Bus Station

Once called "a baroque cathedral for buses", this extraordinary piece of work of BDP (Building Design Partnership) from 1969 is under threat of demolition. 

via creativetimes 

via prestonbusstation
via gate81

Rudolf Schwarz

St. Fronleichnam church in Aachen

"Here there is nothing but the still presence of the congregation and of Christ. The goal is attained, and every way is brought to rest in pure presence, in a common, bright, high, and entirely simple space. The people and the Lord are together, having become one body in a celebratory architectural form, in the higher body of their sacred presence."

Theology in Stone via oxfordscholarship

Sound: Jesu

Kiyonori Kikutake

Watch panel discussion at the Harvard GSD about the work of visionary architect Kiyonori Kikutake, a key figure in the Metabolist Movement launched in Tokyo in the 1960s. 

Geoffrey Bawa

Bawa’s work in Sri Lanka is characterised by a sensitivity to site and context. He produced “sustainable architecture” long before the term was devised. His designs broke down the barriers between inside and outside and reduced buildings to a series of spaces separated by courtyards and gardens.

via geoffreybawa

Soundtrack: Kamal Lazar

Muzharul Islam

Tini (The Architect) is a documentary film about Bengali architect and activist Muzharul Islam. He was a very important person in modern architecture in Bangladesh. Among the others he brought Louis I. Kahn to Dhaka to design the national parliament building.

If the work is given to a master architect it would work as a continuous source of reference for the future generation of architects.

archiv materials via muzharulislam

video:

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Soundtrack: Band Lalon - Ami Opar Hoye

Martin Correa

The chapel of the Benedictine monastery of Santa Maria de las Condes belongs to the masterpieces of modern architecture in Chile. The project was developed in 1962 by two young architects Martín Correa and Gabriel Guarda. Martin Correa dedicated himself to the monastic life.

via plataformaarquitectura

Steve Larkin

On 21 June the RIAI announced the 2012 Irish Architecture Awards. Steve Larkin Architects won the Best Emerging Practice.

The award emphasises the importance of strong ideas, innovation and a rigour in thinking. Steve Larkin Architects demonstrates a mature and weighty work. The consideration of proportion, materials and their weight is impressive. A body of work that has real substance and exquisite detailing.

via stevelarkinarchitects
via riai

Soundtrack: Signals Under Tests - Mecca

WG Clark

This house WG Clark designed for himself in Charlottesville in 1994. A pure austere form made of concrete blocks perfectly seated on the plot and protected from the street by the wall of glass blocks. 

”We want our artifacts and habitats, like those of the civilizations we admire, to form an allegiance with the land so strong that our existence is seen as an act of adoration, not an act of ruin.”

via wgclark-architects
via readthehook

Soundtrack: Scott Kelly - The Passage

Toppila Pulp Mill

photo Daniel Segerlöv

The Toppila pulp mill was designed by Alvar Aalto in 1931. When the factory was taken out of service in the 1990s, planning began to convert the area to residential use. 

The Cultural Power Station association is now refurbishing the silo to be used as an emerging community art centre. The project started as a diploma project and was continued with a half-year grant from the Finnish cultural fund.

via studio puisto

via alvaraalto

Soundtrack: Fun - Here Comes The Ugly Man

Temple Beth El

This rarely published Kahn´s work - the Temple Beth El in Chappaqua was completed in 1972. The structure is made of concrete and wood. Its polygonal volume, rising to a central lantern, is related to the forms of earlier wooden synagogues of Poland.

In 2010 original concrete entryway was demolished and replaced with the glass hall connecting temple with the new addition.

via archrecord

via docomomo

Soundtrack: Isis - Dulcinea

Kahn in Kathmandu

Family Planning Centre, Kathmandu, 1970-74

Louis I. Kahn designed a symmetrical composition of exposed brick piers interspersed by vertical strips of wooden windows. The building was topped off by a one-store high exposed brick parapet with deep punctures enclosing large roof terraces - courtyards in the sky.

Unfortunately, in 1995, the current resident of the building, the Ministry of Health, decided to put a metal roof over the terraces to create more floor space.

via spacesnepal

Soundtrack: Birds of Passage - Forbidden Love

Hospital in Butwal

The Siddhartha Children and Women Hospital, Butwal, 1998

The shape of the hospital building is based on an extremely simple, rectangular form. In respect of construction method or materials, our possibilities were limited due to difficulties of cost issues and availability of local technology... (Tadao Ando)

via spacesnepal

Soundtrack: OM - Pilgrimage

KAIT

photo Iwan Baan

Kanagawa Institute of Technology Workshop by Junya Ishigami, 2007, filmed by Vincent Hecht

Serpentine 2012

The Pavilion is Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei's first collaborative built structure in the UK. It takes visitors beneath the Serpentine's lawn to explore the hidden history of its previous pavilions. 

via serpentinegallery
via dezeen

John Hejduk

the fundamental issue of architecture is,
if it does affect the spirit or doesn´t ,
if it doesn´t affect the spirit, it´s building,
if it affects the spirit, it´s architecture...

via cca
via cooper union
via michaelblackwoodproductions

Black Barn

This project was built in 1973 during what Stanley Tigerman calls his "Surrealist Phase," a phase in which he sees himself under the influence of John Hedjuk and the possibility of a formal symbolic vocabulary in architecture. The house is covered in black shingles and asphalt.

via andreasangelidakis
via AIC Tigerman

Soundtrack: Earth - Land of Some Other Order

James Gorst

The refurbishment of an existing stone barn into an artists studio and the linking of the two by a new two storey timber building providing garaging and staff accommodation.

via jamesgorstarchitects

Soundtrack: Malcolm Middleton - Week Off

Beath Rothen

The house rests like a monolith in the slope. Simple and powerful in its typology. The result of intensive search for the materialization is a masonry with an outer shell made of ribbed cement blocks.

via beatrothen 

Soundtrack: Kunz - Flow

Bio Towers

Bio-towers in Lauchhammer were used to purify wastewater from the town's coking plant by way of internal trickling filters. These days the structures are used to educate people about the area’s industrial history through guided tours and exhibitions.

via iba-see2010

Soundtrack: Sleep - Holy Mountain

LC in Baghdad

via pushpullbar
via youtube

Soundtrack: A Whisper in the Noise - As We Were

Cube House

photo: Eduard Hueber

In the year 2000 Simon Ungers completed the so-called ‘Cube House’, a vacation home for himself in Ithaca, NY. Widely published, it would never be completed as originally conceived, and was scarcely occupied.

via archphoto

Soundtrack: P·A·L - Wasteland

Maruyama House

A private house in Sapporo designed by Takahiko Sano

via at-sano

Soundtrack: Boris - Hope

Casa Arco

foto Cristobal Palma

"Resistance is not only opposition to a force, but also tolerance, patience, being strong-willed. For things to last, for them to withstand the weight of time, they must suffer; the question was to what extent of this tension should be made visible."

via arquitecturaviva

Soundtrack: Saade - Maybe I Fly