There are precious few examples of authentic modernist buildings in the Wellington region. Read More
While Laugier’s Primitive Hut is frequently looked at as the dominant myth of architect’s beginnings, millions of children around the world are told of more appealing origins for building.
Maximus may have been all fish-out-of-water proposing an inhabited viaduct over Wellingtonās the Basin Reserve over at Eye of the Fish, but it seems that somebody is reading that blog over in our good old Mother Countryā¦ Boris Johnson, Lord Mayor of London no lessā¦ Read More
Of course everyone knows that the Arch Centre was born – no doubt on a dark and windy Wellington evening – on Tuesday the 23rd of July 1946 in the Baronia Lounge. Read More
The blurb says:Ā
Le Corbusier’sĀ summer cabinĀ – a tiny bolthole built in the south of France for his wife – has beenĀ reconstructed at the Royal Institute of British ArchitectsĀ in London. Jonathan Glancey steps inside to discover what it tells us about the architect’s other monumental buildings
It’s kind of mind-blowing that it is in this space that Corb designed some of those vast concrete megaliths that architectural historians do love so much. That aside, I just love the craft here, and the novel solutions to the problems of everyday living – it puts me in mind to our recent visits to the Black and Einhorn Houses in that respect… But, the minimum dwelling? A model forĀ affordableĀ living? I suspect that it really does need the views that it had originally in order to make thisĀ livableĀ rather than soul-destroying, and theĀ lackĀ of kitchen (and consequent reliance on the next door restaurant) isn’t really going to work for the usual low-income earner… and where the heck would you put the widescreen tv, let alone get far enough away to view it all…
Fwiw, CorbĀ spent his last night here (in the cabin in its original location, not at RIBA in london), before drowning on 27 August 1965.
m-d
OK, so we have already discussed carsĀ on this site, but that was regarding the ever-expanding girth of both us, and the automotive metal which we wrap around ourselves before hurtling through the landscape at great speed (OK, much less speed through the cityscape…). But what about the relationship between architecture, and the car itself…?
Those of us who are ‘up’ on our history should no about ModernistĀ predilectionsĀ for machine-inspired goodness, and will probably even recall Le Corbusier’sĀ reverenceĀ forĀ CitroĆ«n, naming his Maison Citrohan after that company. Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse is one of the most famous urban schemes that was predicated on the speed and efficiency of the automobile, and he certainly wasn’t alone in the conflation of Modern urbanity with automotiveĀ dominanceĀ – even FLW’s arcadian paradise,Ā Broadacre CityĀ is reliant upon this.
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Corbusier’s dalliance with automotive design for… Read More