Skip to main content
Tag

modern architecture

Video of the Week IX: Le Corbusier’s Mediterranean cabanon comes to London

By Uncategorized, Video of the Week

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

Video of the Week V: Los Angeles Plays Itself

By Video of the Week

Ok – enough of the sordid student activities (for now at least). How ’bout something a little more cerebral, in the form of a discussion of the role of Modernist houses in Hollywood movies. The somewhat droll announcer explores the association ofĀ villainyĀ withĀ ModernismĀ – something to keep in mind when you pen the design for your next retro-modernist contemporary dwelling… what is it that you are really saying about your clients…

m-d