Posts Tagged ‘Zaha Hadid’

Wellington Mayoral Candidates Respond

Tuesday, September 13th, 2016

https://www.psa.org.nz/assets/Uploads/_resampled/ResizedImageWzYwMCwxNTVd/mayoral.JPG
ARCHITECTURAL CENTRE: 2016 questions for Wellington mayoral candidates. (more…)

Architects Draw: history

Saturday, November 1st, 2014

hugh-ferriss

Hugh Ferriss “Metropolis of Tomorrow” (c.1929)

Drawing has been a staple of an architect’s profession for longer than architecture has been a profession … (more…)

Barbie Architecture: yep it’s pink

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

A casual comment about architect costumes at the last Arch Centre committee meeting made me wonder what the most fashionable fashion victim of all time: Barbie – might be able to offer to the subject of architects and architecture. (more…)

Fetish or Fashion: architecture & shoes

Sunday, May 17th, 2009

Urban legend perpetrates the idea of an uncontrollable relationship between women and shoes. (more…)

Now that’s deconstructivism…

Tuesday, May 12th, 2009

…or has Prince Charles (also, see our other story here), finally developed psychokinetic powers of destruction for contemporary architecture…?

  Mwahahaha

Click here for the ‘real’ story…

Architectural reasons for dumping the Monarchy…?

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009

Poundbury Fire Station, England: HRH Prince Charles, 2009

Unfortunately the Guardian article that brings this rather strange contemporary building to our attention is dated 31st of March – so I have to assume that it isn’t some April Fool’s Day prank. This is, according to the article, the Prince of Wales’ first attempt at architectural design – a fire station in that weird little phenomenon: Poundbury.

Now, there has been some discussion over at the Fish, relating to the employment of Classical architectural language by various regimes throughout history, but HRH’s uptake of the style is much more bizarre than a simple architecture-as-propaganda motive. Here the Prince seems to be waxing nostalgic for a bygone era of – not royal power – but strictly mannered gentility: a romantic yearning for a bygone era that only ever existed for the few who had the good fortune to be born into nobility…

It’s kind of sweet really (the yearning, not the building) – but what are we to make of this out here in the Dominion of New Zealand, whose Head of State may well end up being Prince Charles? Yes, the role is largely symbolic, but does his utopian conservatism symbolically align with our own self-styled egalitarianism? And what of architectural taste? Perhaps we should have invited the Prince to design our Supreme Court (now there would be a symbolic gesture!) – I am sure he would show us colonials a thing or two about domes(more…)

The architecture of the automobile

Thursday, March 12th, 2009

OK, so we have already discussed cars 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 Modernist predilections for machine-inspired goodness, and will probably even recall Le Corbusier’s reverence for Citroën, 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 automotive dominance – even FLW’s arcadian paradise, Broadacre City is reliant upon this.

 

Corbusier’s dalliance with automotive design for… (more…)