Category: reviews

Alberto Cruz: Observation, Act, Form – Review

Alberto Cruz: Observation, Act, Form – Review

Matt Page

Alberto Cruz (1917–2013) was an architect and theorist who devoted most of his professional life to education. In 1952, he played an important role in revitalising the School of Architecture at the Universidad Catolica de Valparíso, Chile, founding the Instituto de Arquitectura de Valparaíso with eight of his colleagues, including… Read More

The Routledge Companion to Architectural Drawings and Models (2021) – Review

The Routledge Companion to Architectural Drawings and Models (2021) – Review

Desley Luscombe

A book like The Routledge Companion to Architectural Drawings and Models cannot be read with speed. Each chapter is finite, and although linked by others into sections, each forms a stand-alone reading event. It also cannot be seen as a book about architectural drawing. The photographic reproduction is poor, often… Read More

The Project of Independence: Architectures of Decolonization in South Asia, 1947-1985 (2022) – Review

The Project of Independence: Architectures of Decolonization in South Asia, 1947-1985 (2022) – Review

Esra Akcan

“The history of modern architecture is the history of its exhibitions,” states the introduction of the anthology ‘Exhibiting Architecture’, [1] and it is hard to deny the central role of exhibitions in the writing of the canonic and the public history of architecture. Yet the exclusionary nature of the history… Read More

Sweet Disorder and the Carefully Careless: Ideas, Faces and Places (2022) – review

Sweet Disorder and the Carefully Careless: Ideas, Faces and Places (2022) – review

Eric Parry and Robin Webster

Reviews by Robin Webster and Eric Parry, and notes from Celia Scott. The opening of the exhibition and symposium about the architect Robert (Bob) Maxwell and the sculptor Celia Scott was held in the elegant home of the Irish Architectural Archive, at 45 Merrion Square in Dublin. The focus of… Read More

Vilanova Artigas: Drawing Models – Review

Vilanova Artigas: Drawing Models – Review

Laura Evans

The basement exhibition space at F’AR Lausanne is dominated by a forest of delicate metal and glass tilting tables within which drawings have been placed. When rotated from the horizontal, they give the large, artificially lit room the feeling of a drawing studio at the end of the day; the… Read More

Missing Link: Strategies of a Viennese Architecture Group (1970-1980) – Review

Missing Link: Strategies of a Viennese Architecture Group (1970-1980) – Review

Erik Wegerhoff

There is a strange moment in the second room of the exhibition, where all kinds of great works are hung on the walls to admire, organised around a central display of plastic and aluminium furniture: a collage of a car hovering like the golden calf amidst a crazed crowd; a… Read More

Kay Fisker: Danish Functionalism and Block-based Housing (2022) – Review

Kay Fisker: Danish Functionalism and Block-based Housing (2022) – Review

Mark Pimlott

This is a useful book. It is also a book that might be thought of as a vehicle or encouragement towards another book, a foundation for future work, either by the editors, or other architects, architectural historians, or even sociologists. It arose from the fascination of two Irish architects, Andrew… Read More

On Bramante (2022) – Review

On Bramante (2022) – Review

Oliver Lütjens and Thomas Padmanabhan

Thomas Padmanabhan: We are very happy to have this book, On Bramante, in front of us. It was written by a friend of ours, Pier Paolo Tamburelli, who is a writer, a teacher and also a practising architect and founding partner of baukuh in Milan. For a while, even before encountering… Read More

Time’s Witness. History in the Age of Romanticism (2021) – Review

Time’s Witness. History in the Age of Romanticism (2021) – Review

Martin Bressani

Anxious Objects At some point in the annals of Western scholarship it was judged that the past could be restituted not only from textual sources but also from objects, that the material of history was equally important as its written archive. This major shift in historical approach was largely brought… Read More

Freddie Phillipson ‘The Ulysses Project’ – Review

Freddie Phillipson ‘The Ulysses Project’ – Review

Peter Carl

The exhibition of Freddie Phillipson’s drawings reconstructing the Dublin of James Joyce’s Ulysses opened on Bloomsday, helping to celebrate the centenary of the publication of the novel. The exhibition is essential viewing for anyone interested in how the European city and its architecture support a culture, and for anyone interested… Read More

Hexenhaus (2021) – Review

Hexenhaus (2021) – Review

Paul Clarke

‘THE FOREST THAT BUILT THE HOUSE’ There are two drawings for me that are significant in understanding the work of the Smithsons. Both are of Upper Lawn [1]. One is a drawing made by Peter Smithson of their Solar Pavilion in elevation, the other by Alison Smithson in plan. The… Read More

Growing up Modern: Childhoods in Iconic Homes (2021) – Review

Growing up Modern: Childhoods in Iconic Homes (2021) – Review

Gillian Darley

What do our birthplaces do to us? Should those homes be considered modernist jewels, the pride of their architects and, sometimes, of their patrons, how would that particular experience be imprinted on their children? Growing up Modern is a highly personal book in which the authors, Julia Jamrozik and Coryn… Read More