Category: reviews
Forecast and Fantasy: Architecture without Borders 1960s to 1980s – Review
30 January 2023
Forecast and Fantasy: Architecture without Borders 1960s to 1980s – Review30 January 2023
This carefully curated and beautifully displayed exhibition brings together 150 drawings with numerous publications and films to display a wave of rebellion and research by architects across the European continent, with a focus on the east, over three decades. The abundance of visionary thinking that followed the boom of post-war… Read More
Neighbours in Space and Time: Grafton Architects at the Soane Museum – Review
25 January 2023
Neighbours in Space and Time: Grafton Architects at the Soane Museum – Review25 January 2023
Between 19th October 2022 and 8th of January 2023, the calm galleries and vitrines at no.12 Lincoln’s Inn Fields were host to an exhibition called Neighbours in Space and Time: Grafton Architects at the Soane Museum. Organised around a dramatic comparison between the thoughts and work of two architects –… Read More
Johan Celsing Buildings Texts (2021) – Review
6 December 2022
Johan Celsing Buildings Texts (2021) – Review6 December 2022
‘Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the handing on of the fire’ Gustav Mahler quoted in Johan Celsing Buildings Texts The work of Johan Celsing represents the continuation of a tradition of significant twentieth century Swedish architects into the present. While the influence of Gunnar Asplund, Sigurd Lewerentz… Read More
Alberto Cruz: Observation, Act, Form – Review
2 December 2022
Alberto Cruz: Observation, Act, Form – Review2 December 2022
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
24 November 2022
The Routledge Companion to Architectural Drawings and Models (2021) – Review24 November 2022
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
10 November 2022
The Project of Independence: Architectures of Decolonization in South Asia, 1947-1985 (2022) – Review10 November 2022
“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
31 October 2022
Sweet Disorder and the Carefully Careless: Ideas, Faces and Places (2022) – review31 October 2022
– 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
20 October 2022
Vilanova Artigas: Drawing Models – Review20 October 2022
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
Kay Fisker: Danish Functionalism and Block-based Housing (2022) – Review
29 September 2022
Kay Fisker: Danish Functionalism and Block-based Housing (2022) – Review29 September 2022
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
22 August 2022
On Bramante (2022) – Review22 August 2022
– 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
25 July 2022
Time’s Witness. History in the Age of Romanticism (2021) – Review25 July 2022
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
Missing Link: Strategies of a Viennese Architecture Group (1970-1980) – Review
10 October 2022
Missing Link: Strategies of a Viennese Architecture Group (1970-1980) – Review10 October 2022
– 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