Tag: domestic

James Gowan: The Expandable House

James Gowan: The Expandable House

Markus Lähteenmäki

James Gowan and James Stirling, first as partners (1956–1963) and then in their own practices, reworked the ideas of composition both in plan and section, often echoing alternative Modernist sources, such as those of the Soviet avant-garde. They looked for new ways to forge connections between programme and form, and… Read More

Walter Pichler: 20 Sketches from the Archives

Walter Pichler: 20 Sketches from the Archives

‘Architecture,’ said Walter Pichler, ‘is a brutal matter … It crushes those who cannot stand it.’ Between 1961 and 1963 the sculptor and designer, working in collaboration with the architect Hans Hollein and drawing on conversations with Raimund Abraham and Friedrich Achleitner, introduced a radically adventurous new plasticity to architecture,… Read More

Haus-Rücker-Co.

Haus-Rücker-Co.

This art collective – we might call them the ‘house thief company’ or ‘house drawing company’– took its name from a pun on the verb ‘to draw’ and an old slang word for ‘thief’. Their projects during this period involved interventions in which a house or building would be ‘stolen’… Read More

Isolation or participation?

Isolation or participation?

Ugo La Pietra

Isolation or participation? The immersions were allusions to two contrary attitudes ever present in the deportment of so many in this era: a readiness to join the currents of social change or a determination to isolate oneself, waiting for what might be next. 

Preamble to a New World (1963)

Preamble to a New World (1963)

Constant

Stones speak. Towns speak. Ruins and skylines: the story of the people. From ‘Preamble to a New World,’ New Babylon, 1963.

A life of their own (1985)

A life of their own (1985)

Paul Rudolph

The following has been excerpted from Staying Creative; Artistic Passion is a Lifelong Pursuit – and These Mature Masters Prove the Point. (Otto Luening, Elizabeth Catlett, Paul Rudolph), December 1985. I try to find a graphic means of indicating what’s happening to the space. Space can move quickly or slowly. It… Read More

John Lautner: house and studio for Edgar Ewing

John Lautner: house and studio for Edgar Ewing

Nicholas Olsberg

On presenting himself as a potential apprentice at Taliesin to Frank Lloyd Wright Jr., Lautner heard no objection except the sly comment that he would be ‘too big for the rooms’. Everything about his approach to visualising a design speaks to the distance from which this towering figure saw the… Read More

Erik Gunnar Asplund: the father

Erik Gunnar Asplund: the father

Nicholas Olsberg

Erik Gunnar Asplund’s son Ingemar told me that their father would pick him and his brother Hans up on Sundays to take them to the summer house. (He was then living with a woman other than their mother.) Father would make a little conversation as they made their way to… Read More

Wagnerschule

Wagnerschule

The drawings of Emil Hoppe (1876 – 1957) and Otto Schönthal (1878–1961) attracted particular interest in the Land Marks exhibition, and people were eager for us to share them more widely. They are presented here with little comment and a few additions for context. These drawings by Emil Hoppe, Otto Schönthal and… Read More

Potomania (1982)

Potomania (1982)

Jacques Couëlle

Call it ‘Potomania’ — plants and flowers above all … a column of water cascading freely on to a little pond … the column a staff both shining and singing.

Future Scenarios, Part I

Future Scenarios, Part I

Niall Hobhouse and Nicholas Olsberg

Capturing the rainbow: the city of tomorrow On any given day late in the 1930s, so someone has calculated, more than 30,000 Americans either bought a train ticket or ordered lunch looking at one of the murals of the designer Winold Reiss. With each new commission, and as the burdens… Read More