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AD Classics: AD Classics: The Kreuzberg Tower / John Hejduk

February 23, 2019

Architects: John Hejduk
Year: 1988

The Interface of the Afterlife: Examining Cemeteries and Mausoleums in the 21st Century

November 03, 2014

The relationship between immortality and architecture is ancient one. Writing in The New Yorker, Alexandra Lange discusses the past and future of cemetery design in relation to a new exhibition on display in New York. Featuring a selection of 1300 individual mausoleum designs stored in Columbia University's archives, Lange notes how "patrons weren’t picky about originality. In the late nineteenth century, memorial companies might just bring back a shipment of angels from Carrara to be distributed among future clients." These "rural estates in miniature" eventually gave way to more contemporary designs which dabbled in Realism and Cubism. What will the people of today house their remains in? For Lange, "the design we take personal pleasure from everyday is now less likely to be architecture and more likely to be an interface." Read the article in full here.

London Calling: The Man Behind the Stirling Prize

November 04, 2013

A few weeks ago the RIBA doled out the 18th Stirling Prize to London-based architects Witherford Watson Mann. The decision was a good one. It was good for WWM and good for the profession – a youngish practice being recognized for a small but beautiful piece of work.

The scheme’s application of brickwork and joinery removes the work from the expediencies of modern construction technology and building products, which almost exclusively characterize the contemporary built environment. It genuinely feels like a project made at a different point in history, the result of the quite particular interests of three minds, Stephen Witherford, Chris Watson and William Mann. It is direct and personal. It reminds me of Stirling’s work..

And not just for its powerful draftsmanship, plan and restricted palette of materials, but for its intimacy. An intimacy that is apparent in much of Stirling’s oeuvre. I do not refer to the production of intimate spaces per se but the formulation of an architecture that is authored not by a factory but a few minds.

The latest Stirling prompted me to look back, and reconsider the work of Stirling himself.

AD Classics: Bagsværd Church / Jørn Utzon

September 12, 2011

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The Bagsværd Church by Jørn Utzon was completed in 1976. Though not his most famous work, the church is an example of the architect’s inventive work at a different scale. Utzon designed the church with an unassuming exterior that merely hints at the stirring forms he created inside.

AD Classics: Florey Building / James Stirling

September 02, 2011

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The Queen's College Florey building is the third and last building of “The Red Trilogy” (the Leicester Engineering Faculty building and the Cambridge History Faculty building being the first two) designed by James Stirling, solidifying him as an irreplaceable facet in modern Architecture.