On November 3rd, 2022, the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA) announced the decision to end the restoration works for elements of the campus designed by Louis Kahn with Indian architects Balkrishna V. Doshi and Anant Raje in 1962. The decision affects the faculty blocks, classroom complex, and dorms other than dorm D15. According to the statement, the institution plans to replace some of the buildings, as the complex is “facing structural damage, deterioration and have become uninhabitable, posing a safety concern for the campus's residents.” This represents a reversal of the decision to withdraw the first demolition plans following global protests, announced in January 2021.
Theodore Prudon, the founding president of Docomomo US, recently stepped down as the organization’s head. (Robert Meckfessel is the new president.) “Docomomo” is shorthand for the group’s mission: the documentation and conservation of buildings, sites, and neighborhoods of the Modern movement. Prudon has had a storied career as a preservationist, architect, and educator, heading his own practice and teaching at Columbia University. In October, he was presented with the Connecticut Architecture Foundation’s Distinguished Leadership Award at the newly reborn Marcel Breuer building in New Haven, which began its life in 1970 as the Pirelli Tire Building and is now the Hotel Marcel (designed, planned, and developed by architect Bruce Redman Becker).
https://www.archdaily.com/992013/theodore-prudon-modernism-has-never-been-a-popular-movementMichael J. Crosbie
Chicago, The Windy City, Chi-Town, or The Second City. It’s a place that is known by many names, but to architects and urban planners alike, it’s famous for its history which has given us some of the best-known buildings and important advancements that have helped to shape other cities across the United States. From its inception, Chicago has long served as an architectural hub for innovation.
In the mid-twentieth century, a set of South Asian countries collectively experienced a catharsis from colonizers’ rule. The period that followed sparked an era of ideas and philosophies for a new future. During this time, architects were pivotal in creating modernist structures that defined the countries’ post-colonial, post-partition and post-imperial identities. South Asian architects used design as an expression of hopeful societal visions, most of which have been actualized. With this success in nation-building, there has been a lack of accreditation for women architects in shaping South Asian histories.
On January 21, 1958, three women sat down as contestants for an episode of the popular television show “To Tell the Truth”, a quiz game in which a panel tries to guess which of the three contestants is who they say they are by asking them a series of questions. The announcer reveals the true identity of the person is a registered architect, has so far designed a Hilton hotel, and is a married mother of four. Each of the women, dressed formally in pencil skirts and blouses, introduces themselves as Natalie De Blois. As the panelists reveal their lack of knowledge about architecture, only firing off questions about Frank Lloyd Wright, one asks “What is the name of the building that was torn down to build Union Carbide?” The real Natalie De Blois, at the time a senior designer at SOM, firmly answers, “Hotel Margery.”
Architecture is one of the oldest recorded professions, dating back to ancient eras when builders designed historic huts and constructed some of the great wonders of the world. When we think about women who have been known as trailblazers of the industry, it’s astonishing that we often talk about women who we may interact with in the workplace day to day, or who our mentors may have learned from. Natalie De Blois was a modern-day pioneer of women in the design workforce, and although her legacy began only seventy years ago, it has significantly changed the way that women can participate in the profession today.
On August 27th, 1883, the volcano of Krakatoa in the Indonesian islands erupted. Ashes and rocks flew miles high. Barometers wobbled three and a half times as they recorded the atmospheric pressure wave circumnavigating the globe. The noise was heard across the Indian Ocean and Australia. And for years, small ash particles floated in the atmosphere, diffusing the sun’s light and scattering colors around the world.
Augusto Malta, Demolition Morro do Castelo, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, June 1, 1922. . Image Courtesy of Biblioteca Nacional Digital Brasil, Fundação Biblioteca Nacional.
At the inauguration of the First Brazilian Congress of Eugenics in July of 1929, the physician and anthropologist Edgar Roquette-Pinto addressed an audience preoccupied with the question of how a country as vast as Brazil could best increase and improve its population. To accomplish this, Roquette-Pinto exalted “eugenia” as the new science that, together with medicine and hygiene, would guarantee the efficiency and perfection of the race. With the following words, the Brazilian scientist underscored a positivist agenda that brought architecture to the very core of the eugenics—the so-called science of race “improvement”—movement: “It is critical to emphasize that the influence [on our race] does not stem from the natural environment but rather from the artificial environment, created by man.” With these opening remarks to the Congress, Roquette-Pinto called attention to the crucial role that the man-made environment plays in the “amelioration” of what he called “the biological patrimony” of Brazil’s diverse population. In his invitation to social engineering, Roquette Pinto pointed to the environmental-genetic collusion that they hoped would bring with it the very possibility of progress.
Modernist architecture came about in the early 20th century as a response to large-scale changes in technology, construction, and society; particularly through the use of glass, steel, and reinforced concrete. The style was typically associated with the function of buildings from an analytical viewpoint, rational use of materials, the elimination of ornamentation, and openness to structural innovation.
Paul Tunge is a Norwegian writer, director, and cinematographer of Arthouse Films who has been involved in film production since the early 2000s. Having written, directed, shot, and produced four independent films, alongside 3 documentaries, each of his projects has been featured during major film festivals across all continents, in galleries, and various national cinemas and cinematheques.
Few other materials can convey architectural atmosphere as well as the glass. A to-go choice for the modernists, due to its transparent nature, glass still holds a solid place within the material palette for architects around the globe. Such unique element is the subject of Archiving Flux / Stasis, a photographic exhibition by Erieta Attali hosted by the Greek Ministry of Culture in Casa Romana, Kos Island, Greece, set to open its doors in July 21st.
In 1926, Le Corbusier developed the five points that would become the foundations for modern architecture. Once materialized in 1929 in the iconic Villa Savoye project, Le Corbusier's principles - pilotis, free design of the ground plan, free design of the facade, horizontal window, and roof garden - have been extensively explored in modern architecture and continue to influence the most diverse contemporary architectural projects to this day.
The five points became a kind of guideline for the New Architecture, as Corbusier used to call it. Even after decades, new technologies, materials, and demands of society have continued to update those architectural solutions, announced almost a century ago as the basis for a new architecture.
How did modern architecture happen? How did we evolve so quickly from architecture that had ornament and detail, to buildings that were often blank and devoid of detail? Why did the look and feel of buildings shift so dramatically in the early 20th century? History holds that modernism was the idealistic impulse that emerged out of the physical, moral and spiritual wreckage of the First World War. While there were other factors at work as well, this explanation, though undoubtedly true, tells an incomplete picture.
A graphic shows some early microclimate-tailored strategies detailed in "Modern Architecture and Climate: Design Before Air Conditioning" by Daniel A. Barber. Image Courtesy of Princeton University Press
It’s easy to think of Modernism as inseparable from air conditioning, simply because we are surrounded by so much of it that is. A valuable reminder that this wasn’t always the case is provided in University of Pennsylvania architecture professor Daniel A. Barber’s Modern Architecture and Climate: Design Before Air Conditioning (Princeton University Press), which outlines the story of the febrile, flexible, and often-forgotten early experiments in climate control.
Design diagram for the City of Culture of Galicia, Spain. Image Courtesy of Eisenman Architects
If we define deconstructivism, it literally translates to the breaking down, or demolishing of a constructed structure, whether it being for structural reasons or just an act of rebellion. It is perhaps for this reason that many misunderstand the Deconstructivist movement.
Deconstructivism is, in fact, not a new architecture style, nor is it an avant-garde movement against architecture or society. It does not follow “rules” or acquire specific aesthetics, nor is it a rebellion against a social dilemma. It is the unleashing of infinite possibilities of playing around with forms and volumes.
Between the late 1940s to the 1980s, Toronto, Canada, experienced a high rate of growth and development, resulting in a wealth of modernist-style buildings. Due to an increasing population, parishes were also outgrowing their spaces and found themselves in need of new facilities. Consequently, many well-designed modernist churches began to pop up throughout Toronto. This black and white photography series, titled Fifty/50 by Amanda Large, is an ode to these churches, and a celebration of their enduring importance to the city more than fifty years after their construction.
The General Motors Technical Center fascinates with architecture filled with an abundance of light. Interior offices and showrooms evoke the impression of a calm overcast sky for a human environment and beauty. The campus designed by Eero Saarinen represents an influential icon of midcentury design. Susan Skarsgard's book "Where Today Meets Tomorrow" opens intriguing perspectives to the origin of the American landmark.
Father of Iraqi architecture Rifat Chadirji has passed away at 93, on April 10 in London, after contracting the novel coronavirus. Born in 1926 in Baghdad, he is responsible for more than 100 buildings across Iraq.
Some of his most iconic works include the Tahrir Square's Freedom Monument, the Tobacco Monopoly Headquarters in 1965, the Central Post Office in Baghdad in 1975 and the Unknown Soldier Monument, one of his most culturally significant intervention designed in 1959, demolished in 1982 and then replaced by a statue of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Modernism could be described as one of the most optimistic styles in architectural history, drawing from notions of utopia, innovation, and the reimagination of how humans would live, work, and interact. As we reflected in our AD Essentials Guide to Modernism, the philosophy of Modernism still dominates much of architectural discourse today, even if the world that gave rise to Modernism has changed utterly.
As we say goodbye to 2019, a year that saw the centenary of the Bauhaus, we have collated a list of key architectural styles that defined Modernism in architecture. This tool for understanding the development of 20th-century design is complete with examples of each style, showcasing the practice of Modernism that lay behind the theory.
Guide map to Modernist architecture across San Francisco and the Bay Area. This two-sided folded map with original photography by Jason Woods is edited by Mitchell Schwarzer, Professor at California College of the Arts, and author of numerous books about architecture. The guide features over fifty influential examples of Modernist and Brutalist architecture from Berkeley and Oakland to Palo Alto and San Mateo. Details for individual buildings are supported by an introduction to Modernism in the Bay Area by Schwarzer. Architects featured include Vernon de Mars, Beverley Thorne, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, Pier Luigi Nervi,
.jpg?1600176766 "Unisociesc Block H / Metroquadrado. Image: © Pablo Teixeira")
.jpg?1600178326 "Torreão House / BLOCO Arquitetos. Image: © Haruo Mikami")
.jpg?1597099445 "Parc de la Villette / Bernard Tschumi Architects. Image © Peeradontax | Shutterstock")
.jpg?1577789705 "Villa Savoye / Le Corbusier")
.jpg?1577789737 "Vitra Design Museum / Gehry Partners. Image © Liao Yusheng")
