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Architecture, Buildings, Construction

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  • Atoms and aggregates

    I see science reversing the trend toward atomistic explanation that has been so triumphant in the last 400 years, and I predict a more human future based on the symbiosis of exact knowledge (which is by its very nature limited) and experience.

    ...Matter cannot be understood without a knowledge of atoms; yet it is now becoming evident that the properties of materials that we enjoy in a work of art or exploit in an interplanetary rocket are really not those of atoms but those of aggregates...It is not stretching the analogy much to suggest that the chemical explanation of matter is analogous to using an identification of individual brick types as an explanation of Hagia Sophia.

    Matter versus Materials: A Historical View
    1. ​​The edifice from which they came​​
    • architecture
    • science
  • Doing nothing with precision

    For his part, Gehry has noted in defense of his recent museum extravaganzas: "artists want to be in an important building, not a neutral one." At Dia:Beacon, Irwin pursued the opposite logic. As Govan has pointed out: "The money was spent to make it look like nothing was done to the building." Or, as a partner from Open Office observes: "We talked often about the idea of doing nothing with precision. Do it right and they'll never know we were here." As one critic has written, what the result showed was, as he puts it, "Irwin's unwavering conviction that museum spaces should serve the art and not the other way around."

    Matthew Simms, Robert Irwin: A Conditional Art
    • space
    • architecture
    • art
    • design
  • New ideas must use old buildings

    Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.

    Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
    1. ​​The economic value of old buildings​​
    • time
    • ideas
    • architecture
    • novelty
  • The picket fence

    There was a fence with spaces you
    could look through if you wanted to.

    An architect who saw this thing
    stood there one summer evening.

    Took out the spaces with great care
    and built a castle in the air.

    The fence was utterly dumbfounded,
    each post stood there with nothing round it.

    Christian Morgenstern, The Art of Looking Sideways
    www.andrew.cmu.edu
    • space
    • architecture
    • absurdity
  • It leaves no sign of its past self behind

    When buildings are torn down and rebuilt, the ghost of the old building is often visible in the new one — strangely angled walls and rooms, which make sense only in the context of the space as a living organism. On the web, there are no such restrictions: when a website dies, it leaves no sign of its past self behind.

    Wesley Aptekar-Cassels, How Websites Die
    • death
    • www
    • architecture
    • building
  • A stealth architect

    By the 1970s, Irwin was in effect a stealth architect. We often talk about the ephemeral qualities of light and space in Irwin's installations, but what make those qualities palpable to our perception are practical structures—windows, walls, corridors, doorways, and skylights—in other words, architecture. And Irwin was keenly aware of how best to use all of those structures. One of his greatest talents has been to engage bad or benign architectural situations, disappearing into their details, changing them, and creating and entirely new quality of space.

    Michael Auping, Stealth Architecture: The Rooms of Light and Space
    • architecture
  • To absorb it or build your own

    Robert Smithson and other so-called land artists simply disengaged from architecture, placing their works in America's open landscape, leaving behind the museums and galleries Smithson referred to as "tombs". A new "expanded field" allowed artists to contextualize their work beyond the institutional frame of the museum or the commercial structure of a gallery. Richard Serra, who also began to move outdoors, at times chose to "attack" architecture, creating structures that disrupted or overwhelmed the buildings around them.

    The artists of the Light and Space movement took another tack. Rather than fight or flee the architecture, they explored and manipulated it, approaching architecture as a kind of found object, creating a series of rooms that incorporated architecture and architectural structures directly into their art. Bruce Nauman summarized it well: "When you work in a gallery or museum, the architecture is a given. If you wanted to have a show, you didn't have a choice, except to deal with it. You had to find a way to either absorb architecture into the piece of build your own."

    Michael Auping, Stealth Architecture: The Rooms of Light and Space
    1. ​​Conditional art​​
    • architecture
  • Would that we loved the ancients more and copied them less

    It is not that we should disregard the creations of the past, but that we should try to assimilate them into our consciousness. Slavish conformity to traditions and formulas fetters the expression of individuality in architecture. We can but weep over the senseless imitations of European buildings which one beholds in modern Japan. We marvel why, among the most progressive Western nations, architecture should be so devoid of originality, so replete with repetitions of obsolete styles. Perhaps we are passing now through an age of democratization in art, while awaiting the rise of some princely master who shall establish a new dynasty. Would that we loved the ancients more and copied them less! It has been said that the Greeks were great because they never drew from the antique.

    Okakura Kakuzō, The Book of Tea
    • history
    • tradition
    • architecture
  • They wanted a monument

    One of the responsibilities for an architect is to provide a space that is usable and enhances the possibilities for what you do. But mostly, museums are just the opposite; they're horrible spaces, anti-art, they can't be used. They can't function, they overwhelm it. So in a way, they become objects in themselves many times, almost sculptures, and they get a lot of aggrandizement out of it...In terms of Bilbao, the one difference there is that they did not really want a museum, they wanted a monument. They wanted a thing that would bring people to the Bilbao.

    Robert Irwin, Robert Irwin: A Conditional Art
    • architecture
    • sculpture
  • The inhumanity of contemporary architecture

    The inhumanity of contemporary architecture and cities can be understood as the consequence of the neglect of the body and the senses, and an imbalance in our sensory system.

    The art of the eye has certainly produced imposing and thought-provoking structures, but it has not facilitated human rootedness in the world.

    Modernist design at large has housed the intellect and the eye, but it has left the body and the other senses, as well as our memories, imagination and dreams, homeless.

    Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses
    1. ​​1º2º3º4º​​
    • architecture
    • senses
    • modernism

    Probably the best summary of Pallasmaa's central thesis.

  • Illa de la Discòrdia

    Screenshot of en.wikipedia.org on 2021-10-14 at 12.16.07 PM.png

    A city block on Passeig de Gràcia in the Eixample district of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. The block is noted for having buildings by four of Barcelona's most important Modernista architects, Lluís Domènech i Montaner, Antoni Gaudí, Josep Puig i Cadafalch and Enric Sagnier, in close proximity. As the four architects' styles were very different, the buildings clash with each other and the neighboring buildings.

    Wikipedia
    en.wikipedia.org
    • style
    • architecture
    • cities
  • I'm reminded of their faces

    Mrs. Shimada is very cheerful, and Mr. Shimada is very intelligent; he is able to perceive things objectively, and discern what is precious. I get the sense they live critically, evaluating what is important. Keeping these characteristics in mind, I think about what kind of plan should be provided, in what proportions, and in what kind of house—to best suit these people. I'm constantly reminded of their faces as I prepare the plans. I'm always thinking about human happiness. If it doesn't make you happy, I don't think it's worth building.

    Akinori Abo, Kigumi House
    • making
    • happiness
    • architecture
  • Post-occupancy evaluation

    Post-occupancy evaluation (POE) is a practice in the building industry where an architect would visit the building after its occupancy and interview its residents. It sounds like a great opportunity for collecting feedback and learning from mistakes, but it’s rarely practiced. Why?

    Many awe-inspiring, prize-winning architectures are half building, half sculpture. Often made of specially molded concrete and steel, they are extremely expensive to alter, let alone any alteration would also attack the architect’s prestige and pride. So whatever usability issues the POE identifies will remain as issues, unless the architect wants to accept the public criticism and shame that comes with the remodeling.

    In fear of criticism, an architect would turn down the opportunity for POE, and continue to design the same roof that would leak water in future projects.

    In fear of criticism, a developer would use customer service representatives as a shield against user complaints, while focusing on the “technical” aspect of things.

    In fear of criticism, a designer would close the contract as soon as the client accepts the design, even though none of the real users are represented by the client.

    Chuánqí Sun, Don’t Be an Ostrich
    • architecture
    • ux
  • The right kind of building can do great things for a culture

    "Steve had this firm belief that the right kind of building can do great things for a culture," said Pixar's president Ed Catmull.

    Despite being a denizen of the digital world, or maybe because he knew all too well its isolating potential, Jobs was a strong believer in face-to-face meetings. "There's a temptation in our networked age to think that ideas can be developed by email and iChat," he said. "That's crazy. Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions. You run into someone, you ask what they're doing, you said 'Wow,' and soon you're cooking up all sorts of ideas."

    Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs
    • architecture
    • work
  • The tower

    Sketch for The Tower – a cheese grater.

    The tower is just a common grater. It is not used to look out toward a distant world from above, but only to slice, grind and grate its surroundings.

    Anyone who stepped inside would see an irremediably cold, metallic, empty void, and a few scattered holes where the world literally seeps through in pieces. It is a sad project.

    Smiljan Radić, Every Thing
    1. ​​After the Fair​​
    • architecture
    • melancholy
    • darkness
  • Complete and consistent requirements

    An architect who needs complete and consistent requirements to begin work, though perhaps a brilliant builder, is not an architect.

    Mark W. Maier & Eberhardt Rechtin, The Art of Systems Architecting
    1. ​​What the problem is​​
    2. ​​The heart of systems engineering​​
    3. ​​A late change in requirements is a competitive advantage​​
    • architecture
    • design
  • Starved for good journalism and criticism

    Imagine for a moment if Kimmelman–or any architecture critic–was also a practicing architect, building enormous commissions for corporations at the same time he writes his columns. If this were the case, you’d probably come to one of two conclusions: either the writer in question was not a serious critic, or that the art form itself is not very serious. You might also stop to think how much poorer we would be without the contributions of his independent voice to the discussion of the craft.

    That is exactly the situation that the design profession finds itself in today. We are lucky to have designers actively sharing knowledge, but we’re starved for good journalism and criticism.

    Khoi Vinh, Design Discourse is in a State of Arrested Development
    www.fastcompany.com
    • architecture
    • critique
    • design

    ...the idea of someone spending their days writing reviews of brand identities, design systems, app experiences, and the design of new products seems far-fetched.

  • The doctrine of salvation by bricks

    When we try to justify good shelter instead on the pretentious grounds that it will work social or family miracles we fool ourselves. Reinhold Niebuhr has called this particular self-deception, “The doctrine of salvation by bricks.”

    Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
    1. ​​When our forces are resolved​​
    2. ​​The doctrine of salvation by blocks​​
    • euphony
    • architecture

    And yet, there is something to the idea that truly "good" buildings and places (in the quality-that-has-no-name sense) do have the power to shape and improve the lives led within it, and even to heal people.

  • There it is again

    Apparently architecture does the same job as set design, "it creates units of environment, atmosphere, or events"—whatever you wish to call them—but with more weight, carrying more material, slower. This is why it can raise the curtain more times and repeat "there it is again" for longer. Perhaps for this and other reasons there are periods in the history of architecture in which stage design or the folly, for example, have been an effective field of experimentation for serious architects.

    Smiljan Radić, The Circus
    1. ​​Follies​​
    • architecture
  • Rain Chains & Musical Drains

    Image from 99percentinvisible.org on 2020-10-02 at 10.30.32 AM.jpeg

    A rain chain in winter; Dresden Kunsthof Passage; Drainage planters near Pike Place Market in Seattle.

    If there is a larger takeaway here perhaps it is about paths of least resistance, with regards to both the actual flow of water and design decisions. On the one hand, it is easy to blindly follow regional precedents and traditions with long histories (or grab whatever is handy at the hardware store). On the other hand, sometimes it makes sense to take a step back and decide consciously how to reveal (or conceal) a natural process.

    Roman Mars & Kurt Kohlstedt, 99% Invisible
    99percentinvisible.org
    1. ​​Rain chains​​
    • water
    • architecture
    • details
    • patterns
  • Authentic architectural experiences

    Authentic architectural experiences consist of approaching or confronting a building, rather than the formal apprehension of a facade; of the act of entering, and not simply the visual design of the door; of looking in or out through a window, rather than the window itself as a material object; or of occupying the sphere of warmth, rather than the fireplace as an object of visual design.

    Architectural space is lived space rather than physical space, and lived space always transcends geometry and measurability.

    Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses
    • architecture
    • geometry
  • Mere retinal art

    Instead of an existentially grounded plastic and spatial experience, architecture has adopted the psychological strategy of advertising and instant persuasion; buildings have turned into image products detached from existential depth and sincerity.

    Architecture of our time often appears as mere retinal art.

    Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses
    1. ​​A set of potential photographs​​
    • architecture
    • images
    • advertising
    • psychology
  • Non-architects

    In 1964, the historian Bernard Rudofsky curated a show at MoMA called Architecture Without Architects, celebrating the formal qualities of a range of traditional building practices drawn from around the world.

    Setting aside the endlessly troubled implications of the Western gaze on “primitive” cultures, the show had the very constructive impacts of encouraging formal diversity at a time when mainstream architecture had grown desperately, myopically monochromatic and of suggesting that “non-architects” were capable not only of making good judgments about their environments but of actually taking the lead in creating them.

    Michael Sorkin, 20 Minutes in Manhattan
    1. ​​The Timeless Way of Building​​
    2. ​​Most cities were mostly built by improvisation​​
    3. ​​Architecture Without Architects​​
    • architecture
  • Deep Interlock

    Forms which have a high degree of life tend to contain some type of interlock – a “hooking into” their surroundings – or an ambiguity between element and context, either case creating a zone belonging to both the form and to its surroundings, making it difficult to disentangle the two.

    The interlock, or ambiguity, strengthens the centers on either side, which are intensified by the new center formed between the two.

    Christopher Alexander, The Nature of Order
    1. ​​The versatility of flat surfaces​​
    2. ​​Strength from both mass and form​​
    3. ​​168. Connection to the Earth​​
    4. ​​Interlocking​​
    5. ​​Protected, yet tuned in​​
    • nature
    • architecture
  • The Cinderella of architecture

    An analogy might be drawn with the use of light quality as a design element, truly a venerable old architectural tradition. The light quality—direct, indirect, natural, artificial, diffuse, dappled, focused—can be subtly manipulated in the design of a space in order to achieve the desired effect.

    Thermal qualities might also be included in the architect's initial conception and could influence all phases of design. Instead, thermal conditions are commonly standardized with the use of modern mechanical systems that can be specified, installed, and left to function independently of the overall design concept.

    Indeed, environmental control systems tend to be treated rather like the Cinderella of architecture; given only the plainest clothes to wear, they are relegated to a back room to do the drudgery that maintains the elegant life-style of the other sisters: light, form, structure, and so forth.

    Lisa Heschong, Thermal Delight in Architecture
    • architecture
  • Maps and observation

    Maps are useful only when they are used in combination with observation. Never try to design a site by just looking at a map, even if it is thoroughly detailed with contour lines, vegetation, erosion gullies, and so on marked in.

    Maps are never representative of the complex reality of nature. Remember, "The map is not the territory."

    Bill Mollison, Introduction to Permaculture
    1. ​​Blueprints​​
    2. ​​Guided by image​​
    • maps
    • reality
    • architecture
  • Desired qualities of light

    In today's architectural practice, light is regrettably often treated merely as a quantitative phenomenon; design regulations and standards specify required minimum level of illumination and window sizes, but they do not define any maximum levels of luminance, or desired qualities of light, such as its orientation, temperature, color, or reflectedness.

    Robert McCarter & Juhani Pallasmaa, Understanding Architecture
    1. ​​Obsessed with absolute numbers​​
    • light
    • architecture
  • Ducks and decorated sheds

    duck2.jpg?w=650

    A duck is a building whose confirmation is a complete symbol or icon. A decorated shed is a building to which symbols, often commonplace signs, have been attached.

    Peter G. Rowe, Design Thinking
    1. ​​Googie architecture​​
    • architecture
    • symbols
  • Modularity

    One of the most pervasive features of these buildings is the fact that they are “modular.” They are full of identical concrete blocks, identical rooms, identical houses, identical apartments in identical apartment buildings. The idea that a building can - and ought - to be made of modular units is one of the most pervasive assumptions of twentieth-century architecture.

    Nature is never modular. Nature is full of almost similar units (waves, raindrops, blades of grass) - but though the units of one kind are all alike in their broad structure, no two are ever alike in detail.

    The same broad features keep recurring over and over again. And yet, in their detailed appearance these broad features are never twice the same.

    Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building
    • nature
    • architecture
    • making
    • details
    • modularity

    On traditional cultures and their building processes, Alexander expands this view:

    Each building was a member of a family, and yet unique.
    Each room a little different according to the view.
    Each tile is set a little differently in the ground, according to the settling of the earth.

  • The house is a machine for living in

    Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture
    • architecture
  • Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, 1959–65

    Salk Institute.jpeg

    Via Evgeny Yorobe Photography.

    If you are there at sunset, as are the scientists every day, you see the most magical of transformations: the golden glow that fills the sky to the west is first reflected in the water of the ocean and then shoots like a line of fire up through the gathering darkness of the plaza's stone floor, to reach its source in the cubic fountain. The court is breathtaking in its sublime power, opening at the edge of the continent to the Pacific Ocean and framing the light blue-on-dark-blue horizon line of the sea and sky.

    Louis Kahn, Understanding Architecture
    • architecture
    • light
    • beauty
  • 177 Huntington

    2020-08-29 23.11.39.jpg
    Nick Trombley, Photography archive
    • brutalism
    • architecture
  • (an architectural stem cell that might transform itself into any organ for living)

    Michael Sorkin, 20 Minutes in Manhattan
    • euphony
    • body
    • architecture
    • space

    Referring to the archetypal loft-style apartments of SoHo.

  • In every skyscraper

    In every skyscraper there is someone going mad.

    Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
    1. ​​21. Four-Story Limit​​
    • architecture
    • urbanism
    • madness

    Cities & Signs 2

  • Architectural sequences

    Noted designer and architectural theorist Bernard Tschumi would call the predictable repetition of events inside an architectural space a sequence: a linear series of actions and behaviors that are at least partially determined by the design of the space itself.

    Geoff Manaugh, A Burglar's Guide to the City
    1. ​​Architectural screenplays​​
    • architecture
    • behavior
    • ux
  • Every heist is a counterdesign

    Heists obsess people because of what they reveal about architecture’s peculiar power: the design of new ways of moving through the world. Every heist is thus just a counterdesign—a response to the original architect.

    Geoff Manaugh, A Burglar's Guide to the City
    • crime
    • architecture
  • Every building is infinite

    For the burglar, every building is infinite.

    Geoff Manaugh, A Burglar's Guide to the City
    1. ​​House of Leaves​​
    • architecture
  • What are those borders made of?

    Functionalist modern architecture has prioritized the functionality of interiors and treated surfaces and external appearances as an outcome of that priority. Diagrams illustrating functional layouts generally frame them with thick borders. Updating conventional program theory entails questioning what those thick borders are actually made of, and how they should be designed. A dynamic program theory should be one that turns these thick borders into more organic interfaces that will foster exchanges and interactions.

    Toshiharu Naka, Two Cycles
    • function
    • architecture
  • The weather in the space

    The architect's special preoccupation is first to decide what kinds of spaces shall be enclosed.

    All manner of different considerations will influence an architect's decisions about the shape of the spaces they are to enclose, but the chief of them will always be the probable activities of the people who will enjoy the weather in the space.

    David Pye, The Nature and Aesthetics of Design
    • architecture
    • space

    Not with what structures should be built, but which spaces should be enclosed. This is also the preoccupation of urban planners, and maybe all design professions are ultimately about the shape of space rather than the shaping of matter.

  • Holding together a civilization

    It is only in the present age that it has been asserted that 'architecture is not an art' or 'should not be an art': and that strenuous efforts are made to made a distinction between design and art. And nowadays we build cities of such a quality that no one likes living in them, everyone who can do so gets a motor car to escape from them. Because of the multitude of motor cars, escape is now denied us, the country is destroyed, and the cities become still less tolerable to live in.

    All that is the consequence of contempt for art. Art is not a matter of giving people a little pleasure in their time off. It is in the long run a matter of holding together a civilization.

    David Pye, The Nature and Aesthetics of Design
    • architecture
    • art
    • urbanism
  • What a greenhouse was for

    The new-found ability to make a wall all of glass had advantages, undoubtedly, in certain particular cases, but not in nearly so many as the Bauhaus stylists pretended. It is not forgotten by those who have to work in buildings with these glass walls that their propagators must have known quite well what a greenhouse was for and what it did. That knowledge counted for nothing beside the imperative necessity of showing how new the 'new architecture' was, by doing something obvious different from the fenestrated walls of the styles which had preceded it.

    David Pye, The Nature and Aesthetics of Design
    • architecture
  • The pitched roof

    Eisenman: I would argue that the pitched roof is – as Gaston Bachelard points out – one of the essential characteristics of "houseness". It was the extension of the vertebrate structure which sheltered and enclosed man. Michel Foucault has said that when man began to study man in the 19th century, there was a displacement of man from the center. The representation of the fact that man was no longer the center of the world, no longer the arbiter, and, therefore, no longer controlling artifacts, was reflected in a change from the vertebrate-center type of structure to the center-as-void.

    Christopher Alexander & Peter Eisenman, Contrasting Concepts of Harmony in Architecture
    • architecture
    • home
  • Ideas of a good life

    In essence, what works of design and architecture talk to us about is the kind of life that would most appropriately unfold within and around them. They tell us of certain moods that they seek to encourage and sustain in their inhabitants. While keeping us warm and helping us in mechanical ways, they simultaneously hold out an invitation for us to be specific sorts of people. They speak of visions of happiness.

    To describe a building as beautiful therefore suggests more than a mere aesthetic fondness; it implies an attraction to the particular way of life this structure is promoting through its roof, door handles, window frames, staircase, and furnishings. A feeling of beauty is a sign that we have come upon a material articulation of certain of our ideas of a good life.

    Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness
    • architecture
    • beauty
  • Pure but silent

    Architects build perfectly proportioned kitchens, living rooms and bedrooms in which their clients will make, among other things, a mess. Typographers likewise build perfectly proportioned pages, then distort them on demand. The text takes precedence over the purity of the design, and the typographic texture of the text takes precedence over the absolute proportions of the pure but silent page.

    Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style
    • architecture
    • typography

    Compare to criticisms of modern architecture, specifically Le Corbusier’s programmes. Alexander believes that every room must flex and adapt to the land on which it is build and the room it is to contain. Rigid modularity cannot create living, breathing buildings.

  • I could never live in a house like that

    Mrs. Tanizaki tells a story of when her late husband decided, as he frequently did, to build a new house. The architect arrived and announced with pride, "I've read your In Praise of Shadows, Mr. Tanizaki, and know exactly what you want."

    To which Tanizaki replied, "But no, I could never live in a house like that."

    There is perhaps as much resignation as humor in his answer.

    Jun'ichirō Tanizaki & Thomas J. Harper, In Praise of Shadows
    • architecture
    • home

    From Thomas J. Harper's afterword.

  • Building generations

    How did the builders of Salisbury Cathedral achieve this astonishing construction? There was no one single architect; the masons had no blueprints. Rather, the gestures with which the building began evolved in principles and were collectively managed over three generations. Each event in building practice became absorbed into the fabric of instructing and regulating the next generation.

    Richard Sennett, The Craftsman
    • architecture

    A pattern language in practice.

  • Relentlessness deformed it

    I am not interested in erecting a building, but in presenting to myself the foundations of all possible buildings. — Ludwig Wittgenstein.

    But in a note of 1940 to himself he wrote that the building "lacks health" or "primordial life".

    In the construction of a house for his sister in the Kundmangasse, Wittgenstein's striving for an ideal perfection rendered the object lifeless. Relentlessness deformed it.

    Richard Sennett, The Craftsman
    • architecture
  • The Eiffel Tower

    When the sun had gotten to the angle from which Phidias had taken his perspective, the Parthenon almost seemed to glow.
    Actually, the best time to see that is generally also at four o’clock.
    Doubtless the taverns from which one could see that did better business than the taverns from which one could not, in fact, even though they were all in the same street.
    Unless of course the latter were patronized by people who had lived in Athens long enough to have gotten tired of seeing it.
    Such things can happen. As in the case of Guy de Maupassant, who ate his lunch every day at the Eiffel Tower.
    Well, the point being that this was the only place in Paris from which he did not have to look at it.

    David Markson, Wittgenstein's Mistress
    • architecture
  • When a building has this fire

    And when a building has this fire, then it becomes a part of nature. Like ocean waves, or blades of grass, its parts are governed by the endless play of repetition and variety, created in the presence of the fact that all things pass. This is the quality itself.

    Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building
    • beauty
    • nature
    • architecture
  • Secreted

    House and home are two evidently different notions: house is a material, spatial and architectural concept, whereas home is a unique setting and product of the act of dwelling itself. Home is charged with subjective meanings, symbols, memories, and images.

    A home is also a set of personal rituals, habits, rhythms, and routines of everyday life. In every sense of the word, home is an extension of its inhabitant. Consequently it can not be an object of design by an architect; it is secreted, as it were, by the actual act of dwelling.

    Robert McCarter & Juhani Pallasmaa, Understanding Architecture
    • home
    • architecture
  • Strength from both mass and form

    IMG_3413.jpeg

    Hoover Dam has the shape of an arch dam, but it is actually a hybrid structure, gathering strength from both mass and form. The dam is often ranked as one of the most exquisite of all engineered structures. It is fitted to its site so well that the gnarly canyon wall looks like an organic growth engulfing the mass of concrete.

    Brian Hayes, Infrastructure: A Guide to the Industrial Landscape
    1. ​​Deep Interlock​​
    2. ​​The Nature of Order​​
    • engineering
    • architecture
    • form
  • Quaker Square Inn

    IMG_3414.jpeg

    The modernist architect Le Corbusier was an admirer of American grain elevators, suggesting that their regularity and modularity could serve as a model for other kinds of buildings. At least one later architect took the suggestion seriously. The Quaker Square Inn in Akron, Ohio, occupies the shell of a former elevator. If you're in town for the night, you can rent a round room in one of the silos.

    Brian Hayes, Infrastructure: A Guide to the Industrial Landscape
    • architecture
    • modernism
    • modularity
    • building
    • farming
  • An emblem of friendship

    Bridges make connections; they bring people together—a role that has made them a traditional emblem of friendship. Consider the town of Mostar in Bosnia-Herzegovina. When fighting between ethnic factions broke out there in the 1990s, nothing symbolized the social disintegration more clearly than the destruction of a sixteenth-century stone-arch bridge that had linked the two parts of the town on opposite banks of the Neretva River. And the emblem of efforts to heal the divisions is a rebuilt bridge, opened with fireworks and fanfare in July of 2004.

    Brian Hayes, Infrastructure: A Guide to the Industrial Landscape
    • metaphor
    • architecture
    • engineering
  • Buttresses

    Buttresses, Ruskin writes, are structures against pressure: a cathedral’s walls want to fall outward, for example, pushed aside by the relentless weight of the roof. But this gravitational pressure can be stabilized by an exoskeleton: a sequence of buttresses that will prevent those walls from collapsing outward.

    However, Ruskin points out, there is a similar kind of pressure from the waves of the sea. Think of the curved hull of a ship, he writes, which is internally buttressed against the “crushing force” of the ocean around it. It is a kind of inside-out cathedral.

    Geoff Manaugh, BLDGBLOG
    www.bldgblog.com
    • weight
    • architecture

    From The Glacial Gothic, or the Cathedral as an "Avalanche on Pause".

    Also relevant is Manaugh's short story / thought experiment, Buttressed Buttresses.

  • Two types of building production

    There are, loosely speaking, two types of building production. Type A is a type of production which relies on feedback and correction, so that every step allows the elements to be perfected while they are being made. This is not unlike the way a good cook tastes a soup while cooking it, checking it, modifying it, until it tastes just right. Type B is a type of production that is organized by a fixed system of rigidly prefabricated elements, and the sequence of assembly is much more rigidly preprogrammed. This type became commonplace in the 20th century, and is still widely used.

    Christopher Alexander, The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth
    • architecture
  • Melt

    In many late 20th century buildings, the architect focused attention on a few strongly defined elements. Usually, the way the building stood out in its surroundings was very sharp, and intentionally separated from the buildings that surround it.

    Real architecture comes about in a different way. If the architecture is real, there will be thousands of living centers; many of them modest, all of them having direct impact on human beings. In this condition, there is an overall wholeness in the building and the zones nearby, but this quality is not aggressive nor too sharp. It rather creates a condition where the building melts into the town, or street, or garden where it is placed.

    Christopher Alexander, The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth
    • architecture
  • Oneiric topography

    If I were the architect of an oneiric house, I should hesitate between a three-story house and one with four. A three-story house, which is the simplest as regards essential height, has a cellar, a ground floor, and an attic; while a four-story house puts a floor between the ground floor and the attic. One floor more, and our dreams become blurred. In the oneiric house, topoanalysis only knows how to count to three or four.

    Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
    • architecture
    • dreams
  • To the worms and the trees

    We owe it to the fields that our houses will not be the inferiors of the virgin land they have replaced. We owe it to the worms and the trees that the buildings we cover them with will stand as promises of the highest and most intelligent kinds of happiness.

    Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness
    • architecture
  • Architectural mysticism

    In response to their growing sense of insignificance, some architects have tried to regain a sense of power through what can best be described as mysticism. By importing arcane ideas from unrelated disciplines—such as contemporary French literary theory (now outdated) —by developing illegible techniques of representation, and by shrouding their work in inscrutable jargon, designers are creating increasingly smaller realms of communication, in order that they might inhabit a domain in which they possess some degree of control. Nowhere is this crisis more evident than in the most prestigious architecture schools.

    Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk & Jeff Speck, Suburban Nation
    • architecture
  • Space

    tomoyuki-tanaka - 6.jpeg
    Tomoyuki Tanaka, Anatomical Drawings of Staircase Spaces
    • architecture
  • The distance of a whisper.

    Michael Sorkin, Two Hundred Fifty Things an Architect Should Know
    • sound
    • architecture
  • Anatomical Drawings of Staircase Spaces

    A Book by Tomoyuki Tanaka
    1. ​​Shibuya​​
    2. ​​Detail​​
    3. ​​Platforms​​
    4. ​​Spiral​​
    5. ​​Descent​​
    1. ​​Back to the Drawing Board​​
    2. ​​Section-perspective drawing​​
    3. ​​Kengo Kuma's sketches​​
    • architecture
    • drawing
    • transportation
    • art
  • The Timeless Way of Building

    A Book by Christopher Alexander
    www.patternlanguage.com
    1. ​​Mind of no mind​​
    2. ​​The quality without a name​​
    3. ​​An objective matter​​
    4. ​​Bitterness​​
    5. ​​The most precious thing we ever have​​
    1. ​​Some emptiness in us​​
    2. ​​Deliberate acts​​
    3. ​​No kind​​
    4. ​​patternsof.design​​
    5. ​​A Pattern Language​​
    6. ​​Non-architects​​
    7. ​​The Side View #17: Susan Ingham & Chris Andrews​​
    8. ​​The usages of life​​
    • architecture
    • making
    • building
    • urbanism
    • beauty
    • construction
    • zen
  • The Design of Design

    A Book by Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
    www.goodreads.com
    1. ​​Design process models: A summary argument​​
    2. ​​The spiral model​​
    3. ​​A grossly obese set of requirements​​
    4. ​​Requirements proliferation​​
    5. ​​The architectural contracting model​​
    1. ​​Design System as Style Manual With Web Characteristics​​
    • design
    • software
    • architecture
    • making
    • style
  • A Pattern Language

    A Book by Christopher Alexander, Murray Silverstein & Sara Ishikawa
    www.goodreads.com
    1. ​​Its place in the web of nature​​
    2. ​​9. Scattered Work​​
    3. ​​21. Four-Story Limit​​
    4. ​​51. Green Streets​​
    5. ​​53. Main Gateways​​
    1. ​​Deliberate acts​​
    2. ​​patternsof.design​​
    3. ​​125 Best Architecture Books​​
    4. ​​The Timeless Way of Building​​
    5. ​​The design systems between us​​
    6. ​​Collaborative Information Architecture at Scale​​
    • architecture
    • urbanism
    • life
    • construction
  • 20 Minutes in Manhattan

    A Book by Michael Sorkin
    www.goodreads.com
    1. ​​It begins with a trip down the stairs​​
    2. ​​Thoughts on stairs​​
    3. ​​They are something that has been buried​​
    4. ​​(an architectural stem cell that might transform itself into any organ for living)​​
    5. ​​The grid and its difficulties​​
    1. ​​The Mezzanine​​
    2. ​​Psychogeography​​
    3. ​​Tilted Arc​​
    • architecture
    • urbanism
    • cities
    • home
    • walking

    Easily one of the most important books I've come across on issues of our urban environment. Could have been titled A Brief History of the City for its density of ideas.

  • A City Is Not a Tree

    An Essay by Christopher Alexander
    www.patternlanguage.com
    1. ​​Strands of life​​
    2. ​​Impending destruction​​
    3. ​​The right overlap​​
    4. ​​The difficulty of designing complexity​​
    5. ​​Political chains of influence​​
    1. ​​Trees and graphs​​
    2. ​​The dishonest mask of pretended order​​
    3. ​​The problem with trees​​
    4. ​​Both practical and aesthetic concerns​​
    • cities
    • urbanism
    • design
    • architecture
    • math
  • Notes on the Synthesis of Form

    A Book by Christopher Alexander
    www.hup.harvard.edu
    1. ​​I could do better than that​​
    2. ​​This small internal quaver​​
    3. ​​Their wrongness is somehow more immediate​​
    • math
    • design
    • architecture
    • form
    • problems
  • A Place of My Own: The Architecture of Daydreams

    A Book by Michael Pollan
    michaelpollan.com
    1. ​​barnsoutbuildings​​
    2. ​​Here Be Dragons​​
    • architecture
    • nature
    • making
  • The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth

    A Book by Christopher Alexander
    www.goodreads.com
    1. ​​Two generating systems​​
    2. ​​Two types of building production​​
    3. ​​System A​​
    4. ​​System B​​
    5. ​​This has harmed modern society greatly​​
    1. ​​What the prototype tells you​​
    2. ​​On the "Building" of Software and Websites​​
    3. ​​Back to the Drawing Board​​
    4. ​​Reading the landscape​​
    • architecture
    • urbanism
    • beauty
    • construction

    A struggle between two world-systems.

  • Two Cycles

    A Book by Toshiharu Naka
    livingculture.lixil.com
    Positioning Architecture Within Two Cycles

    Gorgeous artwork by Minori Asada.

    1. ​​Among the trees​​
    2. ​​Small economies​​
    3. ​​An extremely closed structure​​
    4. ​​Ecological cycles​​
    5. ​​Doing community​​
    1. ​​Turn them into cycles​​
    • architecture
    • urbanism
    • cycles
    • community
  • BLDGBLOG

    A Blog by Geoff Manaugh
    www.bldgblog.com
    1. ​​A World Where Things Only Almost Meet​​
    2. ​​Buttresses​​
    3. ​​The Gosling Effect​​
    4. ​​Auditory Hallucinations from Offworld Megafarms​​
    1. ​​125 Best Architecture Books​​
    • architecture
    • geography
    • nature
    • science
  • Einmal Ist Keinmal

    An Article by Dan Klyn
    blog.usejournal.com
    1. ​​Jacked in​​
    2. ​​Immer wieder​​
    3. ​​But what if it is?​​
    1. ​​104. Site Repair​​
    2. ​​66. Holy Ground​​
    3. ​​109. Long Thin House​​
    4. ​​135. Tapestry of Light and Dark​​
    5. ​​239. Small Panes​​
    • beauty
    • craft
    • making
    • design
    • architecture
  • Design of Cities

    A Book by Edmund Bacon
    • urbanism
    • architecture
    • cities
  • The Architecture of Happiness

    A Book by Alain de Botton
    www.alaindebotton.com
    1. ​​A few millimeters apart​​
    2. ​​Tragic colors​​
    3. ​​Classical absurdity​​
    4. ​​Ideas of a good life​​
    5. ​​The people we love​​
    • architecture
    • happiness
    • life
  • The Nature of Order

    A Book by Christopher Alexander
    www.natureoforder.com
    1. ​​Levels of Scale​​
    2. ​​Strong Centers​​
    3. ​​Boundaries​​
    4. ​​Alternating Repetition​​
    5. ​​Positive Space​​
    1. ​​Strength from both mass and form​​
    • architecture
    • urbanism
    • goodness
    • beauty
  • Two Hundred Fifty Things an Architect Should Know

    An Essay by Michael Sorkin
    www.readingdesign.org
    1. ​​The distance of a whisper.​​
    2. ​​Corners​​
    3. ​​Want, need, afford​​
    4. ​​What the brick really wants.​​
    5. ​​Borders​​
    1. ​​136 things every web developer should know before they burn out and turn to landscape painting or nude modelling​​
    • architecture
    • design
    • collections
  • A Burglar's Guide to the City

    A Book by Geoff Manaugh
    burglarsguide.com
    1. ​​To commune with the space​​
    2. ​​Every building is infinite​​
    3. ​​Putting the streets to use​​
    4. ​​Topology by other means​​
    5. ​​Burglary's White Whale​​
    1. ​​Picking locks with audio technology​​
    2. ​​The axis of movement​​
    3. ​​Learning to walk through walls​​
    • architecture
    • cities
    • urbanism
    • crime
    • theft
  • How Buildings Learn

    A Book by Stewart Brand
    1. ​​Shearing layers of change​​
    1. ​​State of the Windows​​
    2. ​​The modern infrastructural ideal​​
    3. ​​The Metabolist philosophy​​
    • time
    • architecture
    • building
    • change
  • How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster?

    A Documentary by Norman Foster
    www.imdb.com

    The film traces the rise of one of the world's premier architects, Norman Foster, and his unending quest to improve the quality of life through design.

    1. ​​Beijing airport ceiling​​
    • architecture
    • urbanism
  • Understanding Architecture

    A Book by Robert McCarter & Juhani Pallasmaa
    www.phaidon.com
    1. ​​We have turned our faces towards the future​​
    2. ​​Fragments of time​​
    3. ​​A timeless space​​
    4. ​​Theatre Epidaurus, Greece, 330 BC​​
    5. ​​The secret life of sculpture​​
    1. ​​Fragments of time​​
    • architecture
    • history
    • cities
  • Sonic architecture

    An Article by Daisy Alioto
    dirt.substack.com

    Brian Eno is well-represented in iOS. His other apps like Bloom, Trope and Air invite listeners to touch the screen to make their own composition. Reflection ($30.99) is different, there is no interaction for the listener. The interface has three buttons: a pause button, a sleep timer, and AirPlay. Reflection produces endless permutations of Eno’s 2017 album, an hour and five minute long title track.

    “Just calling it an app is akin to saying Falling Water is just a building,” writes one app store reviewer. “I would not call this an app,” agrees another, “Between the music and visuals it’s more like sonic architecture.” The visuals consist of slowly morphing rectangles that only seem to change in the split second you look away from the screen.

    • architecture
    • sound
    • music
  • The problem with ornament

    An Article
    www.architectural-review.com

    Contemporary architects are, however, increasingly engaging with ornamentation. The zenith was Grayson Perry and Charles Holland of FAT’s fairytale House for Essex (p64), but it does not serve as an indicator because the involvement of an artist has allowed an enhanced engagement with ornament until it surpasses mere decoration and becomes embodied in the architecture in a way that architects do not allow themselves to do. Think of FAT’s old work: the ornament is all contained within a surface - a facade - which allowed them to separate out the (Modernist) architecture from the (kitsch) superficiality of the elevation. Like Venturi before them, their ornament allowed them to have their ornamentally iced cake - and eat the Minimal Modernist sponge underneath.

    1. ​​It passes by the river​​
    • ornament
    • architecture
    • art
  • revisiting architectural blogging

    An Article by Alan Jacobs
    blog.ayjay.org
    Image from blog.ayjay.org on 2022-03-07 at 8.41.25 PM.jpeg

    I have appropriated from Brian Eno and others the distinction between architecture and gardening, and have described my blog as a kind of garden. But lately I’ve been revisiting the architecture/gardening distinction and I have come to think that there is something architectural about writing a blog, or can be – but not in the sense of a typical architectural project, which is designed in advanced and built to specifications. Rather, writing a blog over a period of years is something like building the Watts Towers.

    Simon Rodi didn’t have a plan, didn’t even have a purpose: he just started building. His work was sustained and extended by bricolage, the acquisition and deployment of found objects – and not just any objects, but objects that the world had discarded as useless, as filth. You put something in here, then something else, you discover, fits there … over time you get something big and with a discernible shape. Not the regular shape envisioned in architectural drawings, but nevertheless something that can be pleasing or at least interesting to look at – an organic and irregular shape. A geometry of irregular forms.

    • architecture
    • blogging
    • gardens
  • In praise of pastiche

    An Essay by Samuel Hughes
    www.worksinprogress.co

    So: it is perfectly true that contemporary traditional architecture tends to be structurally dishonest. But traditional architecture has always tended to be structurally dishonest. So if this is what makes contemporary traditional architecture pastiche, then most traditional architecture has been pastiche since the faux timbering of the Parthenon. Contemporary traditional architects have most of the great builders of our history as their companions in guilt.

    • architecture
    • tradition
    • material
  • Against the survival of the prettiest

    An Essay by Samuel Hughes
    www.worksinprogress.co

    What has emerged here is that although survivorship bias probably does contribute to that to some extent, it is not the main explanation: premodern buildings may on average have been a bit less beautiful than those that have survived, but they still seem to have been ugly far less often than recent buildings are.

    The survivorship theory sought to explain the apparent rise of ugliness in terms of a bias in the sample of buildings we are observing. There is another kind of bias theory, which seeks to explain it in terms of a bias in the observer, saying for instance that every generation is disposed to find recent buildings uglier than older ones, and that this is why recent buildings seem so to us. This is a complex and interesting idea, which I am not going to assess on this occasion. Suppose, though, that our eyes are to be trusted. If this is so, strange and eerie truths rise before us: that ugly buildings were once rare, that the ‘uglification of the world’ is real and that it is happening all around us.

    • urbanism
    • architecture
    • beauty
  • Bowellism

    A Definition
    en.wikipedia.org
    0DE25C41-1380-48F6-BEA2-200633B32EB3.jpeg

    Lloyd’s Building, London.

    Bowellism is a modern architectural style heavily associated with Richard Rogers. The premise is that the services for the building, such as ducts, sewage pipes and lifts, are located on the exterior to maximise space in the interior.

    • architecture
    • infrastructure
    • waste
  • You Don't Need To Do The Farmhouse Home Aesthetic When You Decorate

    An Article by Kate Wagner
    www.bustle.com
    Image from www.bustle.com on 2021-12-06 at 8.32.15 PM.jpeg

    It took two decades for HGTV and its ilk to streamline the process of creating design hegemony — to perfect the concept of having multiple shows congeal around the same aesthetic rather than let them exist at the whims of their individual hosts, as was more the case in the 2000s. While previous eras of design (think midcentury modernism) were spearheaded by architects, interior designers, and other tastemakers, in the late ’90s, capital-A Architecture lost interest in the home — deconstructivist ideas and new, high-tech forms were better suited to museums and universities — and a coalition of real estate developers, home improvement and furniture stores, and TV decorators stepped in to take their place. The worlds of high culture and popular consumption in residential design have never been more separate, and, in this critic’s opinion, both suffer as a result.

    • culture
    • architecture
  • Weinberg's Law

    A Quote by Gerald Weinberg
    quoteinvestigator.com

    If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.

    • programming
    • making
    • architecture
    • quality
  • The usages of life

    A Fragment by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc
    victorianweb.org

    During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries architects not only paid attention to internal arrangements, but subordinated the designs for the exterior to them. The usages of life dictated the arrangement and the arrangement suggested the form of the building. This was the dominant principle in times of Classical Antiquity and the Middle Ages.

    1. ​​The Timeless Way of Building​​
    2. ​​Form follows function​​
    • architecture
    • function
  • Form follows function

    A Quote by Louis Sullivan
    en.wikipedia.org
    1. ​​205. Structure Follows Social Spaces​​
    2. ​​Classical absurdity​​
    3. ​​The element becomes a sign​​
    4. ​​The requirements of economy​​
    5. ​​Against form follows function​​
    6. ​​The minimum condition​​
    7. ​​Form follows failure​​
    8. ​​The usages of life​​
    • form
    • function
    • design
    • architecture
  • Against form follows function

    An Essay by Andrea Resmini
    andrearesmini.com

    I cannot get past the fact that any *designer* who throws that phrase around matter-of-factly, as in “of course form follows function”, comes out as a complete ignoramus. An ignoramus who's not just repeating an 1896 “law” without any clues as to what it means but who also, most poignantly, demonstrates to possess no knowledge of what has happened in design and architecture since Sullivan and Adler contributed to inventing the high rise building and, by extension, much of the world we live in.

    1. ​​Useless work on useful things​​
    2. ​​Form follows function​​
    3. ​​Form follows failure​​
    • form
    • function
    • architecture
  • Reversible Destiny Lofts, Mitaka

    A Building
    www.rdloftsmitaka.com
    Image from www.rdloftsmitaka.com on 2021-04-30 at 12.18.22 PM.jpeg

    The “Reversible Destiny Lofts Mitaka (In Memory of Helen Keller),” built by architects/artists Shusaku Arakawa and Madeline Gins, are the first residential units designed “not to die.”

    • architecture
    • life
    • health
    • destiny
  • Back to the Drawing Board

    An Article by Nick Jones
    www.the-possible.com
    Image from www.the-possible.com on 2020-09-07 at 11.13.31 AM.jpeg

    The lost art of drawing for engineers and architects.

    1. ​​You can almost tell which software they were designed in​​
    2. ​​Conversational drawing​​
    3. ​​The effort heuristic​​
    4. ​​Tablets have caught up​​
    1. ​​Anatomical Drawings of Staircase Spaces​​
    2. ​​The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth​​
    3. ​​Drawing for parallel design thinking​​
    • architecture
    • drawing
  • Subtilitas

    A Blog
    www.subtilitas.site

    SUBTĪLITĀS (latin; noun f., 3rd):
    fineness of texture, logic, detail; slenderness, exactness, acuteness; sharpness : precision

    1. ​​1/3 House​​
    2. ​​Sprössling​​
    3. ​​OIA Office Building​​
    4. ​​Hospital, Solothurn – Silvia Gmür & Reto Gmür​​
    • architecture
    • geometry
    • texture
    • details

    An architectural blog showcasing mostly modernist and later residential architecture.

  • After the Fair

    An Artwork
    www.georgkargl.com
    tumblr_f11f2e6a9a8df01e03e944fb9331b804_acf75e23_1280.jpeg

    After the Fair by David Maljkovic. Via hiddenarchitecture.

    After the Fair puts in focus the Yugoslavian Pavilion at the International Vienna Fair and recalls absent images of the pavilion and the absence of an euphoric projection of a happier future which should be built after the recent historic trauma. The exhibition in its archtectonically determined space of the Georg Kargl BOX cannot reconstruct these 'events', however it can bring up questions as a kind of an inventory making.

    1. ​​The tower​​
    • art
    • architecture
  • As inanimate as it was gigantic

    A Fragment by John Ruskin
    blog.ayjay.org

    And among such false means largeness of scale in the dwelling-house was of course one of the easiest and most direct. All persons, however senseless or dull, could appreciate size: it required some exertion of intelligence to enter into the spirit of the quaint carving of the Gothic times, but none to perceive that one heap of stones was higher than another. And therefore, while in the execution and manner of work the Renaissance builders zealously vindicated for themselves the attribute of cold and superior learning, they appealed for such approbation as they needed from the multitude, to the lowest possible standard of taste; and while the older workman lavished his labor on the minute niche and narrow casement, on the doorways no higher than the head, and the contracted angles of the turreted chamber, the Renaissance builder spared such cost and toil in his detail, that he might spend it in bringing larger stones from a distance; and restricted himself to rustication and five orders, that he might load the ground with colossal piers, and raise an ambitious barrenness of architecture, as inanimate as it was gigantic, above the feasts and follies of the powerful or the rich.

    • architecture
    • size
    • scale
  • The Side View #17: Susan Ingham & Chris Andrews

    An Episode
    thesideview.co

    In this episode, we talk about the work of architect, builder, and design theorist Christopher Alexander. Joining us are two of Alexander’s former students, Susan Ingham and Chris Andrews. They talk about their philosophy of architecture and their program, Building Beauty, which offers a post-graduate diploma in architecture based around Alexander's ideas.

    1. ​​The Timeless Way of Building​​
    • architecture
    • beauty
  • The answer to a brief is not necessarily a building

    An Article by Dan Hill
    medium.com

    This brilliantly engaging book may actually be one of the first to describe and discuss what might be architecture’s true value at this pivotal point in our own history: seeing that everything is connected, and artfully hosting that complexity, before constructively plotting routes towards clarity, pinned up on broad civic, ethical foundations.

    So Architects after Architecture, as the title suggests, is not about buildings. Or at least not always, not directly. Buildings are simply one of the ways that this complex yet constructive sensibility might exert itself, but they are certainly not the only way, nor are they always the most potent – as muf’s Liza Fior makes clear here, when she says “the answer to a brief is not necessarily a building.”

    1. ​​The Best Interface is No Interface​​
    • architecture
    • connection

    From a book review for Architects After Architecture: Alternative Pathways for Practice.

  • Innovation in Structural Art

    A Book by Eladio Dieste
    architecture.mit.edu
    Image from architecture.mit.edu on 2020-12-24 at 1.16.56 PM.jpeg

    Dieste's unique and innovative method of design, a melding of architecture and engineering, elevated these often humble buildings to masterworks of art.

    • engineering
    • architecture
  • Cosmic economy

    A Quote by Eladio Dieste
    en.wikipedia.org

    There are deep moral/practical reasons for our search which give form to our work: with the form we create we can adjust to the laws of matter with all reverence, forming a dialogue with reality and its mysteries in essential communion... For architecture to be truly constructed, the materials must be used with profound respect for their essence and possibilities; only thus can 'cosmic economy' be achieved... in agreement with the profound order of the world; only then can have that authority that so astounds us in the great works of the past.

    • material
    • architecture
  • MIT Student Hub

    An Article by Alex Hogrefe
    visualizingarchitecture.com
    Image from visualizingarchitecture.com on 2020-12-08 at 9.48.22 AM.jpeg

    The project is located on the MIT Campus and will be a “Student Hub” containing restaurants, large event spaces, and smaller study spaces.

    • visualization
    • architecture
  • The 99% Invisible City

    A Book by Roman Mars & Kurt Kohlstedt
    99percentinvisible.org
    • urbanism
    • cities
    • design
    • architecture
    • details
  • Follies

    A Definition
    www.britannica.com
    Image from www.britannica.com on 2020-08-25 at 3.36.45 PM.jpeg

    Folly at Hagley Hall, Hereford and Worcester, built by Sanderson Miller, 1749–50

    In architecture, a folly is a costly, generally nonfunctional building that was erected to enhance a natural landscape. Follies first gained popularity in England, and they were particularly in vogue during the 18th and early 19th centuries, when landscape design was dominated by the tenets of Romanticism. Thus, depending on the designer’s or owner’s tastes, a folly might be constructed to resemble a medieval tower, a ruined castle overgrown with vines, or a crumbling Classical temple complete with fallen, eroded columns.

    1. ​​To build a folly​​
    2. ​​Thermal aediculae​​
    3. ​​There it is again​​
    • architecture
    • building
  • Architecture Without Architects

    A Gallery by Bernard Rudofsky
    en.wikipedia.org

    Both a book and a MoMA exhibition of the same name by Bernard Rudofsky originally published in 1964. It provides a demonstration of the artistic, functional, and cultural richness of vernacular architecture.

    In 200 enlarged black-and-white-photographs, he showed various kinds of architectures, landscapes, and people living with or within architectures. Shown without texts or explanations, the visitors were just confronted with imagery that showed indigenous building traditions, which were very much at odds with the ideas of architectural modernism which had been promoted through NYC MoMA's Philip Johnson in his famous 1932 exhibition "Modern Architecture. International Exhibition".

    1. ​​Non-architects​​
    2. ​​The tacit wisdom of the body​​
    • architecture
  • Architectural tracings

    A Gallery by Nick Trombley
    1. ​​Newtonville Home​​
    2. ​​Symphony Hall​​
    3. ​​Boston Children's Museum​​
    4. ​​Metropolitan Storage Warehouse​​
    5. ​​Boston City Hall​​
    • drawing
    • architecture
  • New Urbanism and Beyond: Designing Cities for the Future

    A Book by Tigran Haas
    books.google.com
    1. ​​New-urbanist projects​​
    • urbanism
    • cities
    • architecture
  • Reading Design

    A Website
    www.readingdesign.org

    Reading Design is an online archive of critical writing about design. The idea is to embrace the whole of design, from architecture and urbanism to product, fashion, graphics and beyond. The texts featured here date from the nineteenth century right up to the present moment but each one contains something which remains relevant, surprising or interesting to us today.

    1. ​​What this site is​​
    • design
    • architecture
    • urbanism
    • graphics
    • fashion
  • ArchDaily

    A Website
    www.archdaily.com

    We began as a platform to collect and spread the most important information for architects seeking to build a better world. Today, we are an ever-evolving tool for anybody who has a passion and determination to shape the world around them, including the 13.6 million readers that visit ArchDaily every month.

    1. ​​125 Best Architecture Books​​
    • architecture
  • Walking through doorways causes forgetting

    A Research Paper
    news.nd.edu

    Entering or exiting through a doorway serves as an ‘event boundary’ in the mind, which separates episodes of activity and files them away. Recalling the decision or activity that was made in a different room is difficult because it has been compartmentalized.

    1. ​​112. Entrance Transition​​
    • memory
    • architecture
    • walking
    • exits
    • doors

See also:
  1. urbanism
  2. design
  3. beauty
  4. cities
  5. making
  6. art
  7. nature
  8. building
  9. home
  10. space
  11. details
  12. function
  13. form
  14. engineering
  15. life
  16. construction
  17. drawing
  18. modularity
  19. light
  20. modernism
  21. sound
  22. math
  23. science
  24. happiness
  25. style
  26. history
  27. walking
  28. crime
  29. ux
  30. time
  31. euphony
  32. geometry
  33. material
  34. tradition
  35. madness
  36. typography
  37. melancholy
  38. darkness
  39. farming
  40. metaphor
  41. weight
  42. dreams
  43. transportation
  44. geography
  45. craft
  46. problems
  47. software
  48. goodness
  49. zen
  50. cycles
  51. community
  52. collections
  53. graphics
  54. fashion
  55. memory
  56. exits
  57. doors
  58. theft
  59. behavior
  60. change
  61. body
  62. brutalism
  63. symbols
  64. ideas
  65. novelty
  66. maps
  67. reality
  68. senses
  69. images
  70. advertising
  71. psychology
  72. water
  73. patterns
  74. texture
  75. visualization
  76. critique
  77. connection
  78. size
  79. scale
  80. health
  81. destiny
  82. work
  83. absurdity
  84. sculpture
  85. programming
  86. quality
  87. culture
  88. infrastructure
  89. waste
  90. death
  91. www
  92. blogging
  93. gardens
  94. ornament
  95. music
  1. Christopher Alexander
  2. Juhani Pallasmaa
  3. Geoff Manaugh
  4. Michael Sorkin
  5. Alain de Botton
  6. David Pye
  7. Robert McCarter
  8. Brian Hayes
  9. Richard Sennett
  10. Toshiharu Naka
  11. Smiljan Radić
  12. Tomoyuki Tanaka
  13. Nick Trombley
  14. Jane Jacobs
  15. Roman Mars
  16. Kurt Kohlstedt
  17. Eladio Dieste
  18. Michael Auping
  19. Samuel Hughes
  20. David Markson
  21. Jun'ichirō Tanizaki
  22. Thomas J. Harper
  23. Italo Calvino
  24. Robert Bringhurst
  25. Peter Eisenman
  26. Louis Kahn
  27. Gaston Bachelard
  28. Andres Duany
  29. Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk
  30. Jeff Speck
  31. Murray Silverstein
  32. Sara Ishikawa
  33. Edmund Bacon
  34. Dan Klyn
  35. Tigran Haas
  36. Frederick P. Brooks
  37. Jr.
  38. Stewart Brand
  39. Peter G. Rowe
  40. Le Corbusier
  41. Louis Sullivan
  42. Nick Jones
  43. Bill Mollison
  44. Lisa Heschong
  45. Bernard Rudofsky
  46. Michael Pollan
  47. Norman Foster
  48. Alex Hogrefe
  49. Khoi Vinh
  50. Dan Hill
  51. Mark W. Maier
  52. Eberhardt Rechtin
  53. John Ruskin
  54. Walter Isaacson
  55. Christian Morgenstern
  56. Chuánqí Sun
  57. Akinori Abo
  58. Andrea Resmini
  59. Robert Irwin
  60. Matthew Simms
  61. Okakura Kakuzō
  62. Eugène Viollet-le-Duc
  63. Gerald Weinberg
  64. Kate Wagner
  65. Wesley Aptekar-Cassels
  66. Alan Jacobs
  67. Daisy Alioto