via boursicot:
The 1929 Michigan Theater in Detroit now serves as a car park.
Le Palais Idéal of Ferdinand Cheval, a postman who spent 33 years making palace in Hauterives, France.
Like the surrealists, the lettrists were thoroughly impressed by Cheval’s Palais Idéal. That the Palais had been produced by a postman as a continual, playful, expressive outpouring only added to the attractions of the building’s fantastic appearance. Moreover, it mixed its sources and references with utter indifference to precedent. It was, in Potlatch’s opinion, “the first manifestation of an architecture of disorientation” in the way in which it “‘détournes’ the forms of diverse exotic monuments, and of a stone vegetation.”
-Simon Sadler, The Situationist City
From the Dezeen blog, a pictorial essay on the Steilneset Memorial, dedicated to the men and women who were tortured and executed for being witches in 17th century Norway. Designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, winner of the 2009 Pritzker Prize, it includes an installation by the late American artist Louise Bourgeois.
This building was a design by Henry Hobson Richardson, who was born in Louisiana and spent part of his childhood in New Orleans. He achieved great fame as an architect in the Northeast, most famous for Trinity Church in Boston, and had the fortune to have a style named after him - Richardsonian Romanesque. This Library was originally designed for Saginaw, Michigan, but New Orleans residents wanted a Richardson building so badly that they had this design built after Richardson’s death. It must be the least contextual building ever built in Louisiana, although a wonder, like a pavillon for a World’s Fair from some arctic country.
via archimaps:
The Howard Memorial Library Building, New Orleans
![A six sided university plan recalls the Abbey of Thélème in Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais. Thelema [θέλημα] means will or desire in Greek, and so the motto of this ideal center of learning was “Fais ce que tu voudras” or “Do what you want”. It was supposed to be coeducational, and devoted not only to learning, but the pursuit of pleasure and healthy living. Each side of the hexagon was dedicated to one language’s libraries and learning: Greek, Latin, Hebrew, French, Italian, and Spanish.
via archimaps:
Projected general plan for a university, 1780](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lx0ijmMTcm1qgpvyjo1_1280.jpg)
A six sided university plan recalls the Abbey of Thélème in Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais. Thelema [θέλημα] means will or desire in Greek, and so the motto of this ideal center of learning was “Fais ce que tu voudras” or “Do what you want”. It was supposed to be coeducational, and devoted not only to learning, but the pursuit of pleasure and healthy living. Each side of the hexagon was dedicated to one language’s libraries and learning: Greek, Latin, Hebrew, French, Italian, and Spanish.
via archimaps:
Projected general plan for a university, 1780
![via radarqnet:
Wolkenbügel, “cloud-irons” skyscrapers. Moscow.
El Lissitzky and Mart Stam [Note 1]
In 1923–1925 El Lissitzky proposed and developed the idea of horizontal skyscrapers (Wolkenbügel, “cloud-irons”). A series of eight such structures was intended to mark the major intersections of the Boulevard Ring in Moscow. Each Wolkenbügel was a flat three-story, 180-meter-wide L-shaped slab raised 50 meters above street level. It rested on three pylons (10×16×50 meters each), placed on three different street corners. One pylon extended underground, doubling as the staircase into a proposed subway station; two others provided shelter for ground-level tram stations.
Text: Horizontal skyscraper & Constructivist architecture: ASNOVA and rationalism
Images: Source
*Note 1: Mart Stam appears as an author in this link Horizontal skyscraper](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lhr7p6BnGu1qcx1mko1_400.jpg)
via radarqnet:
Wolkenbügel, “cloud-irons” skyscrapers. Moscow.
El Lissitzky and Mart Stam [Note 1]
In 1923–1925 El Lissitzky proposed and developed the idea of horizontal skyscrapers (Wolkenbügel, “cloud-irons”). A series of eight such structures was intended to mark the major intersections of the Boulevard Ring in Moscow. Each Wolkenbügel was a flat three-story, 180-meter-wide L-shaped slab raised 50 meters above street level. It rested on three pylons (10×16×50 meters each), placed on three different street corners. One pylon extended underground, doubling as the staircase into a proposed subway station; two others provided shelter for ground-level tram stations.
Text: Horizontal skyscraper & Constructivist architecture: ASNOVA and rationalism
Images: Source
*Note 1: Mart Stam appears as an author in this link Horizontal skyscraper
I’m amazed at the concrete work, how they got the surfaces so smooth that they’re actually reflective.
via marcelodimitrius:
rudy ricciotti architecte: musée jean cocteau
french practice rudy ricciotti architecte has completed the ‘musée jean cocteau’, a museum dedicated to the career of jean cocteau… read more: http://goo.gl/EfA6B(photos by eric duliere and olivier amsellem)
The architecture of Brasilia has always fascinated me, maybe because after the Astrodome, the Houston I grew up in - Space City - never really fulfilled its opportunity to build civic buildings that looked to the future.
via henryandlibby:
oscar niemeyer
