International style (architecture)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The International style was a major architectural style that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s, the formative
decades of Modernist architecture. The term had its origin from the name of a book by Henry-Russell
Hitchcock and Philip Johnson written to record the International Exhibition of Modern Architecture held at
the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1932 which identified, categorized and expanded upon
characteristics common to Modernism across the world. As a result, the focus was more on the stylistic
aspects of Modernism. Hitchcock's and Johnson's aims were to define a style of the time, which would
encapsulate this modern architecture. They identified three different principles: the expression of volume
rather than mass, balance rather than preconceived symmetry and the expulsion of applied ornament. All
the works which were displayed as part of the exhibition were carefully selected, as only works which
strictly followed the set of rules were displayed. [1] Previous uses of the term in the same context can be
attributed to Walter Gropius in Internationale Architektur, and Ludwig Hilberseimer in Internationale neue
Baukunst.[2]

Contents
[hide]

1 Regions

o 1.1 Europe

o 1.2 North America

o 1.3 Tel Aviv

o 1.4 Other countries

2 Criticism of International style

3 International style today

4 Examples

o 4.1 The 1932 MOMA exhibition

o 4.2 Other examples

5 Architects

6 References

7 External links

[edit]Regions

[edit]Europe

This section does not cite any references or sources.

Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may
be challenged and removed. (July 2008)
Around 1900 a number of architects around the world began developing new architectural solutions to
integrate traditional precedents with new social demands and technological possibilities. The work of Victor
Horta and Henry van de Velde in Brussels, Antoni Gaudi in Barcelona, Otto Wagner in Vienna and Charles
Rennie Mackintosh in Glasgow, among many others, can be seen as a common struggle between old and
new.

The International Style as such blossomed in 1920s Western Europe. Researchers find significant
contemporary common ground among the Dutch de Stijl movement, the work of visionary French/Swiss
architect Le Corbusier and various German efforts to industrialize craft traditions, which resulted in the
formation of the Deutscher Werkbund, large civic worker-housing projects in Frankfurt and Stuttgart, and,
most famously, the Bauhaus. The Bauhaus was one of a number of European schools and associations
concerned with reconciling craft tradition and industrial technology.

For more details on this topic, see New Objectivity (architecture).

Villa Savoye, by Le Corbusier

By the 1920s the most important figures in modern architecture had established their reputations. The big
three are commonly recognized as Le Corbusier in France, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter
Gropius in Germany. The common characteristics of the International Style include: a radical simplification
of form, a rejection of ornament, and adoption of glass, steel and concrete as preferred materials. Further,
the transparency of buildings, construction (called the honest expression of structure), and acceptance of
industrialized mass-production techniques contributed to the international style's design philosophy. Finally,
the machine aesthetic, and logical design decisions leading to support building function were used by the
International architect to create buildings reaching beyond historicism.

The ideals of the style are commonly summed up in four slogans: ornament is a crime, truth to
materials, form follows function, and Le Corbusier's description of houses as "machines for living".

In 1927, one of the first and most defining manifestations of the International Style was the  Weissenhof
Estate inStuttgart, built as a component of the exhibition "Die Wohnung," organized by the Deutscher
Werkbund, and overseen by Mies van der Rohe. The fifteen contributing architects included Mies, and
other names most associated with the movement: Peter Behrens, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, J.J.P.
Oud, Mart Stam, and Bruno Taut. The exhibition was enormously popular, with thousands of daily visitors.

The Glass Palace, a celebration of transparency, in Heerlen, Netherlands (1935)

The town of Portolago (now Lakki) in the Greek Dodecanese island of Leros represents some of the most
interesting urban planning from the fascist regime in the Dodecanese; an extraordinary example of city
takeover in the International Style known as Italian Rationalist. The symbolism of the shapes is reflected
with exemplary effectiveness in the buildings of Lakki: the administration building, the metaphysical tower
of the market, the cinema-theatre, the Hotel Roma (now Hotel Leros), the church of San Francisco and the
hospital are fine examples of the style. Many of its ideas and ideals were formalized by the 1928  Congrès
International d'Architecture Moderne.

The residential area of Södra Ängby in western Stockholm, Sweden, blended an international

or functionalist style withgarden city ideals. Encompassing more than 500 buildings, it remains the largest
coherent functionalistic villa area in Sweden and possibly the world, still well-preserved more than a half-
century after its construction 1933–40 and protected as a national cultural heritage.[3]

[edit]North America
The Loews Philadelphia Hotel

Prior to use of the term 'International Style', the same striving towards simplification, honesty and clarity are
identifiable in US architects, notably in the work of Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright in Chicago, as
well as the west-coast residences of Irving Gill. Frank Lloyd Wright's Wasmuth Portfolio influenced the work
of European modernists, and his travels there probably influenced his own work, although he refused to be
categorized with them. In 1922, the competition for the Tribune Tower and its famous second-place entry
by Eliel Saarinen gave a clear indication of what was to come.

The term International Style came from the 1932 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, organized
by Philip Johnson, and from the title of the exhibition catalog for that exhibit, written by Johnson and Henry
Russell Hitchcock. It addressed building from 1922 through 1932. Johnson named, codified, promoted and
subtly re-defined the whole movement by his inclusion of certain architects, and his description of their
motives and values. Many Modernists disliked the term, believing that they had arrived at an approach to
architecture that transcended "style," along with any national or regional or continental identity. The British
architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner commented, "to me what had been achieved in 1914 was the
style of the century. It never occurred to me to look beyond. Here was the one and only style which fitted all
those aspects which mattered, aspects of economics and sociology, of materials and function. It seems
folly to think that anybody would wish to abandon it. [4]

Johnson also defined the modern movement as an aesthetic style, rather than a matter of political
statement. This was a departure from the functionalist principles of some of the original Weissenhof
architects, particularly the Dutch, and especially J.J.P. Oud, with whom Johnson maintained a prickly
correspondence on the topic. The same year that Johnson coined the termInternational Style, saw the
completion of the world's first International Style skyscraper: Philadelphia's PSFS Building. Designed by the
truly "international" team of architects, George Howe and William Lescaze, the PSFS Building has become
an integral element of the Philadelphia skyline.

Research facilities at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, part of the Hanford Site nuclear complex, dating from
the early Cold War

Frank Lloyd Wright's work was considered a formative to the international style, but he was considered not
to have kept up with more recent developments. His work was included in the exhibition, but not the
catalog. This provoked Wright to quip in response to Hitchcock and Johnson "...having a good start, not
only do I fully intend to be the greatest architect who has yet lived, but fully intend to be the greatest
architect who will ever live". His buildings of the 1920s and 1930s clearly changed his style as an architect,
but in a different direction than the International Style.

The gradual rise of the National Socialist regime in Weimar Germany in the 1930s, and the Nazi's rejection
of modern architecture, meant that an entire generation of architects were forced out of Europe.
When Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuerfled Germany, they both arrived at the Harvard Graduate School
of Design, in an excellent position to extend their influence and promote the Bauhaus as the primary source
of architectural modernism. When Mies fled in 1938, he came to Chicago, founded the  Second School of
Chicago at IIT and solidified his reputation as the prototypical modern architect.

Three of the Toronto-Dominion Centre's five towers (left to right): the Ernst & Young Tower, the Toronto-Dominion Bank
Tower, and the Royal Trust Tower.

After World War II, the International Style matured, HOK and SOM perfected the corporate practice, and it
became the dominant approach for decades. Beginning with the initial technical and formal inventions
of 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments in Chicago its most famous examples include the United Nations
headquarters, the Lever House and the Seagram Building in New York as well as the Toronto-Dominion
Centre in Toronto. Further examples can be found in mid-century institutional buildings throughout North
America and spread from there especially to Europe.

In Canada, this period coincided with a major building boom and few restrictions on massive building
projects. International Style skyscrapers came to dominate many of Canada's major cities,
especially Ottawa, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary,Edmonton, and Toronto. While these glass boxes were at
first unique and interesting, the idea was soon repeated to the point of ubiquity. Architects attempted to put
new twists into such towers, such as the Toronto City Hall. By the 1970s a backlash was under way against
modernism, and Canada was one of its centres — prominent anti-modernists such as  Jane
Jacobsand George Baird were based in Toronto.
The typical International Style high-rise usually consists of the following:

1. Square or rectangular footprint

2. Simple cubic "extruded rectangle" form

3. Windows running in broken horizontal rows forming a grid

4. All facade angles are 90 degrees.

[edit]Tel Aviv
In July 2003, UNESCO proclaimed the White City of Tel Aviv a World Heritage Site, describing the city as
"a synthesis of outstanding significance of the various trends of the Modern Movement in architecture and
town planning in the early part of the 20th century". [5]

Tel Aviv was founded in 1909 by European Jewish settlers, who erected the first buildings on sand dunes
outside the inhabited ancient Arab town of Jaffa.[6] A large proportion of the buildings built in the
International Style can be found in the area planned by Patrick Geddes, north of Tel Aviv's main historical
commercial center. Geddes laid out the streets and decided on block size and utilization. His plan was to
create a garden city.[7] He did not prescribe an architectural style for the buildings in the new city. The
impetus for large-scale construction in the new style came from the rapid influx of European Jewish
immigrants (who grew in numbers from about 2,000 in 1914 to about 150,000 in 1937). [8] In the 1930s, new
architects and architectural ideas were to converge on Tel Aviv to satisfy a burgeoning, relatively
prosperous population with European tastes.

Esther Theater, now the Cinema Hotel, by architect Jehuda Magidovitch[9]

By 1933 many Jewish architects of the German Bauhaus school, which was closed down on the orders of
the Nazi Party, fled to the British Mandate of Palestine. [10] The residential and public buildings were
designed by these architects, who took advantage of the absence of established architectural conventions
to put the principles of modern architecture into practice. The Bauhaus principles, with their emphasis on
functionality and inexpensive building materials, were perceived as ideal in Tel Aviv. The architects fleeing
Europe combined their Bauhaus ideas with the architectural ideals of Le Corbusier. Among notable
architects were Erich Mendelsohn, who belonged to the Expressionist school and who was active in Tel
Aviv and Jerusalem in the 1930s, Carl Rubin, an architect originally from Mendelsohn's office., [11] and Arieh
Sharon, who made important contributions in the International style. [12]
In 1984, in celebration of Tel Aviv's 75th year, [13] an exhibition was held at the Tel Aviv Museum of
Art entitled White City, International Style Architecture in Israel, Portrait of an Era. In 1994, a conference
took place at the UNESCO headquarters, entitled World Conference on the International Style in
Architecture. In 1996, Tel Aviv's White City was listed as a World Monuments Fund endangered site.[14] In
2003, UNESCO named Tel Aviv a World Heritage Site for its treasure of modern architecture. [5]

[edit]Other countries
This section does not cite any references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may
be challenged and removed. (February 2010)

One of the strengths of the International Style was that the design solutions were indifferent to location,
site, and climate. This was one of the reasons it was called 'international'; the style made no reference to
local history or national vernacular. (Later this was identified as one of the style's primary weaknesses.)

American anti-Communist politics after the war and Philip Johnson's influential rejection
of functionalism have tended to mask the fact that many of the important contributors to the original
Weissenhof project fled to the east. This group also tended to be far more concerned with
functionalism. Bruno Taut, Mart Stam, the second Bauhaus director Hannes Meyer, Ernst May and other
important figures of the International Style went to the Soviet Union in 1930 to undertake huge, ambitious,
idealistic urban planning projects, building entire cities from scratch. This Soviet effort was doomed to
failure, and these architects became stateless persons in 1936 when Stalin ordered them out of the country
and Hitler would not allow them back into Germany.

In the late 1930s this group and their students were dispersed
to Turkey, France, Mexico, Venezuela, Kenya and India, adding up to a truly international influence. In
India, Geocentric Construction and Architect, an ISO firm, has played a vital role in different types of
architectural work.

In 2000, UNESCO, proclaimed Ciudad Universitaria de Caracas in Caracas, Venezuela, as a World

Heritage Site, describing it as "a masterpiece of modern city planning, architecture and art, created by the
Venezuelan architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva and a group of distinguished avant-garde artists" being the
only university campus designed in the 20th century that has received such recognition by UNESCO.

Also the UNESCO proclaimed in June 2007 Ciudad Universitaria of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de
Mexico (UNAM), in Mexico City, a World Heritage Site due to its relevance and contribution in terms of
international style movement (as well as cultural - alma mater of 3 Nobel Prizes and most Mexican
presidents). It was designed in the late 1940s and built in the mid 1950s based upon a masterplan created
by a then student, later draughtsman of Le Corbusier, now very recognized architect:Teodoro Gonzalez de
Leon. His original and visionary idea was enriched by other students, teachers, and diverse professionals
of several disciplines. In the place there can be seen mural paintings by Diego Rivera, Juan O'Gorman, etc.
as well as Olympic Stadium (1968). Also in his first years of practice, Pritzker Prize winner and remarkable
Mexican architect, Luis Barragan designed upon international style, later evolving to a more traditional local
architecture. Other notable Mexican architects of the international or modern period are Carlos Obregón
Santacilia, Augusto H. Alvarez, Mario Pani, Federico Mariscal, Vladimir Kaspé, Enrique del Moral, Juan
Sordo Madaleno, Max Cetto, among many others.

In Brazil Oscar Niemeyer proposed a more organic and sensual [citation needed] International Style. He designed
the political landmarks (headquarters of the three state powers) of the new, planned capital Brasilia. The
masterplan for the city was proposed by Lucio Costa.

[edit]Criticism of International style

The stark, unornamented appearance of the International style met with contemporaneous criticism and
continues to be criticized today by many. Especially in larger and more public buildings, the style is
commonly subject to disparagement as ugly, [15] inhuman,[16] sterile,[17] and elitist.[18] Such criticism gained
momentum in the latter half of the 20th Century, from academics such as Hugo Kükelhaus to best-selling
American author Tom Wolfe's From Bauhaus to Our House, and contributed to the rise of such counter-
movements as postmodernism. The negative reaction to internationalist modernism has been linked to
public antipathy to development overall.[19][20]

[edit]International style today

Although it was conceived as a movement that transcended style, the International Style was largely
superseded in the era of Postmodern architecture that started in the 1960s. In 2006, Hugh Pearlman, the
architectural critic of The Times, observed that those using the style today are simply "another species of
revivalist," noting the irony.[4]

[edit]Examples

[edit]The 1932 MOMA exhibition

Important buildings in the 1932 MOMA exhibition include:

 Alvar Aalto: Turun Sanomat building, Turku, Finland 1930

 Otto Eisler: Double House, Brno, Czechoslovakia 1926

 Walter Gropius: Bauhaus School, Dessau, Germany 1926

 Walter Gropius: City Employment Office, Dessau, Germany 1928

 Frederick John Kiesler: Film Guild Cinema, New York City, Greenwich
village 1929

 Le Corbusier (Pierre Jeanneret): Stein house, Garches, Near St. Cloud

1928

 Le Corbusier (Pierre Jeanneret): Villa Savoye, Poissy-Sur-Seine 1930

 Le Corbusier (Pierre Jeanneret): Carlos de Beistegui Penthouse, Champs-

Élysées, Paris 1931
  Erich Mendelsohn: Schocken Department Store, Chemnitz, Germany
1928-1930

 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe: Apartment House, Weissenhof Estate,

Stuttgart 1927

 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe : German pavilion at the Barcelona Exposition,
Spain 1929

 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe: Tugendhat House, Brno, Czechoslovakia

1930

 Jacobus Oud: Workers Houses,(Seidlung, Kiefhoek), Hook of Holland

1924-1927

 Karl Schneider: Kunstverein, Humburg, Germany 1930

 Richard Neutra: Lovell House, Los Angeles, California 1929

[edit]Other examples

 E-1027 (1929), Cap Martin, France, by Eileen Gray

 Royal Corinthian Yacht Club (1931), by Joseph Emberton.

 Labworth Café (1932–33), by Ove Arup.

 Glaspaleis (1933), Heerlen (by Frits Peutz)

 Carl Mackley Houses (1933–1934), Philadelphia, by Oscar Stonorov and

Alfred Kastner

 Södra Ängby (1933–1939), Stockholm, Sweden

 Ravelston Garden (1936), Edinburgh, by Neil & Hurd

 Farnsworth House (1945–1951), Illinois, by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

 Old City Hall (1958), Ottawa, by John Bland

 High School of Graphic Communication Arts  (1959) Manhattan, New York

City, by Kelly & Gruzen

 Chemosphere (1960), Los Angeles, by John Lautner

 Place Ville-Marie (1962), Montreal, by I. M. Pei

 Toronto-Dominion Centre (1967), Toronto, by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

 Westmount Square (1967), Montreal, by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

 Place de Ville (1967–1972), Ottawa, by Campeau Corporation

 Hudson's Bay Centre (1974), Toronto, by Crang & Boake

 CNR Building (1975), London, Ontario; demolished 2007

[edit]Architects

 Alvar Aalto

 Luis Barragan
  Welton Becket

 Geoffrey Bazeley

 Roberto Burle Marx

 Joseph Emberton

 Eileen Gray

 Walter Gropius

 Mazharul Islam

 Arne Jacobsen

 Philip Johnson

 Louis Kahn

 Richard Kauffman

 Joseph Klarwein

 Le Corbusier

 William Lescaze

 Erich Mendelsohn

 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

 Richard Neutra

 Oscar Niemeyer

 I.M. Pei

 Frits Peutz

 Ernst Plischke

 Ralph Rapson

 Gerrit Rietveld

 Arseniusz Romanowicz

 Rudolph Schindler

 Arieh Sharon

 Jerzy Sołtan

 Raphael Soriano

 Carlos Raul Villanueva

 Lloyd Wright

 The Architects' Collaborative

International Style
1920-1945
A style of architecture applied to residences and public buildings that is minimalist
in concept, is devoid of regional characteristics, stresses functionalism, and rejects
all nonessential decorative elements; typically this style emphasizes the horizontal
aspects of a building.

Coined by the architect Walter Gropius (1883-1969), Bauhaus combines the root

of the German verb bauen (to build) with haus (house). It is the name given to the
art school founded by Gropius under the original title of the "Staatliches
Bauhaus Weimar." The Bauhaus lasted from 1919-1933. (School building photo)

Bauhaus in the US

Bauhaus principles flourished in America particularly as a result of a highly

successful exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City
entitled International Style: Architecture in 1932 and a book entitled The
International Style-Architecture since 1922 by Henry-Russell Hitchcock (1903-
1987) and Philip Johnson (1906- ).

Outstanding early examples in America of the International style include the

buildings on the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology (1939-1956) in
Chicago, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969). Example: Crown
Hall

Cf, Modern / Modernism

Daylight Factory substyle

Houses

In the decades separating World Wars I and II, Americans tended to prefer period
houses that reflected past traditions, while European architects emphasized
radically new designs that came to be known as International style architecture. Le
Corbusier had stressed the idea of the house as a "machine for living."

During the 1930s these ideas were introduced into the United States by several
distinguished practitioners, like Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe,
Richard Neutra and Marcel Breurer who emigrated to escape the developing
chaos in Europe.

Defining features:

 Simple geometric forms, often rectilinear

 Asymmetrical
 Form characterized by a series of volumes
 Reinforced-concrete and steel construction with a nonstructural skin
 Occasionally, cylindrical surfaces
 Unadorned, smooth wall surfaces, typically of glass,steel, or stucco
painted white
 Complete absence of ornamentation and decoration; often, an entire
blank wall
 Often, a cantilevered upper floor or balcony
 Houses in this style are characterized by open interior spaces and are
commonly asymmetrical
 Commercial buildings are not only symmetrical but appear as a series
of repetitive elements
 Flat roof, without a ledge, eaves, or coping, that terminates at the
plane of the wall
 Large areas of floor-to-ceiling glass or curtain walls of glass
 Metal window frames set flush with the exterior walls, often in
horizontal bands
 Casement windows; sliding windows
 Doorway treatments conspicuously plain, lacking decorative detailing

- Source: "American Architecture: An Illustrated Encyclopedia," Cyril M. Harris,

ed.. Norton & Co., 1998

Furniture

Examples from Buffalo architecture:

 AM&A's Department Store

 M. Wile Factory Daylight Factory substyle

 Larkin Co. Terminal Warehouse Daylight Factory substyle

  Knox Addition, Albright-Knox Art Gallery

Other examples:

 Illustration above: Barcelona Pavilion

 Villa Tugendhat, by Mies van der Rohe - Hofmobileliendepot

Imperial Furniture Collection,Vienna, Austria On display in 2005

 Villa Tugendhat, by Mies van der Rohe  (Great Buildings)

 The Seagram Building, by Mies van der Rohe (Great Buildings)

 The Farnsworth House, by Mies van der Rohe (Great Buildings)

 Philip Johnson's Glass House (Great Buildings)

 Garden Grove Church, by Philip Johnson (Great Buildings)

 United Nations Headquarters, by Le Corbusier (Great Buildings)

 Kaufmann Desert House, by Richard Neutra (Great Buildings)

 The Lovell House, by Richard Neutra (Great Buildings)

Team 10
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Team X" redirects here. For the comic book characters, see Team X (comics)

Team 10, just as often referred to as "Team X", was a group of architects and other invited participants
who assembled starting in July 1953 at the 9th Congress ofC.I.A.M. and created a schism within CIAM by
challenging its doctrinaire approach to urbanism.

The group's first formal meeting under the name of Team 10 took place in  Bagnols-sur-Cèze in 1960; the
last, with only four members present, was in Lisbon in 1981. Team 10's core group consists of the seven
most active and longest-involved participants in the Team 10 discourse, namely Jaap Bakema, Georges
Candilis, Giancarlo De Carlo, Aldo van Eyck, Alison and Peter Smithson and Shadrach Woods. Other
participants and their contributions are of course important, particularly those of José Coderch, Ralph
Erskine, Amâncio Guedes, Rolf Gutmann, Geir Grung, Oskar Hansen, Reima Pietilä, Charles
Polonyi, Brian Richards, Jerzy Soltan, Oswald Mathias Ungers, John Voelcker, and Stefan Wewerka. They
referred to themselves as "a small family group of architects who have sought each other out because each
has found the help of the others necessary to the development and understanding of their own individual
work."[1] Team 10's theoretical framework, disseminated primarily through teaching and publications, had a
profound influence on the development of architectural thought in the second half of the 20th century,
primarily in Europe.

Two different movements emerged from Team 10: the New Brutalism of the English members (Alison and
Peter Smithson) and the Structuralism of the Dutch members (Aldo van Eyck and Jacob Bakema).

"Core family members" included:

 Jacob B. Bakema, The Netherlands

 Aldo van Eyck, The Netherlands

 Alison and Peter Smithson, England

 Georges Candilis, Greece

 Shadrach Woods, USA/France

 Giancarlo De Carlo, Italy

Contents
[hide]

1 History

2 References

3 Selected bibliography

4 External links

[edit]History

This section is missing citations or needs footnotes. Please help add inline

citations to guard against copyright violations and factual inaccuracies. (January 2008)

Team 10's core group [2] started meeting within the context of CIAM, the international platform for modern
architects founded in 1928 and dominated by Le Corbusier andSigfried Giedion. After the war CIAM
became the venue for a new generation of modern architects. As a student, Candilis had already been
taking part in the CIAM meetings since the congress in Athens, 1933, while Bakema and Van Eyck had
been involved in the discussions on the future of modern architecture since the ‘reunion’ congress in
Bridgwater, 1947. Alison and Peter Smithson attended the congress in Hoddesdon in 1951 to hear Le
Corbusier speak, and it was there that they met, among others, Candilis, Bakema and Van Eyck. These
individuals would form part of the core of Team 10 after the dissolution of CIAM, as would Shadrach Woods
and Giancarlo De Carlo.

The younger members who instigated the changes in CIAM formed a much wider group than the later core
of Team 10. After the eighth congress in Hoddesdon, the individual national groups of CIAM set up
‘youngers’ sections, whose members generally took a highly active part in the organization. The intention
was to rejuvenate CIAM, but instead a generation conflict started to dominate the debates, triggering a
lengthy process of handing over the control of the CIAM organization to the younger generation. After the
tenth congress in Dubrovnik in 1956, organized by a representative group from the younger generation
which was nicknamed ‘Team 10’, the revival process of CIAM began to falter, and by 1959 the legendary
organization came to an end at a final congress in Otterlo. An independent Team 10 with a partly changed
composition subsequently started holding its own meetings without declaring a formal new organization.

There is a variety of reasons why Team 10 and its particular core participants emerged from this process.
They certainly belonged to the most combatant, outspoken and eloquent ‘youngers’. They also shared a
profound distrust of the bureaucratic set-up of the old CIAM organization which they refused to continue.
But perhaps more importantly, they were initially part of the most active and dominant CIAM groups,
namely those from the UK, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland, which were run by the second,
so-called middle generation of modern architects. This observation partly explains why there are no
German participants to the Team 10 discourse in the early years; due to the Second World War most of the
first and second generation of modern architects had fled the country to the UK and the USA. This
migration also explains the dominance of the Anglo-Saxon contribution to post-war CIAM, which was quite
different from the pre-war years, when modern architecture was dominated by developments on the
European continent. Especially the English youngers were eager to abandon the CIAM organization and
set up their own platform.

There is no doubt that Team 10 sprang from within CIAM but it is impossible to identify an exact and
singular moment of origin; looking back each Team 10 participant seems to remember a different particular
moment. The chosen period of 1953-81 represents the years of the most intensive interaction between the
core participants. All of them were present in an official capacity for the first time in 1953, at the CIAM
congress in Aix-en-Provence, except for De Carlo who first attended a CIAM meeting in 1955 and who did
not really form part of the core group of Team 10 until after the dissolution of CIAM. The last ‘official’ Team
10 meeting took place in 1977, but in retrospect the core participants identify the demise of Bakema in
1981 as marking the end of Team 10. With the loss of Bakema as a driving force, the ‘magic’ of the
meetings apparently evaporated. At the same time, this was the moment when Van Eyck and the
Smithsons became embroiled in a dispute which damaged their formerly close relationship beyond repair.
Individual Team 10 members continued to meet, but the core of the group had finally disintegrated. Besides
the ambiguous status of the participants and of the group, as well as the time frame, there is a third factor
complicating the reconstruction of the history of Team 10. From the perspective of conventional
historiography, there is scarcely a tangible product or object to research. The individuals within the group
emphatically maintained their autonomous standpoints as demonstrated by the many clashes that arose.
Yet they persisted in calling Team 10 a ‘family’, so expressing their close bond and their mutual trust and
respect.

There was no unequivocal Team 10 theory or school in the traditional sense. There was only one
manifesto, the Doorn Manifesto of 1954, and that had been assembled within the older CIAM organization
before Team 10 came into being. Even this one manifesto was moreover a subject of dispute between the
Dutch and English younger members of CIAM. Mention may be made of two other brief public statements
which were sent into the world in 1961 in the aftermath of the dissolution of CIAM – the ‘Paris Statement’
and ‘The Aim of Team 10’. They stated the new group’s intentions to continue to meet, but can hardly be
called a programme for a new architecture. According to the introductory text of the Team 10 Primer, the
individual members ‘sought each other out, because each has found the help of the others necessary to
the development and understanding of their own individual work’. It could be argued that the only ‘product’
of Team 10 as a group was its meetings, at which the participants put up their projects on the wall, and
exposed themselves to the ruthless analysis and fierce criticism of their peers.

[edit]References

1. ^ Smithson, Alison [ed] Team 10 Primer, The MIT Press, (1968), ISBN 0-

289-79556-7

2. ^ Text by Max Risselada & Dirk van den Heuvel - www.team10online.org

 INTRODUCTION
Looking into the mirror of Team 10
 As to people who are interested in Team 10, Team 10 might ask a few serious questions: ‘Why
do you wish to know?’ ‘What will you do with your knowledge?’ ‘Will it help you regenerate the
language of Modern Architecture so that it would again be worth inheriting?’
 Alison Smithson in: Team 10 Meetings, 1991

The Team 10 story 
Together with the book 'Team 10 - in search of a Utopia of the Present' this website aspires to be the
first attempt to map a comprehensive history of Team 10. At the same time, we have to admit that the
ambition to produce an exhaustive historiography of Team 10 has proven quite beyond our capacities, if
only because the ramified network of Team 10 forced us to make selections. Another, more practical
reason concerns the archives; although the main sources were generously made available for our
investigation, others still await the work needed to make them accessible for study. The most
fundamental reason, however, may be that so much of the history of Team 10 consists of personal
events and encounters of which no direct trace remains and which survive only in the stories that make
up much of the myth of Team 10.
This myth is one of the most attractive aspects of Team 10, yet at the same time the greatest obstacle in
writing a history of the group of architects. One of our first objectives has therefore been to probe this
myth and place the stories in a new perspective, so that forgotten connections appear and new
interpretations become possible. The book falls for this purpose into three parts. The first contains a
vast chronological review of the group’s meetings and other significant events. An extensive selection of
project designs is used to paint a picture of the group dynamic, of the shifts in position and of the
tensions between the intellectual discourse and the design practice. Secondly, new, contemporary
interpretations are proffered in a series of essays, each giving a closer examination of certain questions
of Team 10 history. Finally, the book concludes with a series of conversations with a number of Team
10 participants, held in the early 1990s, in which they reflect on their own past experiences.

Reconstructing a history of Team 10 is not an easy matter. The group’s history challenges conventional
historiography, as well as the more specific historiography of modern architecture. To draw a straight
line from a clear beginning to a clear end is impossible. The picture is more like the ‘Play Brubeck’
ideogram drawn by Peter Smithson, which shows a collection of points in time and space without any
obvious hierarchy, connected by a multitude of intersecting lines. There are several reasons behind this
complex web of overlapping stories, including the unclear character of the group, the almost equally
unclear time frame of the group’s activities and the question of the actual results of the group’s
meetings.

Team 10 was a loosely organized band of individuals. The composition of the group varied through the
years. Such things as ‘membership’ or a ‘movement’ had no formal existence and the question of who
was to be invited to each meeting invariably led to discussion and sometimes heated arguments. There
was arguably an ‘inner circle’ as opposed to ‘invited participants’, but it is often hard to distinguish
definitely between them.
For this first attempt at a history, we have chosen to concentrate especially on the core group of the
seven most active and longest-involved participants in the Team 10 discourse, namely Jaap Bakema,
Georges Candilis, Giancarlo De Carlo, Aldo van Eyck, Alison and Peter Smithson and Shadrach
Woods. Our aim is to bring the protagonists back together again, so to speak. Other participants and
their contributions are of course also represented, particularly since it is so hard to delimitate the group
as such. According to the perspective taken, the historical source and the time under consideration, one
may also include José Coderch, Ralph Erskine, Amancio Guedes, Rolf Gutmann, Geir Grung, Oskar
Hansen, Charles Polonyi, Brian Richards, Jerzy Soltan, Oswald Mathias Ungers, John Voelcker and
Stefan Wewerka; but even this list can in no way be considered complete, considering the broad context
of Team 10.

Team 10 at the Free University, Berlin, 1973. From left to right: Peter Smithson, Ungers, Schiedhelm, De Carlo, Van Eyck
and Sia Bakema. Photograph by Jeffrey Scherer. 

The core group – as identified by us – started meeting within the context of CIAM, the international
platform for modern architects founded in 1928 and dominated by Le Corbusier and Sigfried Giedion.
After the war CIAM became the venue for a new generation of modern architects. As a student, Candilis
had already been taking part in the CIAM meetings since the congress in Athens, 1933, while Bakema
and Van Eyck had been involved in the discussions on the future of modern architecture since the
‘reunion’ congress in Bridgwater, 1947. Alison and Peter Smithson attended the congress in Hoddesdon
in 1951 to hear Le Corbusier speak, and it was there that they met, among others, Candilis, Bakema
and Van Eyck. These individuals would form part of the core of Team 10 after the dissolution of CIAM,
as would Shadrach Woods and Giancarlo De Carlo.

The younger members who instigated the changes in CIAM formed a much wider group than the later
core of Team 10. After the eighth congress in Hoddesdon, the individual national groups of CIAM set up
‘youngers’ sections, whose members generally took a highly active part in the organization. The
intention was to rejuvenate CIAM, but instead a generation conflict started to dominate the debates,
triggering a lengthy process of handing over the control of the CIAM organization to the younger
generation. After the tenth congress in Dubrovnik in 1956, organized by a representative group from the
younger generation which was nicknamed ‘Team 10’, the revival process of CIAM began to falter, and
by 1959 the legendary organization came to an end at a final congress in Otterlo. An independent Team
10 with a partly changed composition subsequently started holding its own meetings without declaring a
formal new organization. 

There is a variety of reasons why Team 10 and its particular core participants emerged from this
process. They certainly belonged to the most combatant, outspoken and eloquent ‘youngers’. They also
shared a profound distrust of the bureaucratic set-up of the old CIAM organization which they refused to
continue. But perhaps more importantly, they were initially part of the most active and dominant CIAM
groups, namely those from the UK, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland, which were run by
the second, so-called middle generation of modern architects. This observation partly explains why
there are no German participants to the Team 10 discourse in the early years; due to the Second World
War most of the first and second generation of modern architects had fled the country to the UK and the
USA. This migration also explains the dominance of the Anglo-Saxon contribution to post-war CIAM,
which was quite different from the pre-war years, when modern architecture was dominated by
developments on the European continent. Especially the English youngers were eager to abandon the
CIAM organization and set up their own platform.

Situating the history of Team 10 in time raises similar problems to those of establishing the group’s
composition. There is no doubt that Team 10 sprang from within CIAM but it is impossible to identify an
exact and singular moment of origin; looking back each Team 10 participant seems to remember a
different particular moment. The chosen period of 1953-81 represents the years of the most intensive
interaction between the core participants. All of them were present in an official capacity for the first time
in 1953, at the CIAM congress in Aix-en-Provence, except for De Carlo who first attended a CIAM
meeting in 1955 and who did not really form part of the core group of Team 10 until after the dissolution
of CIAM. The last ‘official’ Team 10 meeting took place in 1977, but in retrospect the core participants
identify the demise of Bakema in 1981 as marking the end of Team 10. With the loss of Bakema as a
driving force, the ‘magic’ of the meetings apparently evaporated. At the same time, this was the moment
when Van Eyck and the Smithsons became embroiled in a dispute which damaged their formerly close
relationship beyond repair. Individual Team 10 members continued to meet, but the core of the group
had finally disintegrated.
Besides the ambiguous status of the participants and of the group, as well as the time frame, there is a
third factor complicating the reconstruction of the history of Team 10. From the perspective of
conventional historiography, there is scarcely a tangible product or object to research. The individuals
within the group emphatically maintained their autonomous standpoints as demonstrated by the many
clashes that arose. Yet they persisted in calling Team 10 a ‘family’, so expressing their close bond and
their mutual trust and respect.

There was no unequivocal Team 10 theory or school in the traditional sense. There was only one
manifesto, the Doorn Manifesto of 1954, and that had been assembled within the older CIAM
organization before Team 10 came into being. Even this one manifesto was moreover a subject of
dispute between the Dutch and English younger members of CIAM. Mention may be made of two other
brief public statements which were sent into the world in 1961 in the aftermath of the dissolution of
CIAM – the ‘Paris Statement’ and ‘The Aim of Team 10’. They stated the new group’s intentions to
continue to meet, but can hardly be called a programme for a new architecture. According to the
introductory text of the Team 10 Primer, the individual members ‘sought each other out, because each
has found the help of the others necessary to the development and understanding of their own
individual work’. It could be argued that the only ‘product’ of Team 10 as a group was its meetings, at
which the participants put up their projects on the wall, and exposed themselves to the ruthless analysis
and fierce criticism of their peers.

Team 10 today
Besides wishing to do as much justice as possible to the history and its dramatis personae, we are
concerned with contemporary relevance. Fully documenting the history of Team 10 implies, first of all,
broaching the task of exposing the longer, continuous lines of development in the architectural
discourse of the latter half of the twentieth century. The questions that occupied Team 10 are still
relevant today, even if the answers are now often different. Reconstructing the history of Team 10 is
thus an opportunity to present a critical as well as inspirational frame of reference for the issues of
today.

A first connection to today relates to the issues of modernity, of the ongoing process of modernization,
and of how architecture and urbanism deal with these. These issues are, in other words, aspects of the
continual process of change to which our living environment is exposed, the indeterminate character of
new urban programmes, and the need to allow for spontaneous, unpredictable developments. In Team
10's era these processes took the form of the reconstruction of European cities after the Second World
War, the creation of the welfare state and the rise of the consumer society. Today the appreciation and
revitalization of the heritage of that era of reconstruction and the welfare state have become acute
questions, while the consumer society has entered a new phase subsequent to the decline of the
welfare state during the 1970s and the collapse of communism. Among other things this has resulted in
the extensive fragmentation of our collective and public space, as well as the continual restructuring and
renewal of our cities in response to new economic realities.

Team 10 sought, within and parallel to these processes of modernization, concepts and strategies which
would make room for individual and collective identities, which would make places capable of being
appropriated by residents and users. This standpoint went, for Team 10, hand in hand with an alertness
to the specific context of a design task. How to define local and regional qualities, and the potential
integration of these qualities into the design, occupied an important place in Team 10's discussions. An
alertness to the context implied taking a profound interest in the historical and social dimensions of
architecture and urbanism. It led to a fundamental and critical redefinition of modern architecture’s chief
premises. This redefinition amounted to both the continuation and the transformation of the tradition of
modern architecture. It meant taking a different view of the relationship between the individual and the
larger whole; it meant a shift from universal solutions to specific solutions for local situations, and a shift
from an outlook on urban planning driven by technological rationalism to one inspired by society and
culture; and, finally, it meant the advocating of an inclusive and positive European perspective.

This redefinition was a direct product of the confrontation between the concrete design tasks undertaken
by individual Team 10 members, and the idealistic programme of improvement and progress of the
human condition that lay at the core of the modern architectural tradition. Here perhaps lies the second
contemporary relevance of a history of Team 10: in the connection between design and social ideals. It
is a speculative dimension which for Team 10 was simultaneously a self-evident moral obligation. The
link between designing and idealism could be described as the utopian tendency of Team 10. Their
Team 10 Primer describes it as follows: ‘[Team 10 is] Utopian about the present. . . . Their aim is not to
theorize but to build, for only through construction can a Utopia of the present be realized.’

This rather ambivalent attitude towards utopianism was probably partly a reaction to their experiences
during the Second World War and partly to the rational, technocratic course modern architecture and
urbanism were taking in the reconstruction of bombed European cities. Members of Team 10 spoke of
the necessity of a ‘new beginning’, and a ‘responsibility’, a moral imperative ‘towards the individual or
groups [the architect] builds for, and towards the cohesion and convenience of the collective structure to
which they belong’. This was necessary for ‘society’s realization-of-itself’ and for achieving ‘meaningful
groupings of buildings . . . Where each building is a live thing and a natural extension of the others.
Together they will make places where a man can realize what he wishes to be.’ To Team 10 this implied
‘a working-together-technique where each pays attention to the other and to the whole insofar as he is
able’.

Utopia and the present

The myth of Team 10 customarily highlights two moments: the break with CIAM and the rise of
postmodernism in the 1970s. This has widely been taken as a convenient simplification – not only by
those who have preferred to inter Team 10 in the pages of history, but also by a number of protagonists
within Team 10 itself who used this version of the story as a means of inflating the existing differences
of opinion to heroic proportions. This obscured much of the overlaps between the various standpoints
and the continuous lines of development in the discourse. Reinvestigating the various events and
developments, it transpires that a much subtler reading lurks behind the myths of the break with CIAM
and the clash with the postmoderns, a reading in which the standpoints are not purely oppositional.

The focus on the first of these moments – the break with CIAM – neglects the continued development of
the Team 10 discourse after 1962, in particular with regard to Team 10's critique of the welfare state and
the rising consumer society, and to the new issues of resident participation and urban renewal. That on
the second moment – the rise of postmodernism – misuses the history of Team 10 to sell a new
discourse; it disregards the group’s innovations, or misappropriates aspects of the Team 10 discourse
as if they were the exclusive achievements of the postmodern tendency in architecture. These aspects
concern such topics as regionalism, the establishment of a new and more democratic relation between
the resident and the architect, and questions about meaning and identity in architecture; they were
central elements in the post-war discourse of modern architecture, with Team 10 as one of its most
significant catalysts.

The main watershed instigated by postmodernism in its widest sense was that of the end of the grand
récits. In parallel with François Lyotard’s analysis of the postmodern condition, Manfredo Tafuri
deconstructed the claims of the avant garde in modern arts and architecture in his seminal study
Progetto e Utopia). Since then, utopian ideas or belief in necessary progress have been likely to be
received with scepticism if not outright rejection. The consequences of this for architecture have
included an embracing of the idea of autonomy and a ‘sublime uselessness’, instead of a measure of
concern for social issues. This turn in the architectural discourse implied the veiling of the close
interaction between everyday practice and moral questions, and the choices that always have to be
made in this respect.

The resurfacing of the issue of morality and utopian thought in relation to architectural practice is of a
recent date. Among others, it is prepared in the studies of modern architecture by Hilde Heynen and by
Sarah Williams Goldhagen. The latter’s anthology Anxious Modernisms argues that we should try to
identify what she calls ‘the interlocking cultural, political, and social dimensions that together constitute
the foundation of modernism in architecture’. In Heynen’s profound study Architecture and Modernity. A
Critique and her anthology Back from Utopia, the author arrives at a reconceptualization of the utopian
dimension of the Modern Movement. She draws the conclusion that the patent failure of many of
modern architecture’s social claims cannot be taken to mean that all social aspirations are necessarily
outside the realm of architectural practice. To Heynen, the notion of a Utopia still figures as a critical and
energizing factor in the realm of everyday architectural practice. Rem Koolhaas too, the unsurpassed
critic of any positivist inclination in architecture, affirmed the necessary link between architectural
conception and utopian thought in his latest book Content.

One of the very first answers to the dilemmas of postmodern thinking was formulated by Michel
 Foucault in his lecture ‘On Other Spaces’, in which he suggested the notion of a heterotopia as a
parallel to the notion of Utopia. Foucault was all too aware of the repressive dimension that the great
ideologies possessed even when they promised liberation and emancipation. Like Utopia, his
heterotopia is an ‘other’ place; both are similar to the metaphorical space seen in a mirror which allows
us to see our existence with a critical eye. Foucault, probing the mechanisms of power and institutions
of discipline, recognized this ‘other space’ in prisons, mental hospitals and schools.

Team 10 found their own ‘other spaces’ in everyday situations such as street life in working-class
neighbourhoods and the world of children at play. As such this everydayness was not regarded as
something idyllic or innocent. Firstly, it was the locus of a different morality, and secondly, it became the
locus of a political and social struggle, a contestation of values. Team 10's interest in the street scene
and in children’s games was paralleled by an attentiveness to developments in the arts, notably Cobra
and the Independent Group, which displayed a similarly alternative or critical stance towards
modernization and modernity. The group’s fascination with supposedly spontaneous non-Western
lifestyles such as that of the Dogon people or of the impoverished bidonvilles of North Africa should also
not go unmentioned. This perspective inspired Team 10 to the indefatigable critique with which they
enlivened the architectural discourse. As architects, they attempted to forge a connection between these
‘other spaces’ and their own situation, in a quest for a ‘Utopia of the present’ as they called it – even
when this meant risking failure and putting their own standpoints and convictions on the line.

It is this ‘other’ perspective that makes the ambivalent connection between the Utopia of the present and
the construction of the present into a rewarding entry point to the history of Team 10. Now that Team 10
is indeed history, Team 10 itself might act as a heterotopian mirror – one whose provocative and
inspirational power we believe is undiminished, inviting or even compelling us today to become
personally involved and to be prepared to explain our own position.
 Dirk van den Heuvel and Max Risselada


In 1974 Team 10 gathered in Aldo van Eycks garden in Loenen aan de Vecht. 
Click on the image for an enlargement

Introduction
Team 10 didn't have any form of regular membership, and over the years the composition of the group changed
continuously. Van Eyck would say there were only participants, not members. Still, looking at the group's history
it is possible to recognize a core of people who were the most active, combatant and outspoken. They can be
called the 'inner circle' of Team 10, and they involve Shadrach Woods, Alison and Peter Smithson, Aldo van
Eyck, Giancarlo De Carlo, Georges Candilis and Jaap Bakema. They would organize the meetings, define the
themes to be discussed, or initiate publications on Team 10. Apart from De Carlo they were involved in Team 10
right from its very beginning, and they would maintain close contacts during the 1970s, also after the dissolution
of Team 10, even well into the 1990s. 
Around this inner circle there is a cloud of numerous other participants. Some of these participants would
consider themselves ‘real’ Team 10 members, yet others might be surprised to find themselves on the list which
we present here. We split this group of participants into two circles. Even though we acknowledge this split is to
some degree arbitrary, we do think it is justifiable to differentiate in levels of involvement in the Team 10
discourse. The first group of participants consists of people who were involved over a longer period of time, or
made an important contribution; the second, larger group of incidental participants and invited guests consists of
people who were only briefly involved, sometimes they would have attended only one meeting. We should
mention, too, that we left out many other people present at the meetings; they would be office employees, or
students joining an occasional meeting, or family members such as the wives and children of Team 10
participants.
This list of Team 10 members, or participants, may be read parallel to the list of meetings, which maps the
changing composition of the group.

The gathered data are based on a comparative study of source material. Given that documentation of the various
Team 10 meetings is far from complete and unequivocal, a certain amount of prudence has been called for in the
presentation of this list.

The most important Team 10 documents consulted while compiling the data are kept in the Bakema archive and
the Smithsons archive at the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi) in Rotterdam; and in the De Carlo archive at
the University of Venice (IUAV). John Voelcker’s archive, maintained by his family, provided additional
information on the early years. Extra data on activities in the 1970s came largely from the archive of Manfred
Schiedhelm. Owing to the dissolution of Candilis-Josic-Woods and the premature death of Shadrach Woods, the
firm’s files have been dispersed and, even more unfortunately, have partly disappeared. The Woods archive,
previously maintained by Val Woods, has found a permanent home at Columbia University. To date, however, no
material on Team 10 meetings organized by Candilis-Josic-Woods has been discovered; commentary on these
meetings is based on articles published in magazines (such as Le Carré Bleu) and on relevant photographs
culled from other archives. An exception is the meeting in Royaumont; transcriptions of tape recordings made at
this meeting are at the NAi.

Generally speaking, we reconstructed the data with the use of photos, letters, invitations, and such. Other
material consisted of lists of those invited (often inconsistent), published presentations, and diverse articles
published after meetings had taken place. We are also grateful for the use of material from previous studies of
CIAM and Team 10 carried out by a number of colleagues; deserving of special mention are Jos Bosman, Eric
Mumford, Annie Pedret and Francis Strauven.
The biographies are based on texts by Dirk van den Heuvel, Veronique Patteeuw, Tom Avermaete, Catherine
Blain, Jos Bosman and Cor Wagenaar.

the inner circle

 Jaap Bakema
 Georges Candilis
 Giancarlo De Carlo
 Aldo van Eyck
 Alison and Peter Smithson
 Shadrach Woods

Participants

 José Coderch
 Ralph Erskine
 Daniel van Ginkel and Blanche Lemco-van Ginkel
 Amancio Guedes
 Rolf Gutmann
 Oskar Hansen
 Herman Hertzberger
 Alexis Josic
 Guillermo Jullian de la Fuente
 Reima Pietilä
 Charles Polonyi
 Brian Richards
 Manfred Schiedhelm
 André Schimmerling
 Jerzy Soltan
 Oswald Mathias Ungers
 John Voelcker
 Stefan Wewerka

Incidental participants and guests

 Christopher Alexander
 Roger Aujame
 Aulis Blomstedt
 Juan Busquets
 Federico Correa
 Christopher Dean
 Balkrishna Vithaldas Doshi
 Ignazio Gardella
 Geir Grung
 Arthur Glikson
 Herman Haan
 Hans Hollein
 Hans Hovens Greve
 Bill and Gill Howell
 Charles Jencks
 Kisho (Nurioka) Kurokawa
 Henri Liu
 Fumihiko Maki
 Theo Manz
 Louis Miquel
 Jean Prouvé
 Joseph Rykwert
 Charles Tom Stifter
 James Stirling
 Colin StJohn Wilson
 Gino Valle
 Kenzo Tange

Berlin Hauptstadt, competition entry 1957-1958

Alison and Peter Smithson, with Peter Sigmond

txt
Alison and Peter Smithson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Robin Hood Gardens housing complex, Poplar, East London, completed 1972

English architects Alison Smithson (22 June 1928 – 16 August 1993) and Peter Smithson (18

September 1923 – 3 March 2003) together formed an architectural partnership, and are often associated
with the New Brutalism (esp in architectural and urban theory).[1][2]

Peter was born in Stockton-on-Tees in north-east England, and Alison was born in Sheffield, South
Yorkshire. They met while studying architecture at Durham University and married in 1949. Together, they
joined the architecture department of the London County Council before establishing their own partnership
in 1950.

Contents
[hide]

1 Work

2 Built projects

3 Unbuilt proposals

4 Notes
[edit]Work

They first came to prominence with Hunstanton School which used some of the language of high
modernist Ludwig Mies van der Rohe but in a stripped back way, with rough finishes and deliberate lack of
refinement. They are arguably among the leaders of the British school of New Brutalism. They were
associated with Team X and its 1953 revolt against old Congrès International d'Architecture
Moderne (CIAM) philosophies of high modernism.

Among their early contributions were streets in the sky in which traffic and pedestrian circulation were
rigorously separated, a theme popular in the 1960s. They were members of the Independent
Group participating in the 1953 Parallel of Life and Art exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary
Arts and This Is Tomorrow in 1956. Throughout their career they published their work energetically,
including their several unbuilt schemes, giving them a profile, at least among other architects, out of
proportion to their relatively modest output.

His teaching activity included the participation for many years at the ILAUD workshops together with fellow
architect Giancarlo De Carlo.

[edit]Built projects

Garden building, St Hilda's College, Oxford (1968)

Their built projects include:

 Smithdon High School, Hunstanton, Norfolk (1949–1954; a Grade II* listed

building)

 The House of the Future exhibition (at the 1956 Ideal Home Show)

 Sugden House, Watford

 The Economist Building, Piccadilly, London (1959–1965)

 Garden building, St Hilda's College, Oxford (1968)

 Private house extension for Lord Kennet, Bayswater, London, 1968

  Robin Hood Gardens housing complex, Poplar, East London (1969–1972)

 Buildings at the University of Bath, including the School of Architecture

and Building Engineering (1988)

 The last project the Cantilever-Chair Museum of the Bauhaus design

company TECTA in Lauenfoerde / Germany

Unfortunately, Robin Hood Gardens suffered from high costs associated with the system selected and high
levels of crime, all of which undermined the architects' vision of streets in the sky and their architectural
reputation.[3] With the exception of their work at Bath, they designed no further public buildings in Britain,
relying instead mainly on private overseas commissions and Peter Smithson’s writing and teaching (he was
a visiting professor at Bath from 1978 to 1990, and also a unit master at theArchitectural Association
School of Architecture).

[edit]Unbuilt proposals

Their unbuilt schemes Include:

 Coventry Cathedral unsuccessful competition entry, 1951

 Golden Lane Estate unsuccessful competition entry, 1952

 Sheffield University, unsuccessful competition entry

 British Embassy, Brasília, Competition winning design, unbuilt due to

financial constraints, 1961

ALISON + PETER SMITHSON

Architects (1928-1993

Not only were ALISON AND PETER SMITHSON (1928-1993 and 1923-2003) among the most influential and
controversial British architects of the mid-20th century, thanks to such landmarks as the Economist Building
and the Robin Hood Gardens housing complex, they also played an important part in the fledgling British pop
art movement.

When Peter Smithson died aged 79 in March 2003, The Times devoted a page of readers’ letters commenting on

the buildings he had designed with his wife Alison. They ranged from glowing tributes to this “brilliant pair” and
Alison and Peter Smithson
affectionate anecdotes from friends to a scathing critique of their first public building, the prize-winning

Hunstanton School in Norfolk, which one man, who had taught there for 37 years condemned as “more suited

to being a prison than a school.”

This combination of accolades and attacks had accompanied the Smithsons throughout their long career ever

since Hunstanton – known locally as the “glasshouse” – was completed in 1954. Controversial though it was,

Hunstanton established Alison and Peter Smithson as leading lights of post-war British architecture.

All their subsequent projects – from the 1956 House of the Future, the visionary home exhibited at the Daily
Hunstanton Secondary Modern
School, Norfolk, 1949-1954
Architects: Alison + Peter Smithson
Alison and Peter Smithson with Nigel
Henderson and Eduardo Paolozzi in
London, 1956
The House of the Future, 1956
Daily Mail Ideal Home Show, London
Design: Alison + Peter Smithson
The House of the Future - living
room, 1956
Daily Mail Ideal Home Show, London
Design: Alison + Peter Smithson
The House of the Future - view across
living room, 1956
Daily Mail Ideal Home Show, London
Design: Alison + Peter Smithson
Mail Ideal Home Exhibition, and the early 1960s Economist Building, to the early 1970s Robin Hood Gardens
housing complex in east London – were infused with the same crusading zeal to build schools, workplaces
and homes for a progressive, more meritocratic post-war society.
Born in Stockton-on-Tees in 1923, Peter Smithson met Alison Gill, born in Sheffield in 1928, when they
were studying at the school of architecture in Newcastle, then part of Durham University. Peter
had started his studies in 1939, only to enlist in the army in 1942 to serve with Queen Victoria’s Own Madras
Sappers and Miners in India and Burma. After the war, he returned to Newcastle to complete his course and then
enrolled at the Royal Academy in London. He and Alison married in 1949. After winning the competition
to design Hunstanton School, they set up a practice together in South Kensington.
Hunstanton offered a rare opportunity for young, idealistic architects like the Smithsons, both still in their
20s when they won the commission, to realise their vision. Both were uncompromising in their determination to
define a new approach to modernist architecture which, like the pre-war International Style, would exploit the
low cost and pragmatism of mass-produced materials and pre-fabricated components, and the aesthetic
purity of their architectural heroes like Mies Van Der Röhe, but would produce buildings that were specific to
their location and purpose. Precisely elegant with its exposed steel and brick structure, Hunstanton School was
a pure expression of the Smithsons’ ideals.
Those ideals were articulated at a CIAM conference in 1953 when Alison and Peter attacked the decades-old
dogma propounded by Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius that cities should be zoned into specific areas for living,
working, leisure and transport and that urban housing should consist of tall, widely spaced towers.
The Smithsons’ ideal city combined different activities within the same areas and they envisaged modern
housing being built as “streets in the sky” to encourage the residents to feel a sense of “belonging”
and “neighbourliness”.
The Smithsons’ friend, the design theorist Reyner Banham, hailed them in 1955 as the pioneers of
“the new brutalism”, a reference to both their ascetic style and Peter’s student nickname – ‘Brutus’. A fashionabl
Brutus plus Alison”.
Not only did the Smithsons share the same ideals, each was equally ambitious. Peter’s student friends recalled h
greatest architect”. After meeting Alison, neither he nor she saw any reason why she should not share that s
Friends admired their convictions, but the Smithsons’ critics considered them opinionated to the point of obdurate
responsibility of bringing up their three children – Simon, Samantha and Soraya – initially above their office, and
The Smithsons were central figures not only in avant garde architectural circles, but on the broader cultural sce
Banham, the artist Eduardo Paolozzi and photographer Nigel Henderson, they became involved with Independen
of Contemporary Arts, over dinner at the Smithsons’ house, Sunday lunch with the Banhams’ in Primrose Hill and
Paolozzi and Henderson, of the art and architecture exhibitions – Parallel of Art and Life at the ICA and This Is To
influential in the development of the British pop art movement.
The artist Richard Hamilton summed up the pop spirit in a 1957 letter to the Smithsons as “popular, transient, e
glamorous, big business”. At the time, Alison and Peter embraced these values in every aspect of their lives from
DS19 which, when it was unveiled in 1955, was hailed as the apogee of modernity with its plastic rear window
made. She once threw a glass of red wine over the architect James Stirling when he poked fun at one outfit by un
Arguably the purest expression of the Smithsons’ pop ideology was the House of the Future, the visionary ‘mode
Designed, predominantly by Alison, to be a plastic structure which could be mass-produced in its entirety,
 rather than in parts, the house included then-innovative futuristic features, such as a self-cleaning bath,

easy-to-clean corners and remote controls for the television and lighting.

In 1959, the Smithsons were commissioned to design a new headquarters for The Economist magazine

in Piccadilly. Inspired by the narrow lanes and courts of the old City of London, they created an elegantly

spacious pedestrian plaza as a trio of finely detailed towers, each built on a different scale, clad in traditional

Portland stone. The office interiors were based on their lengthy research into the working practices of
The House of the Future - entrance,
The Economist journalists. At the opening the editor Sir Geoffrey Crowther said that the staff had felt
1956
Daily Mail Ideal Home Show, London “trepidation” on first meeting the Smithsons but took “leave of them now with awe and affection”.
Design: Alison + Peter Smithson
The success of The Economist project secured a commission for the new British Embassy in Brasilia.

Alison and Peter produced their design after conducting yet more rigorous research – this time

into how the embassy’s staff worked. One senior diplomat described their scheme as an “embassy of great

beauty and certainly the most efficient embassy building ever conceived”. Unfortunately it fell victim to

government spending cuts and was never built.

In the late 1960s, the Smithsons were given the opportunity to realise their vision of modern housing

The House of the Future - view from by designing an estate of 213 homes at Robin Hood Gardens in Poplar, east London. They conceived it as
patio to kitchen, 1956
Daily Mail Ideal Home Show, London a series of “streets in the sky” mixing single-storey apartments with two-storey maisonettes and including a
Design: Alison + Peter Smithson
wide balcony on every third floor which, they hoped, the residents would use for children’s play and chatting

to neighbours like a traditional street. Sadly Robin Hood Gardens was plagued by structural flaws and a high

crime rate. It was often derided as an example of modernist architectural folly rather than the role model for

progressive social housing that Alison and Peter had hoped.

Its failure dealt lasting damage to their reputation. The couple would only complete one more major public

commission in the UK – five buildings at Bath University in the 1980s. Most of their later architectural work

would be residential projects for private clients such as a folly at Hadspen estate in Somerset for their friend
Economist Plaza, London, 1959-64
Architects: Alison + Peter Smithson Niall Hobhouse, which was based on an unrealised design for a tower in Siena, and the extensions to Hexenhaus
for whom they also designed a small furniture museum.

Uncompromising to the last, the Smithsons continued to propound their ideas in lectures and books. Peter,

in particular, was praised as a devoted and inspiring teacher. For the decade in which he lived and

worked alone after Alison’s death in 1993, he devoted most of his time to lecturing and to analysing their work

in writings.

© Design Museum

Hexenhaus, near Lauenförde,

Germany, 1984 to 2001
Architects: Alison + Peter Smithson
Hexenhaus, near Lauenförde,
Germany, 1984 to 2001
Architects: Alison + Peter Smithson

Hexenhaus, near Lauenförde,

Germany, 1984 to 2001
Architects: Alison + Peter Smithson

Alison & Peter Smithson

1928–1993; 1923–2003
Alison and Peter Smithson brought a fresh and rigorous understanding of modern architecture to the Independent
Group. They briefly worked at that cradle of creativity for young architects at the time, the London County Council,
before establishing their own architectural practice in 1950. This was as a result of winning the competition to design
the groundbreaking Hunstanton School, Norfolk. An essay in Miesian modernity, the School attracted widespread
critical attention when it was completed in 1954. Although the Smithsons did not receive any more prestigious
architectural commissions during the 1950s, they made an impact on the international stage of architecture through
their competition entries such as Golden Lane (1952) and Sheffield University (1953) and their participation in Team 10
from its foundation in 1956.
The Smithsons became in involved with the Independent Group as Peter was teaching at the Central School of Art and
Crafts, London with Eduardo Paolozzi, who introduced them to Nigel Henderson in 1952. The Smithsons, Paolozzi and
Henderson proposed the exhibition, Parallel of Life and Art to the ICA in March 1952 via Dorothy Morland, whom
Paolozzi knew. The proposal was finally accepted in January 1953 with the support of Roland Penrose and sponsorship
from Peter Gregory, Roland Jenkins, Jane Drew and Denys Lasdun. The exhibition was similar to Richard
Hamilton’s Growth and Form in that it spanned science and art and created a total environment with a host of black
and white images taken from a range of art and non-art sources. Curated by Reyner Banham, the show was polemical
and controversial, the images shared an overall crudeness, vulgarity and rawness. This was not beautiful art, but
processed images juxtaposed randomly. The exhibition also had a pedagogic purpose, and when the exhibition finished
at the end of 1953, the panels were moved to the Architectural Association in Bedford Square, London where a stormy
discussion took place on 2 December 1953, chaired by Banham. He referred to the debate in his seminal article ‘New
Brutalism’ which celebrated the work of the Smithsons:
…students at the Architectural Association complained of the deliberate flouting of the traditional concepts of
photographic beauty, of the cult of ugliness and ‘denying the spiritual in Man’. (Architectural Review,December 1955,
p356)
The cover of the exhibition catalogue ofParallel of Life and Art, 1953

Installation shot of the exhibition, Parallel of Life and Art, 1953

It was by means of this exhibition and the creative collaboration with Henderson and Paolozzi that the Smithsons
became involved in the Independent Group. The first, 1952–3 session of the Group had come to an end, and during 1954
the Group contributed more to the public programme at the ICA, including the lecture series  Aesthetic Problems of
Contemporary Art. Lawrence Alloway and John McHale convened the second session of the Independent Group on the
theme of fine art and popular culture. Peter Smithson contributed to the fourth session in April 1955 on Advertising with
Alloway, Paolozzi and McHale. An evening in which the Group focussed on American advertising imagery and
symbolism.
The Independent Group stopped meeting towards the end of 1955, but the creative collaboration which lay behind its
success continued throughout the lifetimes of the erstwhile members. In many ways, the apogee of the Group was the
exhibition This is Tomorrow at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in September and October 1956. The show consisted of
twelve separate spaces, constructed by twelve groups of architect, sculptor and painter. The Smithsons created the  Patio
and Pavilion area with their oldParallel of Life and Art team, Nigel Henderson and Eduardo Paolozzi. It consisted of a
makeshift ‘lean to’ and patio area, strewn with random objects. Collaboration continued beyond  This is Tomorrow, with
Banham authoring a book on New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic? in 1966. The Smithsons continued to work with
Independent Group preoccupations with their design for the ephemeral,  House of the Future for the Ideal Home
exhibition in 1956 their article, ‘But Today We Collect Ads’ in ARK November 1957.
Poster from the This is Tomorrow exhibition

Aldo van Eyck

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Aldo van Eyck or van Eijk (16 March 1918, Driebergen, Utrecht, Netherlands - 14 January 1999) was

an Architect from the Netherlands.

Contents
[hide]

1 Family

2 Early life and career

3 Selected works

4 See also

5 References

[edit]Family

He was a son of Poet, Critic, Essayist and Philosopher Pieter Nicolaas van Eyck or van Eijk and wife Nelly
Estelle Benjamins, a woman of Jewish and Latin origin born and raised in Suriname.[1][2][3]

His brother is Poet, Artist and Art Restorer Robert Floris van Eyck or van Eijk.

[edit]Early life and career

His family moved to Great Britain in 1919 and he was educated at Sidcot School, Somerset 1932–1935
in England during his youth, after which he finished his secondary school in The Hague between 1935 and
1938, and went to study at the ETH Zurich, graduating in 1942, after which he remained in Switzerland until
the end ofWorld War II, where he entered the circle of many other avant-garde artists around  Carola
Giedion-Welcker, wife of historian Sigfried Giedion.

He taught at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture from 1954 to 1959 and he was a professor at

the Delft University of Technology from 1966 to 1984. He also was editor of the architecture
magazine Forum from 1959 to 1963 and in 1967. Aldo van Eyck was one of the most influential
protagonists of the movement Structuralism.

A member of CIAM and then in 1954 a co-founder of "Team 10", Van Eyck lectured throughout Europe and
northern America propounding the need to reject Functionalism and attacking the lack of originality in most
post-war Modernism. Van Eyck's position as co-editor of the Dutch magazine Forum helped publicise the
"Team 10" call for a return to humanism within architectural design.

Van Eyck received the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 1990.

[edit]Selected works

 Design for village of Nagele, Noordoostpolder, 1948–1954

 Housing for the Elderly, Slotermeer, Amsterdam, 1951–1952

 Amsterdam Orphanage, Amsterdam, 1955–1960

 Primary Schools, Nagele, Noordoostpolder, 19??-19??

 Hubertus House, Amsterdam, 1973–1978

 ESA-ESTEC restaurant and conference centre, Noordwijk, 1984–1990

Jane Jacobs
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jane Jacobs
 Born Jane Butzner

May 4, 1916

Scranton, Pennsylvania, USA

Died April 25, 2006 (aged 89)

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Occupation Writer, Urban theorist

Genres Non-fiction

Notable work(s) The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Notable award(s) OC, O.Ont, Vincent Scully Prize,National Building

Museum

Jane Jacobs, OC, O.Ont (May 4, 1916 – April 25, 2006) was an American-born

Canadian writer and activist with primary interest in communities and urban planning and decay. She is
best known for The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), a powerful critique of the urban
renewal policies of the 1950s in the United States. The book has been credited with reaching beyond
planning issues to influence the spirit of the times.

Along with her well-known printed works, Jacobs is equally well-known for organizing  grassroots efforts to
block urban-renewal projects that would have destroyed local neighborhoods. She was instrumental in the
eventual cancellation of the Lower Manhattan Expressway, and after moving to Canada in 1968, equally
influential in canceling the Spadina Expressway and the associated network of highways under
construction.

Contents
[hide]

1 American years

2 Canadian life

3 Legacy

4 Works

o 4.1 The Death and Life of Great American Cities

o 4.2 The Economy of Cities

o 4.3 Cities and the Wealth of Nations

o 4.4 The Question of Separatism: Quebec and the Struggle over Sovereignty

o 4.5 Systems of Survival

o 4.6 The Nature of Economies

o 4.7 Dark Age Ahead

5 Activism in later years

6 Criticism

7 See also

8 References

9 External links

[ edit]American years

Jane Jacobs, then chairperson of a civic group inGreenwich Village, at a press conference in 1961.

Jane Butzner was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the daughter of a doctor and a former teacher and
nurse, who were Protestant in a Catholic town—adherents of a minority religion. After graduating
from Scranton's Central High School, she took an unpaid position as the assistant to the women’s page
editor at the Scranton Tribune. A year later, in the middle of the Great Depression, she left Scranton
for New York City.

During her first several years in the city, Jacobs held a variety of jobs, working mainly as
a stenographer and freelance writer, often writing about working districts in the city. These experiences,
she later said, "… gave me more of a notion of what was going on in the city and what business was like,
what work was like." Her first job was for a trade magazine, first as a secretary, then as an editor. She also
sold articles to the Sunday Herald Tribune. She then became a feature writer for the Office of War
Information. While working there she met an architect named Robert Hyde Jacobs whom she married in
1944. Together they had two sons and a daughter.

She studied at Columbia University's extension school (now the School of General Studies) for two years,
taking courses ingeology, zoology, law, political science, and economics. About the freedom to study her
wide-ranging interests, she said:

“
For the first time I liked school and for the first time I made good marks. This was almost my
undoing because after I had garnered, statistically, a certain number of credits I became the
property of Barnard College at Columbia, and once I was the property of Barnard I had to take,
it seemed, what Barnard wanted me to take, not what I wanted to learn. Fortunately my high-
school marks had been so bad that Barnard decided I could not belong to it and I was therefore
allowed to continue getting an education.[1] ”
On March 25, 1952, Jacobs responded to Conrad E. Snow, chairman of the Loyalty Security Board at
the United States Department of State. In her foreword to her answer she said:

“
The other threat to the security of our tradition, I believe, lies at home. It is the current fear of
radical ideas and of people who propound them. I do not agree with the extremists of either the
left or the right, but I think they should be allowed to speak and to publish, both because they
themselves have, and ought to have, rights, and once their rights are gone, the rights of the rest of
us are hardly safe …[2] ”
Opposing expressways and supporting neighborhoods were common themes in her life. In 1962, she was
the chairperson of the "Joint Committee to Stop the Lower Manhattan Expressway", when the downtown
expressway plan was killed. She was again involved in stopping the Lower Manhattan Expressway and
was arrested during a demonstration on April 10, 1968. Jacobs opposed Robert Moses, who had already
forced through the Cross-Bronx Expressway and other roadways against neighborhood opposition. A late
1990s Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) documentary series on New York’s history devoted a full hour of
its fourteen-hours to the battle between Moses and Jacobs, [3] although Robert Caro's highly critical
biography of Moses, The Power Broker, gives only passing mention to this event, despite Jacobs's strong
influence on Caro.[4][5]

[ edit]Canadian life
In 1968, Jacobs moved to Toronto, where she lived until her death. She decided to leave the United States
in part because of her objection to the Vietnam War and worry about the fate of her two draft-age sons.
She and her husband chose Toronto because it was pleasant and offered him work opportunities.

She quickly became a leading figure in her new city and helped stop the proposed Spadina Expressway. A
frequent theme of her work was to ask whether we are building cities for people or for cars. She was
arrested twice during demonstrations. [2] She also had considerable influence on the regeneration of the St.
Lawrence neighborhood, a housing projectregarded as a major success. She became a Canadian citizen in
1974, and she later told writer James Howard Kunstler that dual citizenship was not possible at the time,
implying that her US citizenship was lost.[citation needed]

In 1980, she offered an urbanistic perspective on Québec's sovereignty in her book The Question of
Separatism: Quebec and the Struggle over Separation.

Jacobs was an advocate of a Province of Toronto to separate the city proper from Ontario. Jacobs said,
"Cities, to thrive in the 21st century, must separate themselves politically from their surrounding areas." [citation
needed]

She was selected to be an officer of the Order of Canada in 1996 for her seminal writings and thought-
provoking commentaries on urban development. The Community and Urban Sociology section of the
American Sociological Association awarded her its Outstanding Lifetime Contribution award in 2002.

In 1997, the City of Toronto sponsored a conference titled "Jane Jacobs: Ideas That Matter", which led to a
book by the same name. At the end of the conference, the Jane Jacobs Prizewas created. It includes an
annual stipend of $5,000 for three years to be given to "celebrate Toronto's original, unsung heroes — by
seeking out citizens who are engaged in activities that contribute to the city’s vitality". [6]

Jacobs never shied away from expressing her political support for specific candidates. She opposed the
1997 amalgamation of the cities of Metro Toronto, fearing that individual neighborhoods would have less
power with the new structure. She backed an ecologist, Tooker Gomberg, who lost Toronto's 2000
mayoralty race, and was an adviser to David Miller'ssuccessful mayoral campaign in 2003, at a time when
he was seen as a longshot.

She died in Toronto Western Hospital at the age of 89, on April 25, 2006, apparently of a stroke.[7] She was
survived by a brother, James Butzner; two sons, James and Ned, and a daughter, Burgin Jacobs; by two
grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Upon her death her family's statement noted:

“
What's important is not that she died but that she lived, and that her life's work has greatly
influenced the way we think. Please remember her by reading her books and implementing her
ideas.[8] ”
[ edit]Legacy
“
Reason: What do you think you'll be remembered for most? You were the one who stood up to
the federal bulldozers and the urban renewal people and said they were destroying the lifeblood
of these cities. Is that what it will be?

Jacobs: No. If I were to be remembered as a really important thinker of the century, the most
important thing I've contributed is my discussion of what makes economic expansion happen.
This is something that has puzzled people always. I think I've figured out what it is.

Expansion and development are two different things. Development is differentiation of what
already existed. Practically every new thing that happens is a differentiation of a previous thing,
from a new shoe sole to changes in legal codes. Expansion is an actual growth in size or volume
of activity. That is a different thing.

I've gone at it two different ways. Way back when I wrote The Economy of Cities, I wrote about
import replacing and how that expands, not just the economy of the place where it occurs, but
economic life altogether. As a city replaces imports, it shifts its imports. It doesn't import less.
And yet it has everything it had before.

Reason: It's not a zero-sum game. It's a bigger, growing pie.

Jacobs: That's the actual mechanism of it. The theory of it is what I explain in The Nature of
Economies. I equate it to what happens with biomass, the sum total of all flora and fauna in an
area. The energy, the material that's involved in this, doesn't just escape the community as an
export. It continues being used in a community, just as in a rainforest the waste from certain
organisms and various plants and animals gets used by other ones in the place. ”
— Jane Jacobs, City Views Urban studies legend Jane Jacobs on gentrification, the New Urbanism,
and her legacy,Reason Magazine, June 2001, Interviewer: Bill Steigerwald

Despite the virtuosity, influence, and public and intellectual awareness of Jane Jacob's first book, she
herself believes that her later works are historically more important and earth shaking. She concludes that
the most important sociological mechanism of wealth creation is urban import replacement, supported by
urban export generation.

“ ”
It may be that we have become so feckless as a people that we no longer care how things do
work, but only what kind of quick, easy outer impression they give. If so, there is little hope for
our cities or probably for much else in our society. But I do not think this is so.

— Jane Jacobs, The Death And Life of Great American Cities, 1961

“
In her book 'Death and Life of Great American Cities,' written in 1961, Ms. Jacobs's enormous
achievement was to transcend her own withering critique of 20th-century urban planning and
propose radically new principles for rebuilding cities. At a time when both common and inspired

”
wisdom called for bulldozing slums and opening up city space, Ms. Jacobs's prescription was
ever more diversity, density and dynamism — in effect, to crowd people and activities together in
a jumping, joyous urban jumble.

— Douglas Martin, The New York Times, April 25, 2006

As a tribute to Jacobs, the Rockefeller Foundation announced on February 9, 2007 the creation of the Jane
Jacobs Medal, "to recognize individuals who have made a significant contribution to thinking about urban
design, specifically in New York City." [9] From the mid 1950s to the mid 1960s, the foundation's Humanities
Division sponsored an "Urban Design Studies" research program, of which Jacobs was the best known
grantee.[10] In September 2007, the Rockefeller Foundation awarded Barry Benepe, co-founder of NYC's
Green Market program and a founding member of Transportation Alternatives, with the inaugural Jane
Jacobs Medal for Lifetime Leadership and a $100,000 cash prize. The inaugural Jane Jacobs Medal for
new Ideas and Activism was awarded to Omar Freilla, the founder of Green Worker Cooperatives in the
South Bronx; Mr. Freilla donated his $100,000 to his organization.

In May 2008, the Rockefeller Foundation announced that Peggy Shepard, executive director of West
Harlem Environmental Action, would receive the 2008 Jane Jacobs Medal for Lifetime Leadership and
Alexie Torres-Fleming, founder of Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice, would receive the award for New
Ideas and Activism. Both women received their medals and $100,000 awards at a dinner ceremony in
September 2008 in New York City.

In 2009, Damaris Reyes, Executive Director of Good Old Lower East Side (GOLES), received the 2009
Jane Jacobs Medal for New Ideas and Activism. Richard Kahan, as Founder and CEO of the Urban
Assembly, which created and manages 22 secondary public schools located in many of the lowest income
neighborhoods in New York City, received the 2009 Jane Jacobs Medal for Lifetime Leadership. Both of
them received $100,000, in addition to the medal[11].

The 2010 recipients were Joshua David and Robert Hammond, whose work in establishing the High Line
park atop an unused elevated railroad line, led the Rockefeller Foundation to award the 2010 Jane Jacobs
Medal for New Ideas and Activism, along with $60,000 for each of them. The 2010 Jane Jacobs Medal for
Lifetime Leadership was given to Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, for her longtime work as writer, Park
Administrator and co-founder of Central Park Conservancy. She also received $80,000. [12]

The City of Toronto proclaimed Friday May 4, 2007 as Jane Jacobs Day in Toronto. Two dozen free walks
around and about Toronto neighborhoods, dubbed Jane's Walk, were held on Saturday May 5, 2007.
A Jane's Walk event was held in New York in on September 29 and 30, 2007 and, for 2008, the event has
spread to eight cities and towns across Canada.

She was also famous for her saying, "Eyes on the Street".

The Municipal Art Society of New York has partnered with the Rockefeller Foundation to host an exhibit
focusing on "Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York" which opened at the MAS on September 26, 2007.
The exhibit aims to educate the public on her writings and activism and uses tools to encourage new
generations to become active in issues involving their own neighborhoods. An accompanying exhibit
publication includes essays and articles by such architecture critics, artists, activists and journalists
as Malcolm Gladwell, Reverend Billy,Robert Neuwirth, Tom Wolfe, Thomas de Monchaux, and William
McDonough.[13] Many of these contributors are participating in a series of panel discussions on "Jane
Jacobs and the Future of New York" taking place at venues across the city in Fall, 2007. [14]

[ edit]Works
Jane Jacobs spent her life studying cities. Her books include:

[edit]The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Main article: The Death and Life of Great American Cities

The Death and Life of Great American Cities is her single-most influential book and possibly the most
influential American book on urban planning and cities. Widely read by both planning professionals and the
general public, the book is a strong critique of the urban renewal policies of the 1950s, which, she claimed,
destroyed communities and created isolated, unnatural urban spaces. Jacobs advocated the abolition of
zoning laws and restoration of free markets in land, which would result in dense, mixed-use neighborhoods
and frequently citedNew York City's Greenwich Village as an example of a vibrant urban community.

Robert Caro has cited it as the strongest influence on The Power Broker, his Pulitzer-winning biography of
Robert Moses, though Caro does not mention Jacobs by name even once in the book despite Jacobs'
battles with Moses over his proposed Lower Manhattan Expressway.

Beyond the practical lessons in city design and planning that Death and Life offers, the theoretical
underpinnings of the work challenge the modern development mindset. Jane Jacobs defends her positions
with common sense and undeniable anecdote.

[edit]The Economy of Cities

The thesis of this book is that cities are the primary drivers of economic development.

Jacobs' main argument is that explosive economic growth derives from urban import replacement. Import
replacement is when a city begins to locally produce goods which it formerly imported, e.g., Tokyo bicycle
factories replacing Tokyo bicycle importers in the 1800s. Jacobs claims that import replacement builds up
local infrastructure, skills, and production. Jacobs also claims that the increased produce is exported to
other cities, giving those other cities a new opportunity to engage in import replacement, thus producing a
positive cycle of growth.

In the second part of the book, Jacobs argues that cities preceded agriculture. She argues that in cities
trade in wild animals and grains allowed for the initial division of labor necessary for the discovery of
husbandry and agriculture; these discoveries then moved out of the city due to land competition.

[edit]Cities and the Wealth of Nations

Cities and the Wealth of Nations attempts to do for economics what The Death and Life of Great American
Cities did for modern urban planning, though it has not received the same critical attention. Beginning with
a concise treatment of classical economics, this book challenges one of the fundamental assumptions of
the greatest economists. Classical (and Neo-classical) economists consider the nation-state to be the main
player in macroeconomics. Jacobs makes a forceful argument that it is not the nation-state, rather it is the
city which is the true player in this worldwide game. She restates the idea of import replacement from her
earlier book The Economy of Cities, while speculating on the further ramifications of considering the city
first and the nation second, or not at all.

[edit]TheQuestion of Separatism: Quebec and the Struggle over

Sovereignty
The Question of Separatism incorporated and expanded Jacobs’ presentation of the 1979 Massey
Lectures, entitled Canadian Cities and Sovereignty-Association. Published in 1980and currently out of print,
Jacobs' book advances the view that Quebec's eventual independence is best for Montreal, Toronto, the
rest of Canada, and the world; and that such independence can be achieved peacefully. As precedent, she
cites Norway’s secession from Sweden and how it enriched both nations. The origins of the contemporary
secessionist-movement in the Quiet Revolution are examined, along with Canada’s historical reliance
on natural resources and foreign-owned manufacturing for its own economic development. Jacobs asserts
that such an approach is colonial and hence backward, citing by example Canada buying
its skis and furniture from Norway or Norwegian-owned factories in Canada, the latter procedure being a
product of Canadian tariffs designed specifically to foster such factories. The relevant public views of Rene
Levesque, Claude Ryan, and then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau are also critically analyzed, an example
being their failure to recognize that two respective, independent currencies are essential to the success of
an independent Quebec and a smaller resultant Canada, an issue that is central to her book. Jacobs
stresses the need for Montreal to continue developing its leadership of Québécois culture, but that such a
need can ultimately never be fulfilled by Montreal's increasing tendencies toward regional-city status,
tendencies foretelling economic, political, and cultural subservience to English-speaking Toronto. Such an
outcome, Jacobs believed, would in the long run doom Quebec's independence as much as it would hinder
Canada's own future. She concludes with her observation that the popular equating of political secession
with political and economic failure is the result of the Enlightenment, which perceived nature as a force for
"standardization, uniformity, universality, and immutability." Since then, naturalists and their readers have
gradually realized that nature is a force for diversity, and that, "diversity itself is of the essence of
excellence." The right kind of secession, Jacobs states, can lead to the right kind of diversity, and Quebec
and Canada are capable of both, and must achieve both, to survive.

[edit]Systems of Survival
Main article: Systems of Survival

Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics moves outside of the
city, studying the moral underpinnings of work. As with her other work, she used an observational
approach. This book is written as a Platonic dialogue. It appears that she (as described by characters in
her book) took newspaper clippings of moral judgements related to work, collected and sorted them to find
that they fit two patterns of moral behaviour that were mutually exclusive. She calls these two patterns
"Moral Syndrome A", or commercial moral syndrome, and "Moral Syndrome B", or guardian moral
syndrome. She claims that the commercial moral syndrome is applicable to business owners, scientists,
farmers, and traders. Similarly, she claims that the guardian moral syndrome is applicable to government,
charities, hunter-gatherers, and religious institutions. She also claims that these Moral Syndromes are
fixed, and do not fluctuate over time.

It is important to stress that Jane Jacobs is providing a theory about the morality of work, and not all moral
ideas. Moral ideas that are not included in her syndrome are applicable to both syndromes.

Jane Jacobs goes on to describe what happens when these two moral syndromes are mixed, showing the
work underpinnings of the Mafia and communism, and what happens when New York Subway Police are
paid bonuses here — reinterpreted slightly as a part of the larger analysis.

[edit]The Nature of Economies

The Nature of Economies, a dialog between friends concerning the premise: "human beings exist wholly
within nature as part of the natural order in every respect" (p ix), argues that the same principles underlie
both ecosystems and economies: "development and co-development through differentiations and their
combinations; expansion through diverse, multiple uses of energy; and self-maintenance through self-
refueling" (p82).

Jacobs' characters discuss the four methods by which "dynamically stable systems" may evade collapse:
"bifurcations; positive-feedback loops; negative-feedback controls; and emergency adaptations" (p86).
Their conversations also cover the "double nature of fitness for survival" (traits to avoid destroying one's
own habitat as well as success in competition to feed and breed, p119), and unpredictability including
the butterfly effect characterized in terms of multiplicity of variables as well as disproportional response to
cause, and self-organization where "a system can be making itself up as it goes along" (p137).

Through the dialogue, Jacobs' characters explore and examine the similarities between the functioning of
ecosystems and economies. Topics include environmental and economic development, growth and
expansion, and how economies and environments keep themselves alive through "self-refueling." Jacobs
also comments on the nature of economic and biological diversity and its role in the development and
growth of the two kinds of systems.

The book is infused with many real-world economic and biological examples, which help keep the book
"down to earth" and comprehensible, if dense. Concepts are furnished with both economic and biological
examples, showing their coherence in both worlds.

One particularly interesting insight is the creation of "something from nothing"—an economy from nowhere.
[citation needed]
 In the biological world, free energy is given through sunlight, but in the economic world human
creativity and natural resources supply this free energy, or at least starter energy. Another interesting
insight is the creation of economic diversity through the combination of different technologies, for example
the typewriter and television as inputs and outputs of a computer system: [citation needed] this can lead to the
creation of "new species of work".[citation needed]
[edit]Dark Age Ahead
Main article: Dark Age Ahead

Published in 2004 by Random House, in Dark Age Ahead Jacobs argued that "North American" civilization
showed signs of spiral of decline comparable to the collapse of the Roman empire. Her thesis focused on
"five pillars of our culture that we depend on to stand firm," which can be summarized as the nuclear family
(but also community), education, science, representational government and taxes, and corporate and
professional accountability. As the title suggests, her outlook was far more pessimistic than in her previous
books. However, in the conclusion she wrote that, "At a given time it is hard to tell whether forces of cultural
life or death are in the ascendancy. Is suburban sprawl, with its murders of communities and wastes of
land, time, and energy, a sign of decay? Or is rising interest in means of overcoming sprawl a sign of vigor
and adaptability in North American culture? Arguably, either could turn out to be true."

[ edit]Activism in later years

During the 2003 Toronto mayoral campaign, Jacobs helped lobby against the construction of a bridge to
join the city's waterfront to Toronto City Center Airport (TCCA).[2] Following the election, Toronto City
Council’s earlier decision to approve the bridge was reversed and bridge construction project was stopped.
TCCA did upgrade the ferry service and the airport is still in operation as of 2010.

Jacobs was also active in a fight against a plan of Royal St. Georges College (an established school very
close to Jacobs' long-time residence in Toronto’s Annex district) to reconfigure its facilities. Jacobs
suggested not only that the redesign be stopped but also the school be forced from the neighborhood
entirely.[3] Although Toronto council initially rejected the school’s plans, the decision was later reversed —
and the project was given the go-ahead by the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) when opponents failed to
produce credible witnesses and tried to withdraw from the case during the hearing.[4]

[ edit]Criticism
Toronto businesses have had mixed feelings about Jacobs. Some have applauded her leading the way to a
thriving urban core. Others have pointed to higher growth in suburban areas surrounding Toronto that have
lower taxes and debt, whereas Toronto's debt is growing. Toronto's mayor David Miller argued in 2005 that
this trend has more to do with inequalities in provincial tax policy than Jacobs’ perceived threat to business
growth.[15]

Another criticism is that Jacobs' approach leads to gentrification: an observed urban social process
whereby urban economic development leads to old neighborhoods becoming too expensive for the original
population once "renewed." The previous inhabitants are replaced by yuppies and hipsters who enjoy the
"semi-bohemian bourgeois lifestyle" that sometimes arises.[16] This issue, however, was addressed and
criticized in Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Jacobs refers to this phenomenon as the
"self destruction of diversity," and lists it as a developmental obstacle that cities must overcome.
Robert Venturi
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Robert Venturi

Personal information

Born 25 June 1925

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Work

Awards Pritzker Prize (1991), Vincent Scully Prize (2002)

Vanna Venturi House

Robert Charles Venturi, Jr. (born June 25, 1925 in Philadelphia) is an American architect, founding
principal of the firm Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, and one of the major figures in the architecture of
the twentieth century. Together with his wife and partner, Denise Scott Brown, he helped to shape the way
that architects, planners and students experience and think about architecture and the American built
environment. Their buildings, planning, theoretical writings and teaching have contributed to the expansion
of discourse. Venturi was awarded the Pritzker Prize in Architecture in 1991.[1] He is also known for coining
the maxim "Less is a bore" as antidote to Mies van der Rohe's famous modernist dictum "Less is more".
Venturi lives in Philadelphia with Denise Scott Brown. They have a son, James Venturi.

Contents
[hide]

1 Education and teaching

2 Writings

3 Architecture
4 Selected works

5 Awards

6 Bibliography

7 References

8 External links

[edit]Education and teaching

Venturi attended school at the Episcopal Academy in Merion, Pennsylvania.[2] He graduated summa cum

laude from Princeton University in 1947 and received his M.F.A. there in 1950. The educational program at
Princeton in these years was a key factor in Venturi's development of an approach to architectural theory
and design that drew from architectural history in analytical, as opposed to stylistic, terms. [3] In 1951 he
briefly worked under Eero Saarinen in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and later for Louis Kahn in Philadelphia.
He was awarded the Rome Prize Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome in 1954, where he studied
and toured Europe for two years.

From 1954 to 1965, Venturi held teaching positions at the University of Pennsylvania, where he served as
Kahn's teaching assistant, an instructor, and later, as associate professor. It was there, in 1960, that he met
fellow faculty member, architect and planner Denise Scott Brown. Venturi taught later at the Yale School of
Architecture and was a visiting lecturer with Scott Brown in 2003 at Harvard University's Graduate School
of Design.

[edit]Writings

Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C. was designed by Venturi in 1980

A controversial critic of the blithely functionalist and symbolically vacuous architecture of corporate

modernism during the 1950s, Venturi has been considered a counterrevolutionary. He published his "gentle
manifesto," Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture in 1966, described in the introduction by Vincent
Scully to be "probably the most important writing on the making of architecture since Le Corbusier's 'Vers
Une Architecture', of 1923." Derived from course lectures at the University of Pennsylvania, Venturi
received a grant from the Graham Foundation in 1965 to aid in its completion. The book demonstrated,
through countless examples, an approach to understanding architectural composition and complexity, and
the resulting richness and interest. Drawing from both vernacular and high-style sources, Venturi
introduced new lessons from the buildings of architects both familiar (Michelangelo, Alvar Aalto) and then
forgotten (Frank Furness, Edwin Lutyens). He made a case for "the difficult whole" rather than the
diagrammatic forms popular at the time, and included examples--both built and unrealized--of his own work
to demonstrate the possible application of the techniques illustrated within. The book has been translated
and published in 18 languages.

Immediately hailed as a theorist and designer with radical ideas, Venturi went to teach a series of studios at
the Yale School of Architecture in the mid-1960s. The most famous of these was a studio in 1968 in which
Venturi and Scott Brown, together with Steven Izenour, led a team of students to document and analyze
the Las Vegas Strip, perhaps the least likely subject for a serious research project imaginable. In 1972,
Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour published the folio, A Significance for A&P Parking Lots, or Learning from
Las Vegas later revised in 1977 as Learning from Las Vegas: the Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural
Form using the student work as a foil for new theory. This second manifesto was an even more stinging
rebuke to orthodox modernism and elite architectural tastes. The book coined the terms "Duck" and
"Decorated Shed"--descriptions of the two predominant ways of embodying iconography in buildings. The
work of Venturi, Rauch and Scott Brown adopted the latter strategy, producing formally simple "decorated
sheds" with rich, complex and often shocking ornamental flourishes. Though he and his wife co-authored
several additional books at the end of the century, these two have proved most influential.

[edit]Architecture

The architecture of Robert Venturi, although perhaps not as familiar today as his books, helped redirect
American architecture away from a widely practiced, often banal, modernism in the 1960's to a more
exploratory, and ultimately eclectic, design approach that openly drew lessons from historic architecture
and responded to the everyday context of the American city. Venturi's buildings typically juxtapose
architectural systems, elements and aims, to acknowledge the conflicts often inherent in a project or site.
This "inclusive" approach contrasted with the typical modernist effort to resolve and unify all factors in a
complete and rigidly structured--and possibly less functional and simplistic--work of art. The diverse range
of buildings of Venturi's early career offered surprising alternatives to then current architectural practice,
with "impure" forms (such as the North Penn Visiting Nurses Headquarters), apparently casual
asymmetries (as at the Vanna Venturi House), and pop-style supergraphics and geometries (for instance,
the Lieb House).
Chapel at the Episcopal Academy, Newtown Square, PA. (2010)

Venturi created the firm Venturi and Short with William Short in 1960. After John Rauch replaced Short as
partner in 1964, The firm's name changed to Venturi and Rauch. Venturi married Denise Scott Brown on
July 23, 1967 in Santa Monica, California, and in 1969, Scott Brown joined the firm as partner in charge of
planning. In 1980, The firm's name became Venturi, Rauch and Scott Brown, and after Rauch's resignation
in 1989, Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates. The firm, based in Philadelphia, was awarded the
Architecture Firm Award by theAmerican Institute of Architects in 1985. Recent work has included many
commissions from academic institutions, including campus planning and university buildings, and civic
buildings in London, Toulouse and Japan.

Venturi's architecture has had world-wide influence, beginning in the 1960s with the dissemination of the
broken-gable roof of the Vanna Venturi House and the segmentally arched window and interrupted string
courses of Guild House. The playful variations on vernacular house types seen in the Trubeck and Wislocki
Houses offered a new way to embrace, but transform, familiar forms. The facade patterning of the Oberlin
Art Museum and the laboratory buildings demonstrated a treatment of the vertical surfaces of buildings that
is both decorative (postmodern) and honest (modern). Venturi's work arguably provided a key influence at
important times in the careers of architects Robert A. M. Stern, Philip Johnson, Michael Graves, Graham
Gund and James Stirling, among others.

Venturi is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, the American Institute of Architects, The American

Academy of Arts and Letters and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

[edit]Selected works

Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery, London

Inside the Seattle Art Museum

Wu Hall (left), designed by Robert Venturi, at Princeton University

Trabant Student Center, University of Delaware

 Episcopal Academy Chapel; Newtown Square, Pennsylvania (2008)

 Dumbarton Oaks Library, Harvard University; Washington, D.C. (2005)

 Undergraduate Science Building, Life Sciences Institute and Palmer

Commons complex, University of Michigan; Ann Arbor, Michigan(2005)

 Biomedical Biological Science Research Building (BBSRB), University of

Kentucky; Lexington, Kentucky (2005)

 Baker/Berry Library, Dartmouth College; Hanover, New Hampshire (2002)

 Frist Campus Center, Princeton University; New Jersey (2000)

 Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College; Hanover, New

Hampshire (2000)
 Perelman Quadrangle, University of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia (2000)

 Provincial Capitol Building; Toulouse, France (1999)

 Gonda (Goldschmied) Neurosciences and Genetics Research

Center, UCLA; Los Angeles, California (1998)

 Mielparque Nikko Kirifuri Resort; Nikko National Park, Japan (1997)

 University of Delaware, Trabant Student Center (1996)

 Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; San Diego, California (1996)

 Charles P. Stevenson, Jr. Library, Bard College; Annondale-on-

Hudson, New York (1994)

 Children's Museum; Houston, Texas (1992)

 Gordon and Virginia MacDonald Medical Research

Laboratories, UCLA; Los Angeles, California (1991)

 Sainsbury Wing, National Gallery, London; United Kingdom (1991)

 Seattle Art Museum; Seattle, Washington (1991)

 Restoration of the Fisher Fine Arts Library, University of

Pennsylvania; Philadelphia (1991)

 House in East Hampton, Long Island, New York (1990)

 Lewis Thomas Laboratory, Princeton University, New Jersey (1986)

 Gordon Wu Hall; Princeton University, New Jersey (1983)

 House in New Castle, Delaware (1983)

 Coxe-Hayden House and Studio; Block Island, Rhode Island (1981)

 Best Products Catalog Showroom; Langhorne, Pennsylvania (1978)

 Allen Memorial Art Museum modern addition, Oberlin College; Oberlin,

Ohio (1976)

 BASCO Showroom; Philadelphia (1976)

 Franklin Court; Philadelphia (1976)

 Dixwell Fire Station, New Haven, CT (1974)

 Brant House; Greenwich, Connecticut (1972)

 Trubek and Wislocki Houses; Nantucket, Massachusetts (1971)

 Fire Station #4; Columbus, Indiana (1968)

 Vanna Venturi House; Philadelphia (1964) won the AIA Twenty-five Year

Award and was recognized as a "Masterwork of Modern American
Architecture" by the United States Postal Service in May 2005.

 Guild House; Philadelphia (1964)

 Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, interior renovation (The James

B. Duke House); New York (1958)
  The Lieb House located in Barnegat Light, New Jersey was designed by
Venturi and his wife Denise Scott Brown and built in 1967. It is best known
for the huge number 9 on its front, and the sailboat-shaped window on one
side. A Long Island, New York couple purchased this home in early March
2009 for just $1 to save it from demolition, paying at least $100,000 to
move it on a barge to Glen Cove, Long Island.[4]
[edit]Awards

 Design Mind Award, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Awards; 2007

(with Denise Scott Brown)[5]

 Vincent Scully Prize, National Building Museum; 2002 (with Denise Scott

Brown)[6]

 Commandeur de L'Ordre des Arts et Lettres, Republique Française,

Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication; 2000

 National Medal of Arts, United States Presidential Award; 1992

(with Denise Scott Brown)[7]

 The Pritzker Architecture Prize; 1991 [3]

 Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters; 1990

 AIA Twenty-five Year Award to the Vanna Venturi House; 1989[8]

 Commendatore of the Order of Merit, Republic of Italy; 1986

 AIA Architecture Firm Award, to Venturi, Rauch and Scott Brown; 1985

 AIA Medal for Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture; 1978

 Fellow in the American Institute of Architects, 1978

 Rome Prize Fellow, American Academy in Rome; 1956[9]

Aldo Rossi
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Aldo Rossi

Personal information

Nationality Italian

Born May 3, 1931

Milan, Italy

Died September 4, 1997 (aged 66)

 Milan, Italy

Alma mater Politecnico di Milano

Work

Buildings Teatro Carlo Felice

Awards Pritzker Prize (1990)

Aldo Rossi (May 3, 1931 – September 4, 1997) was an Italian architect and designer who accomplished

the unusual feat of achieving international recognition in four distinct areas: theory, drawing, architecture
and product design.[1]

Contents
[hide]

1 Early life

2 Work

3 Neo-Rationalist movement

4 Main works

o 4.1 Exhibits

o 4.2 Architecture

5 Awards

6 Death

7 References

8 Further reading

9 External links

[edit]Early life

Rossi was born in Milan, Italy. In 1949 he started studying architecture at the Politecnico di Milano where
he graduated in 1959. Already in 1955 he started writing for the Casabellamagazine, where he became
editor between 1959–1964.

[edit]Work
Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht.

His earliest works of the 1960s were mostly theoretical and displayed a simultaneous influence of
1920s Italian modernism (seeGiuseppe Terragni), classicist influences of Viennese architect Adolf Loos,
and the reflections of the painter Giorgio De Chirico. A trip to the Soviet Union to study Stalinist
architecture also left a marked impression.

In his writings Rossi criticized the lack of understanding of the city in current architectural practice. He
argued that a city must be studied and valued as something constructed over time; of particular interest are
urban artifacts that withstand the passage of time. Rossi held that the city remembers its past (our
"collective memory"), and that we use that memory through monuments; that is, monuments give structure
to the city.

He became extremely influential in the late 1970s and 1980s as his body of built work expanded and for his
theories promoted in his books The Architecture of the City (L'architettura della città, 1966) and A Scientific
Autobiography (Autobiografia scientifica, 1981).

[edit]Neo-Rationalist movement

Rossi is considered one of the founders of the Neo-Rationalist movement known as La Tendenza. His
influence in shaping European architectural thinking during this period is often compared to that of Robert
Venturi in the USA. Along with Venturi, Rossi became one of the prime examples given by architecture
critic Charles Jencks of Postmodern architecture. But this characterization of Rossi sat oddly with his
background in European urbanism and his idea of progressing Modernist views.[2]

[edit]Main works
Stainless steel kettle "Il Conico", 1986. Such products have been designed forAlessi, Pirelli, and others.

[edit]Exhibits

For the Venice Biennale in 1979 he designed a floating Teatro del Mondo[3] that seated 250 people. For the
Venice Biennale in 1984, he designed a triumphal arch at the entrance to the exhibition site.

[edit]Architecture

The Quarter Schüzenstrasse, in Berlin.

 Monte Amiata complex in the Gallaratese district of Milan, Italy (1968–

1974) with Carlo Aymonino[4]

 San Cataldo Cemetery, Modena, Italy (1971)[5]

 Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa, Italy (1981).

 Centro direzionale, Perugia, Italy (1982–88).

 Palazzo Hotel in Fukuoka, Japan (1986–89).

 Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht, The Netherlands (1990–94).

 Quartier Schützenstrasse in Berlin, Germany (1994–98) Photos[6]

 Ca' di Cozzi in Verona, Italy, his last project[7]

[edit]Awards
He won the prestigious Pritzker Prize for architecture in 1990. Ada Louise Huxtable, architectural critic and
Pritzker juror, has described Rossi as "a poet who happens to be an architect."

[edit]Death

Aldo Rossi died in a car accident in September 1997 in Milan.

Christopher Alexander
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the diplomat with the same name, see Christopher Alexander (diplomat).

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help

by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is
unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if
potentially libelousor harmful. (January 2008)

Christopher Alexander

Christopher Wolfgang Alexander (born October 4, 1936 in Vienna, Austria) is a registered architect

noted for his theories about design, and for more than 200 building projects
in California, Japan, Mexico and around the world. Reasoning that users know more about the buildings
they need than any architect could, he produced and validated (in collaboration with Sarah Ishikawa
and Murray Silverstein) a "pattern language" designed to empower anyone to design and build at any
scale. Alexander is often overlooked by texts in the history and theory of Architecture because his work
intentionally disregarded contemporary Architecture discourse, appealing more through methods consistent
with his theories than through established practices. [1]. As such, Alexander is widely considered to occupy a
place outside the discipline, the discourse, and the practice of Architecture. In 1958 he moved from
England to the United States, living and teaching in Berkeley, California from 1963. He is professor
emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. Now retired (though ceaselessly active), he is based in
Arundel, Sussex, UK.
Contents
[hide]

1 Education

2 Honors

3 Career

o 3.1 Writings

o 3.2 Buildings

 3.2.1 Teaching

4 Influence

o 4.1 Computer Science

o 4.2 Religion

5 Published works

6 See also

7 References

8 Further reading

9 External links

[edit]Education

Alexander grew up in England and started his education in sciences. In 1954, he was awarded the top
open scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge University in chemistry and physics, and went on to read
mathematics. He earned a Bachelor's degree in Architecture and a Master's degree in Mathematics. He
took his doctorate at Harvard (the first Ph.D. in Architecture ever awarded at Harvard University), and was
elected fellow at Harvard. During the same period he worked at MIT in transportation theory and in
computer science, and worked at Harvard in cognition and cognitive studies.

[edit]Honors

Alexander was awarded the First Gold Medal for Research by the American Institute of Architects in 1972.
He was awarded the Seaside Prize in 1994. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences in 1996.[2] In 2006 he was one of the two inaugural recipients of the Athena Award, given by
the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU). On 5 November 2009, at a ceremony in Washington D.C., he
was awarded (in absentia) the Vincent Scully Prize by the National Building Museum.

[edit]Career

[edit]Writings

The Timeless Way of Building (1979) described the perfection of use to which buildings could aspire:
There is one timeless way of building. It is a thousand years old, and the same today as it has ever been.
The great traditional buildings of the past, the villages and tents and temples in which man feels at home,
have always been made by people who were very close to the center of this way. It is not possible to make
great buildings, or great towns, beautiful places, places where you feel yourself, places where you feel
alive, except by following this way. And, as you will see, this way will lead anyone who looks for it to
buildings which are themselves as ancient in their form, as the trees and hills, and as our faces are.

A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (1977) described a practical architectural system in a

form that a theoretical mathematician or computer scientist might call agenerative grammar.

The work originated from an observation that many medieval cities are attractive and harmonious. The
authors said that this occurs because they were built to local regulations that required specific features, but
freed the architect to adapt them to particular situations.

The book provides rules and pictures, and leaves decisions to be taken from the precise environment of the
project. It describes exact methods for constructing practical, safe and attractive designs at every scale,
from entire regions, through cities, neighborhoods, gardens, buildings, rooms, built-in furniture, and fixtures
down to the level of doorknobs.

A notable value is that the architectural system consists only of classic patterns tested in the real world and
reviewed by multiple architects for beauty and practicality.

The book includes all needed surveying and structural calculations, and a novel simplified building system
that copes with regional shortages of wood and steel, uses easily-stored inexpensive materials, and
produces long-lasting classic buildings with small amounts of materials, design and labor. It first has users
prototype a structure on-site in temporary materials. Once accepted, these are finished by filling them with
very-low-density concrete. It uses vaulted construction to build as high as three stories, permitting very high
densities.

This book's method was adopted by the University of Oregon, as described in The Oregon
Experiment (1975), and remains the official planning instrument. It has also been adopted in part by some
cities as a building code.

The idea of a pattern language appears to apply to any complex engineering task, and has been applied to
some of them. It has been especially influential in software engineering wherepatterns have been used to
document collective knowledge in the field.

A New Theory of Urban Design (1987) coincided with a renewal of interest in urbanism among architects,
but stood apart from most other expressions of this by assuming a distinctly anti-masterplanning stance. An
account of a design studio conducted with Berkeley students, it shows how convincing urban networks can
be generated by requiring individual actors to respect only local rules, in relation to neighbours. A vastly
undervalued part of the Alexander canon, A New Theory is important in understanding the generative
processes which give rise to the shanty towns latterly championed by Stewart Brand,[3] Robert Neuwirth,
 and the Prince of Wales.[5]
[4]

The Nature of Order: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe (2003-4), which
includes The Phenomenon of Life, The Process of Creating Life, A Vision of a Living World and The
Luminous Ground, is Alexander's latest, and most comprehensive and elaborate work. In it, he puts forth a
new theory about the nature of space and describes how this theory influences thinking about architecture,
building, planning, and the way in which we view the world in general. The mostly static patterns from  A
Pattern Language have been amended by more dynamic sequences, which describe how to work towards
patterns (which can roughly be seen as the end result of sequences). Sequences, like patterns, promise to
be tools of wider scope than building (just as his theory of space goes beyond architecture).

The online publication "Katarxis 3" (September 2004) includes several essays by Christopher Alexander,
as well as the legendary debate between Alexander and Peter Eisenmanfrom 1982.

[edit]Buildings

Among Alexander's most notable built works are the Eishin Campus near Tokyo (the building process of
which is soon to be outlined in his forthcoming book Battle); the West Dean Visitors Centre [6] in West
Sussex, England; the Julian Street Inn (a homeless shelter) in San Jose, California (both described
in Nature of Order); the Martinez House (an experimental house in Martinez, California made of lightweight
concrete); the low-cost housing in Mexicali, Mexico (described in The Production of Houses); and several
private houses (described and illustrated in "The Nature of Order"). Alexander's built work is characterized
by a special quality (which he calls "the quality without a name") that relates to human beings and induces
feelings of belonging to the place and structure. This quality is found in the most loved traditional and
historic buildings and urban spaces, and is precisely what Alexander has tried to capture with his
sophisticated mathematical design theories. Paradoxically, achieving this connective human quality has
also moved his buildings away from the abstract imageability valued in contemporary architecture, and this
is one reason why his buildings are under-appreciated at present. [1]

Michael Mehaffy wrote an introductory essay on Christopher Alexander's built work in the online
publication "Katarxis 3" , which includes a gallery of Alexander's major built projects to date (September
2004).

[edit]Teaching

Apart from his lengthy teaching career at Berkeley (during which a number of international students began
to appreciate and apply his methods), Alexander was a key member of faculty both of The Prince of
Wales's Summer Schools in Civil Architecture (1990–1994) and The Prince of Wales's Institute of
Architecture[7]

[edit]Influence

[edit]Computer Science
Alexander's Notes on the Synthesis of Form was required reading for researchers in computer science
throughout the 1960s. It had an influence [8] in the 1960s and 1970s onprogramming language design,
modular programming, object-oriented programming, software engineering and other design
methodologies. Alexander's mathematical concepts and orientation were similar to Edsger Dijkstra's
influential A Discipline of Programming.[9]

A Pattern Language‘s greatest influence in computer science is the design patterns movement[10].

Alexander's philosophy of incremental, organic, coherent design also influenced the extreme
programming movement[11]. The Wiki was invented[12][13] to allow the Hillside Group to work on
programming design patterns. More recently, The Nature of Order's "deep geometrical structures" have
been cited as having importance for object-oriented programming, particularly in C++ [14].

Will Wright wrote that Alexander's work was influential in the origin of The Sims computer game, and in his
later game Spore.[15]

[edit]Religion

The fourth volume of The Nature of Order approaches religious questions from a scientific rather than
mystical direction. In it, Alexander describes deep ties between the nature of matter,human perception of
the universe, and the geometries people construct in buildings, cities, and artifacts, [vague][examples needed] and he
suggests a crucial link between traditional beliefsand recent scientific advances.[vague][examples needed] Despite his
leanings toward Deism,[citation needed] Alexander has retained a respect for the Catholic church, believing it to
embody a great deal of accumulated human truth within its rituals. [citation needed]

[edit]Published works

Alexander's published works include:

 Notes on the Synthesis of Form (1964)

 Community and Privacy, with Serge Chermayeff (1965)

 A city is not a tree (1965)

 The Atoms of Environmental Structure (1967)

 A Pattern Language which Generates Multi-service Centers, with Ishikawa and Silverstein (1968)

 Houses Generated by Patterns (1969)

 The Grass Roots Housing Process (1973)

 The Oregon Experiment (1975)

 A Pattern Language, with Ishikawa and Silverstein (1977)

 The Timeless Way of Building (1979)

 The Linz Cafe (1981)

 The Production of Houses, with Davis, Martinez, and Corner (1985)

 A New Theory of Urban Design, with Neis, Anninou, and King (1987)
 Foreshadowing of 21st Century Art: The Color and Geometry of Very Early Turkish Carpets (1993)

 The Mary Rose Museum, with Black and Tsutsui (1995)

 The Nature of Order Book 1: The Phenomenon of Life (2002)

 The Nature of Order Book 2: The Process of Creating Life (2002)

 The Nature of Order Book 3: A Vision of a Living World (2005)

 The Nature of Order Book 4: The Luminous Ground (2004)

Unpublished:[16]

 Battle

 Sustainability and Morphogenesis (working title)

Postmodern architecture
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may
be challenged and removed. (August 2009)

The Harold Washington Library was modeled on nearby buildings of Chicago's downtown.

1000 de La Gauchetière, in Montréal, with ornamented and strongly defined top, middle and bottom. Contrast with the
modernist Seagram Building.

Postmodern architecture began as an international style the first examples of which are generally cited
as being from the 1950s, but did not become a style until the late 1970s [1] and continues to influence
present-day architecture. Postmodernity in architecture is said to be heralded by the return of "wit,
ornament and reference" to architecture in response to the formalism of the International Style of
modernism. As with many cultural fashions, some of Postmodernism's most pronounced and visible ideas
can be seen in architecture. The functional and formalized shapes and spaces of the modernist style are
replaced by diverse aesthetics: styles collide, form is adopted for its own sake, and new ways of viewing
familiar styles and space abound. Perhaps most obviously, architects rediscovered the expressive and
symbolic value of architectural elements and forms that had evolved through centuries of building which
had been abandoned by the modern style.

Influential early large-scale examples of postmodern architecture are Michael Graves' Portland Building in

Portland, Oregon and Philip Johnson's Sony Building (originally AT&T Building) in New York City, which
borrows elements and references from the past and reintroduces color and symbolism to architecture.

Postmodern architecture has also been described as "neo-eclectic", where reference and ornament have
returned to the facade, replacing the aggressively unornamented modern styles. This eclecticism is often
combined with the use of non-orthogonal angles and unusual surfaces, most famously in the State Gallery
of Stuttgart (New wing of the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart) by James Stirling and the Piazza d'Italia by Charles
Moore. The Scottish Parliament buildings in Edinburgh have also been cited as being of postmodern
vogue.[citation needed]

Modernist architects may regard postmodern buildings as vulgar, associated with a populist ethic, and
sharing the design elements of shopping malls, cluttered with "gew-gaws". Postmodern architects may
regard many modern buildings as soulless and bland, overly simplistic and abstract. This contrast was
exemplified in the juxtaposition of the "whites" against the "grays," in which the "whites" were seeking to
continue (or revive) the modernist tradition of purism and clarity, while the "grays" were embracing a more
multifaceted cultural vision, seen in Robert Venturi's statement rejecting the "black or white" world view of
modernism in favor of "black and white and sometimes gray." The divergence in opinions comes down to a
difference in goals: modernism is rooted in minimal and true use of material as well as  absence of
ornament, while postmodernism is a rejection of strict rules set by the early modernistsand seeks meaning
and expression in the use of building techniques, forms, and stylistic references.

One building form that typifies the explorations of Postmodernism is the traditional gable roof, in place of
the iconic flat roof of modernism. Shedding water away from the center of the building, such a roof form
always served a functional purpose in climates with rain and snow, and was a logical way to achieve larger
spans with shorter structural members, but it was nevertheless relatively rare in modern houses. (These
were, after all, "machines for living," according to LeCorbusier, and machines did not usually have gabled
roofs.) However, Postmodernism's own modernist roots appear in some of the noteworthy examples of
"reclaimed" roofs. For instance, Robert Venturi's Vanna Venturi House breaks the gable in the middle,
denying the functionality of the form, and Philip Johnson's 1001 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan advertises a
mansard roof form as an obviously flat, false front. Another alternative to the flat roofs of modernism would
exaggerate a traditional roof to call even more attention to it, as when Kallmann McKinnell and Wood's
American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge, Massachusetts, layers three tiers of low hipped
roof forms one above another for an emphatic statement of shelter.

Contents
[hide]

1 Relationship to previous styles

2 Roots of Postmodernism

3 Robert Venturi

4 Aims and characteristics

5 Influential architects

6 Changing pedagogies

7 International examples of Postmodern architecture

8 See also

9 Notes

10 References

11 External links

[edit]Relationship to previous styles

San Antonio Public Library,Texas.

Ancient ruyi symbol adorning Taipei 101 (Taiwan)

New trends became evident in the last quarter of the 20 th century as some architects started to turn away
from modern Functionalism which they viewed as boring, and which some of the public considered
unwelcoming and even unpleasant. These architects turned towards the past, quoting past aspects of
various buildings and melding them together (even sometimes in an inharmonious manner) to create a new
means of designing buildings. A vivid example of this new approach was that  Postmodernism saw the
comeback of columns and other elements of premodern designs, sometimes adapting classical Greek and
Roman examples (but not simply recreating them, as was done in neoclassical architecture). In Modernism,
the traditional column (as a design feature) was treated as a cylindrical pipe form, replaced by
other technological means such as cantilevers, or masked completely by curtain wall façades. The revival
of the column was an aesthetic, rather than a technological, necessity. Modernist high-rise buildings had
become in most instances monolithic, rejecting the concept of a stack of varied design elements for a
single vocabulary from ground level to the top, in the most extreme cases even using a constant "footprint"
(with no tapering or "wedding cake" design), with the building sometimes even suggesting the possibility of
a single metallic extrusion directly from the ground, mostly by eliminating visual horizontal elements — this
was seen most strictly in Minoru Yamasaki's World Trade Centerbuildings.

Another return was that of the “wit, ornament and reference” seen in older buildings in terra
cotta decorative façades and bronze or stainless steel embellishments of the Beaux-Arts and Art
Deco periods. In Postmodern structures this was often achieved by placing contradictory quotes of
previous building styles alongside each other, and even incorporating furniture stylistic references at a
huge scale.

Contextualism, a trend in thinking in the later parts of 20 th Century, influences the ideologies of the
postmodern movement in general. Contextualism is centered on the belief that all knowledge is “context-
sensitive”. This idea was even taken further to say that knowledge cannot be understood without
considering its context. While noteworthy examples of modern architecture responded both subtly and
directly to their physical context (analyzed by Thomas Schumacher in "Contextualism: Urban Ideals and
Deformations," and by Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter in Collage City), postmodern architecture often
addressed the context in terms of the materials, forms and details of the buildings around it—the cultural
context.

[edit]Roots of Postmodernism
The interior of the Basilica of Our Lady of Licheń clearly draws from classical forms ofWestern European church
architecture.

The Postmodernist movement began in America around the 1960s - 1970s and then it spread to Europe
and the rest of the world, to remain right through to the present. The aims of Postmodernism or Late-
modernism begin with its reaction to Modernism; it tries to address the limitations of its predecessor. The
list of aims is extended to include communicating ideas with the public often in a then humorous or witty
way. Often, the communication is done by quoting extensively from past architectural styles, often many at
once. In breaking away from modernism, it also strives to produce buildings that are sensitive to the context
within which they are built.

Postmodernism has its origins in the perceived failure of Modern Architecture. Its preoccupation with
functionalism and economical building meant that ornaments were done away with and the buildings were
cloaked in a stark rational appearance. Many felt the buildings failed to meet the human need for comfort
both for body and for the eye, that modernism did not account for the desire for beauty. The problem
worsened when some already monotonous apartment blocks degenerated into slums. In response,
architects sought to reintroduce ornament, color, decoration and human scale to buildings. Form was no
longer to be defined solely by its functional requirements or minimal appearance.

Sainsbury Wing of theNational Gallery in London by Robert Venturi (1991).

[edit]Robert Venturi

Vanna Venturi House with its split gable.

Robert Venturi was at the forefront of this movement. His book, Complexity and Contradiction in
Architecture (published in 1966), was instrumental in opening readers eyes to new ways of thinking about
buildings, as it drew from the entire history of architecture—both high-style and vernacular, both historic
and modern—and lambasted overly simplistic Functional Modernism. The move away from modernism’s
functionalism is well illustrated by Venturi’s adaptation of Mies van der Rohe’s famous maxim “Less is
more” to "Less is a bore." The book includes a number of the architect's own designs in the back, including
structures such as Guild House, in Philadelphia, that became major icons of postmodernism. He sought to
bring back ornament because of its necessity. He explains this and his criticism of Modernism in
his Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture by saying that:

Architects can bemoan or try to ignore them (referring to the ornamental and decorative elements in
buildings) or even try to abolish them, but they will not go away. Or they will not go away for a long time,
because architects do not have the power to replace them (nor do they know what to replace them with).

Venturi's second book, Learning from Las Vegas (1972) further developed his take on modernism. Co-
authored with his wife, Denise Scott Brown, andSteven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas argues that
ornamental and decorative elements “accommodate existing needs for variety and communication”. Here
Venturi stresses the importance of the building communicating a meaning to the public, a value shared by
postmodernists in general. This communication however is not intended to be a direct narration of the
meaning. Venturi goes on to explain that it is rather intended to be a communication that could be
interpreted in many ways. Each interpretation is more or less true for its moment because work of such
quality will have many dimensions and layers of meaning.

This pluralism of meaning is intended to mirror the similar nature of contemporary society. The pluralism in
meaning was also echoed in the Postmodern architects striving for variety in their buildings. Venturi
reminisces in one of his essays, A View from the Campidoglio, to that effect when he says that:

When [he] was young, a sure way to distinguish great architects was through the consistency and
originality of their work...This should no longer be the case. Where the Modern masters' strength lay in
consistency, ours should lie in diversity.

Postmodernism with its diversity possesses sensitivity to the building’s context and history, and the client’s
requirements. The postmodernist architects often considered the general requirements of the urban
buildings and their surroundings during the building’s design. For example, in Frank Gehry's Venice Beach
House, the neighboring houses have a similar bright flat color. This vernacular sensitivity is often evident,
but other times the designs respond to more high-style neighbors. James Stirling's Arthur M. Sackler
Museum at Harvard University features a rounded corner and striped brick patterning that relate to the form
and decoration of the polychromatic Victorian Memorial Hall across the street, although in neither case is
the element imitative or historicist.

[edit]Aims and characteristics

The City Hall inMississauga, Canadaconveys a Postmodern architectural style depicting the concept of a "futuristic
farm"

Hood Museum of Art at the campus of Dartmouth Collegein Hanover, New Hampshire(1983).

The aims of Postmodernism, including solving the problems of Modernism, communicating meanings with
ambiguity, and sensitivity for the building’s context, are surprisingly unified for a period of buildings
designed by architects who largely never collaborated with each other. The aims do, however, leave room
for various implementations as can be illustrated by the diverse buildings created during the movement.

The characteristics of postmodernism allow its aim to be expressed in diverse ways. These characteristics
include the use of sculptural forms, ornaments,anthropomorphism and materials which perform trompe
l'oeil. These physical characteristics are combined with conceptual characteristics of meaning. These
characteristics of meaning include pluralism, double coding, flying buttresses and high
ceilings, irony and paradox, and contextualism.

The sculptural forms, not necessarily organic, were created with much ardor. These can be seen in Hans
Hollein’s Abteiberg Museum (1972–1982). The building is made up of several building units, all very
different. Each building’s forms are nothing like the conforming rigid ones of Modernism. These forms
are sculptural and are somewhat playful. These forms are not reduced to an absolute minimum; they are
built and shaped for their own sake. The building units all fit together in a very organic way, which
enhances the effect of the forms.
After many years of neglect, ornament returned. Frank Gehry’s Venice Beach house, built in 1986, is
littered with small ornamental details that would have been considered excessive and needless
in Modernism. The Venice Beach House has an assembly of circular logs which exist mostly for decoration.
The logs on top do have a minor purpose of holding up the window covers. However, the mere fact that
they could have been replaced with a practically invisible nail, makes their exaggerated existence largely
ornamental. The ornament in Michael Graves' Portland Municipal Services Building ("Portland Building")
(1980) is even more prominent. The two obtruding triangular forms are largely ornamental. They exist for
aesthetic or their own purpose.[citation needed]

Postmodernism, with its sensitivity to the building’s context, did not exclude the needs of humans from the
building. Carlo Scarpa's Brion Cemetery (1970–72) exemplifies this. The human requirements of a
cemetery is that it possesses a solemn nature, yet it must not cause the visitor to become depressed.
Scarpa’s cemetery achieves the solemn mood with the dull gray colors of the walls and neatly defined
forms, but the bright green grass prevents this from being too overwhelming. [citation needed]

Postmodern buildings sometimes utilize trompe l'oeil, creating the illusion of space or depths where none
actually exist, as has been done by painters since the Romans. The Portland Building (1980) has pillars
represented on the side of the building that to some extent appear to be real, yet they are not. [citation needed]

The Hood Museum of Art (1981–1983) has a typical symmetrical façade which was at the time prevalent
throughout Postmodern Buildings.[citation needed]

Robert Venturi’s Vanna Venturi House (1962–64) illustrates the Postmodernist aim of communicating a

meaning and the characteristic of symbolism. The façade is, according to Venturi, a symbolic picture of a
house, looking back to the 18th century. This is partly achieved through the use of symmetry and the arch
over the entrance.[citation needed]

Perhaps the best example of irony in Postmodern buildings is Charles Moore’s Piazza d'Italia (1978).
Moore quotes (architecturally) elements of Italian renaissance and Roman Antiquity. However, he does so
with a twist. The irony comes when it is noted that the pillars are covered with steel. It is alsoparadoxical in
the way he quotes Italian antiquity far away from the original in New Orleans.[citation needed]

Double coding meant the buildings convey many meanings simultaneously. The Sony Building in New York
does this very well. The building is a tallskyscraper which brings with it connotations of very modern
technology. Yet, the top contradicts this. The top section conveys elements of classical antiquity. This
double coding is a prevalent trait of Postmodernism. [citation needed]

The characteristics of Postmodernism were rather unified given their diverse appearances. The most
notable among their characteristics is their playfully extravagant forms and the humour of the meanings the
buildings conveyed.[citation needed]

[edit]Influential architects
Gare do Oriente (Lisbon, Portugal), designed by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava.

Some of the best-known and influential architects in the Postmodern style are:

 Aldo Rossi  Charles Moore

 Ricardo Bofill  William Pereira
 John Burgee  Boris Podrecca
 Santiago  Cesar Pelli
Calatrava  Paolo Portoghesi
 Terry Farrell  Antoine Predock
 Michael Graves  Tomás Taveira
 Helmut Jahn  Robert A.M. Stern
 Jon Jerde  James Stirling
 Philip Johnson  Robert Venturi
 Ricardo  Peter Eisenman
Legorreta  Mario Botta
 Frank Gehry  James Wines and Sculpture in the
Environment
[edit]Changing pedagogies
Bank of America Center in Houston by John Burgee andPhilip Johnson. It combines architecture elements of pre-
WWII skyscrapers with elements of modern aesthetics.

Critics of the reductionism of modernism often noted the abandonment of the teaching of architectural
history as a causal factor. The fact that a number of the major players in the shift away from modernism
were trained at Princeton University's School of Architecture, where recourse to history continued to be a
part of design training in the 1940s and 1950s, was not insignificant. The increasing rise of interest in
history had a profound impact on architectural education. History courses became more typical and
regularized. With the demand for professors knowledgeable in the history of architecture, several Ph.D.
programs in schools of architecture arose in order to differentiate themselves from art history Ph.D.
programs, where architectural historians had previously trained. In the US, MIT and Cornell were the first,
created in the mid 1970s, followed by Columbia, Berkeley, and Princeton. Among the founders of new
architectural history programs were Bruno Zevi at the Institute for the History of Architecture in Venice,
Stanford Anderson and Henry Millon at MIT, Alexander Tzonis at the Architectural Association, Anthony
Vidler at Princeton, Manfredo Tafuri at the University of Venice, Kenneth Frampton at Columbia University,
and Werner Oechslin and Kurt Forster at ETH Zürich.[2]

The creation of these programs was paralleled by the hiring, in the 1970s, of professionally trained
historians by schools of architecture: Margaret Crawford (with a Ph.D. from U.C.L.A) at SCI-Arc; Elisabeth
Grossman (Ph.D., Brown University) at Rhode Island School of Design; Christian Otto[3] (Ph.D., Columbia
University) at Cornell University; Richard Chafee (Ph.D., Courtauld Institute) at Roger Williams University;
and Howard Burns (M.A. Kings College) at Harvard, to name just a few examples. A second generation of
scholars then emerged that began to extend these efforts in the direction of what is now called “theory”: K.
Michael Hays (Ph.D., MIT) at Harvard, Mark Wigley (Ph.D., Auckland University) at Princeton (now
at Columbia University), andBeatriz Colomina (Ph.D., School of Architecture, Barcelona) at Princeton; Mark
Jarzombek (Ph.D. MIT) at Cornell (now at MIT), Jennifer Bloomer (Ph.D., Georgia Tech) at Iowa State and
Catherine Ingraham (Ph.D., Johns Hopkins) now at Pratt Institute.

[edit]International examples of Postmodern architecture

Neue Staatsgalerie inStuttgart, Germany byJames Stirling andMichael Wilford,

1984.


Wells Fargo Center inMinneapolis by César Pelli. Completed 1988.

Messeturm in Frankfurt, Germany by Helmut Jahn. Completed 1991.

Auditorio de Tenerife inSanta Cruz de Tenerife bySantiago Calatrava. Completed

2003.

One Detroit Center inDetroit by John Burgeeand Philip Johnson, completed 1993.

 

RMIT Building 8. Swanston Street in Melbourne byEdmund & Corrigan, 1993.

Kollhoff-Tower atPotsdamer Platz in Berlinby Hans Kollhoff. Completed 1999.

The McCormick Tribune Campus Center atChicago's IIT Campus byRem

Koolhaas, 2003.

Charles Jencks
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may
be challenged and removed. (March 2010)
Jencks' Landform at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art

Jencks' Life Mounds at Jupiter Artland, near Edinburgh

Charles Jencks (born 1939) is an American architectural theorist, landscape architect and designer. His

books on the history and criticism of Modernism and Postmodernism were widely read in architectural
circles and beyond. Born in Baltimore to aScottish mother from Fife,[1] he first studied English Literature
at Harvard University, later gaining an MA in architecture from theGraduate School of Design in 1965. He
also has a PhD in Architectural History from the Bartlett School of Architecture atUniversity College,
London. In the mid-sixties Jencks moved to Scotland where he has resided ever since. [1]

Contents
[hide]

1 Early Years

2 Landscape Architecture

3 Architectural Writing

4 Critical Modernism - Where is Post Modernism going?

5 Other Works
6 Television

7 Select bibliography

8 References

9 External links

[edit]Early Years

Jencks studied under the Modern architectural historians Siegfried Giedion and Reyner Banham. He first
received his BA in English Literature at Harvard University in 1961, later gaining an MA in architecture from
the Graduate School of Design in 1965. He took his studies even further and received his PhD in
Architectural History from University College, London in 1970. In the mid-sixties Jencks moved to Scotland
where he resided with his late wife Maggie Keswick Jencks. He now designs landscape sculpture and
writes on cosmogenic art.

[edit]Landscape Architecture

The Garden of Cosmic Speculation, begun in 1988, was dedicated to Jencks' late wife Maggie Keswick.
The garden has such a name because Jencks, Keswick, scientists, and their friends designed the garden
based on natural and scientific processes. Jencks goal was to celebrate nature, but he also incorporated
elements from the modern sciences into the design. The garden contains a species of plants that are
pleasurable to the eye, as well as edible. With a ‘century of extraordinary discovery in biology’ like evolution
and deoxyribonucleic acid also known as DNA, and cosmology, this has given birth to a new type of garden
design [Cosmic]’. Preserving paths and the beauty of the garden is still evident in the garden except,
Jencks enhances the garden using new tools and artificial materials. Just as Japanese Zen gardens,
Persian paradise gardens, the English and French Renaissance gardens were analogies of the cosmic
universe, the design of the garden represents the cosmic and cultural evolution of the contemporary world.
The garden represents a microcosm of the universe. As one walks through the garden they are
experiencing the cosmic universe in miniature. According to Jencks gardens are like autobiographies
because they reveal the happiest moments, the tragedies, and the truths about a person. As the garden
developed since 1988, so too did such sciences as cosmology and this allow a dynamic interaction
between the unfolding universe, a progressing science and a question design. Jencks believes that
contemporary science is potentially the greatest moving force for creativity of our time because it tells us
the truth about the way the universe is. Cosmic passion, the desire both to know and to relate to the
universe, is one of the strongest drives in sentient creatures on a par with those which exercise novelists:
sex, money, and power. Every creature in the universe tries to increase its knowledge, to figure out what is
going on, what will happen next, how things are evolving and the point of this passion how we can relate to
this process, fit in with its patterns, celebrate and on occasion, criticize it. The laws of nature may be
omnipotent, but they can also be challenged. A garden is a perfect place to try out these speculations and
celebrations because it is a bit of man-made nature, a fabricated and ideal cosmic landscape, and a
critique of the way the universe is.
Jencks has become a leading figure in British landscape architecture. His landscape work is inspired
by fractals, genetics, chaos theory, waves and solitons. In Edinburgh, Scotland, he designed the Landform
at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in collaboration with Terry Farrell and Duncan Whatmore of
Terry Farrell and Partners. These themes are expanded in his own private garden, the  Garden of Cosmic
Speculation, at Portrack House near Dumfries. He is also a furniture designer and sculptor, completing the
DNA Sculpture in London'sKew Gardens in 2003.

His late wife, Maggie Keswick Jencks was the founder of the Maggie's cancer caring centres, for which
Jencks has designed gardens, and the author of a book on Chinese Gardens.

[edit]Architectural Writing

Jencks is synonymous with his writings of Postmodernism in architecture. He discusses his theories of
postmodern architecture in his book the Language of Post-Modern Architecture. Jencks discusses the
paradigm shift in modern to post-modern architecture. Modern architecture concentrates on univalent forms
such and right angles and square buildings often resembling office buildings. However, post modern
architecture focuses on forms derived from the mind, body, and nature. His latest book the Iconic Building
examines the trend setting and celebrity culture. Jencks discusses why buildings are being designed this
way. The reason that our culture seeks the ‘iconic building’ is because it has the possibility of reversing the
economic trend of a flagging “conurbation”. An iconic building is created to make a splash, to generate
money, and the normal criteria of valuation does not apply. “Enigmatic signifiers” can be used in and
effective way to support the deeper meaning of the building. Jencks has lectured at over forty universities
throughout the globe, including Peking, Shanghai, Tokyo, Milan, Barcelona, and in the US at Harvard,
Columbia, Princeton, and Yale. In his most recent work he collaborated with the late Maggie Keswick on
fractal designs of building and furniture as well as extensive landscape designs base on complexity theory,
waves and solitons.

[edit]Critical Modernism - Where is Post Modernism going?

Critical Modernism - Where is Post Modernism going is the latest book by Charles Jencks. It is an
overview of post-modernism in which Jencks argues that Post modernism is another critical reaction
to Modernism that comes from within Modernism itself.[2][3][4]

On 26 March 2007, the Royal Academy hosted a debate between Jencks and John N. Gray centered

around the book.[5]

[edit]Other Works

 Symbolic Furniture, exhibition Aram Designs London 1985.

 Garagia Rotunda, Truro, MA 1976-77.

 The Elemental House (with Buzz Yudell), Los Angeles.

 The Thematic House (with Terry Farrell), London, 1979-84.

  Landform in Edinburgh for The Scottish Gallery of Modern Art.

 Matt Ridley, Center for Life, Newcastle, May 2000.

 Designs for Black Hole Landscape, IUCAA, Pune, India, 2002.

Pop architecture. 
1. Architecture popular with the public.

2. Buildings the forms of which suggest their function, such as a shoe-shaped shoe-shop; also called
‘bizarre’, ‘illegitimate’, ‘programmatic’, or ‘roadside’ architecture. Venturi has included ‘autoscape’
architecture of the large illuminated advertisements common in the USA in the pop-architecture
category.

3. Work influenced by popular architecture, or responding to High Tech andArchigram-promoted

images.

Neo-rationalism
In the late 1960s, a new rationalist movement emerged in
architecture, claiming inspiration from both the Enlightenment and
early-20th century rationalists. Like the earlier rationalists, the
movement, known as the Tendenza, was centered in Italy.
Practitioners include Carlo Aymonino (b. 1926), Aldo Rossi (1931–
97), and Giorgio Grassi (b. 1935). The Italian design
magazine Casabella featured the work of these architects and
theorists. The work of architectural historian Manfredo
Tafuri influenced the movement, and the University Iuav of
Veniceemerged as a center of the Tendenza after Tafuri became
chair of Architecture History in 1968.[11]
Rossi's book L'Architettura della Città published in 1966, and
translated into English as The Architecture of the City in 1982,
explored several of the ideas that inform Neo-rationalism. In seeking
to develop an understanding of the city beyond simple functionalism,
Rossi revives the idea of typology, following from Quatremère de
Quincy, as a method for understanding buildings, as well as the larger
city. He also writes of the importance of monuments as expressions of
the collective memory of the city, and the idea of place as an
expression of both physical reality and history.[12][13]
Architects, such as Leon Krier, Maurice Culot, and Demetri
Porphyrios, took Rossi's ideas to their logical conclusion with a revival
of Classical Architecture and Traditional Urbanism. Krier's witty
critique of Modernism, often in the form of cartoons, and Porphyrios's
well crafted philosophical arguments, such as "Classicism is not a
Style", won over a small but talented group of architects to the
classical point of view. Organizations such as the Traditional
Architecture Group at the RIBA, and the Institute of Classical
Architecture attest to their growing number, but mask the Rationalist
origins.
A Tendenza exhibition was organized for the 1973 Milan Triennale. [14]
In Germany, Oswald Mathias Ungers (1926-2007) became the
leading practitioner of German rationalism from the mid-1960s.
[15]
 Ungers influenced a younger generation of German architects,
including Hans Kollhoff, Max Dudler, and Christoph Mäckler.[16]
[edit]

Charles Willard Moore

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other people named Charles Moore, see Charles Moore (disambiguation).

Charles Willard Moore

Piazza d'Italia, New Orleans

Personal information

Nationality American
 Born October 31, 1925

Benton Harbor, Michigan

Died December 16, 1993 (aged 68)

Austin, Texas

Practice Moore Ruble Yudell

Work

Buildings Piazza D'Italia

Haas School of Business

Projects Sea Ranch, California

Yale Building Project

Awards AIA Gold Medal (1991)

Charles Willard Moore (October 31, 1925 – December 16, 1993) was an American architect, educator,
writer, Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and winner of the AIA Gold Medal in 1991.

[edit]Biography

Moore graduated from the University of Michigan in 1947 and earned both a Master's and
a Ph.D at Princeton University in 1957, where he remained for an additional year as a post-doctoral fellow.
During this fellowship, Moore served as a teaching assistant for Louis Kahn, the Philadelphia architect who
taught a design studio. It was also at Princeton that Moore developed relationships with fellow students
Donlyn Lyndon, William Turnbull, Jr., Richard Peters, and Hugh Hardy, who would remain lifelong friends
and collaborators. During the Princeton years, Moore designed and built a house for his mother in Pebble
Beach, California, and worked during the summers for architect Wallave Holm of neighboring Monterey.
Moore's Master's Thesis explored ways to preserve and integrate Monterey's historic adobe dwellings into
the fabric of the city. His Doctoral dissertation, "Water and Architecture", was a survey of the presence of
water in shaping the experience of place; many decades later, the dissertation became the basis of a book
with the same title.

In 1959, Moore left New Jersey and began teaching at the University of California, Berkeley. Moore went
on to become Dean of the YaleSchool of Architecture from 1965 through 1970, directly after the tenure
of Paul Rudolph. In 1975, he moved to the University of California, Los Angeles where he continued
teaching (one of his students included Lem Chin). Finally, in 1985, he became the O'Neil Ford Centennial
Professor of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin.
Moore's outgoing, absorptive, and engaging personality and his dedication to innovation, collaboration,
debate, and direct experience was sharp contrast to Rudolph's authoritarian approach. With Kent Bloomer,
Moore founded the Yale Building Project in 1967 as a way both to demonstrate social responsibility and
demystify the construction process for first-year students. The project remains active at Yale.

Moore opened a practice in New Haven, Connecticut and in the following years practiced under a
confusing variety of professional configurations, partners, and names, including Moore, Lyndon, Turnbull,
Whitaker, MLTW, Centerbrook Architects, Moore Ruble Yudell, Urban Innovations Group,
and Moore/Andersson. The constant changes resulted, in part, from Moore's extensive worldwide travel
and his moves to California and then to Austin, Texas.

Moore preferred conspicuous design features, including loud color combinations, supergraphics, stylistic
collisions, the re-use of esoteric historical-design solutions, and the use of non-traditional materials such
as plastic, (aluminized) PET film, platinum tiles, and neon signs, As a result, his work provokes arousal,
demands attention, and sometimes tips over into kitsch. His mid-1960s New Haven residence, published
in Playboy, featured an open, freestanding shower in the middle of the room, its water nozzled through a
giant sunflower. Such design features (historical detail, ornament, fictional treatments, ironic significations)
made Moore one of the chief innovators of postmodern architecture, along with Robert
Venturi and Michael Graves, among others. Moore's Piazza d'Italia (1978), an urban public plaza in New
Orleans, made prolific use of his exuberant design vocabulary and is frequently cited as the archetypal
postmodern project.

In addition to his influential work as an architect and university educator, Moore was a prolific author,
publishing a dozen books. Many other books, monographs, and articles document his designs.

 The Place of Houses (with Gerald Allen and Donlyn Lyndon)

 Dimensions (with Gerald Allen)

 Body, Memory and Architecture (with Kent Bloomer)

 The Poetics of Gardens

 The City Observed: Los Angeles (with Peter Becker and Regula

Campbell)

 Water and Architecture

 Chambers for a Memory Palace (with Donlyn Lyndon)

"Body, Memory, and Architecture," written with Kent Bloomer during the Yale years, is a plea for architects
to design structures for three-dimensional user experience instead of two-dimensional visual appearance.
"The City Observed: Los Angeles" remains an excellent guide to Los Angeles' significant architecture.

The Charles W. Moore Foundation was established in 1997 in Austin, Texas to preserve Moore's last home
and studio. Its non-profit programs include residencies, conferences, lectures, and publication of
PLACENOTES, a travel guide.
[edit]Work

The Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. Moore died before the project was completed in 1995.

 The influential Sea Ranch (1963) planned community in Sonoma County,

California (with landscape architect Lawrence Halprin)

 The Faculty Club at University of California, Santa Barbara, (1968) with

William Turnbull

 Kresge College (1971) at University of California Santa Cruz

 The exuberant, postmodern archetype Piazza d'Italia (1978), an

urban public plaza in New Orleans, Louisiana

 University Extension at the University of California, Irvine

 The Beverly Hills Civic Center (1992) in Beverly Hills, California

 National Dong Hwa University, Hualien, Taiwan (1992)

 The California Center for the Arts, Escondido in Escondido,

California (1993)

 The Haas School of Business (1995) at the University of California,

Berkeley

 Lurie Tower at the University of Michigan (1995)

 The Preview Center (now a Bank of America branch) in Celebration,

Florida (1996)

 The Williams College Museum of Art addition in Williamstown,

Massachusetts.

 His last work, the Washington State History

Museum in Tacoma, Washington

Deconstructivism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the architectural style or movement known as deconstructivism. For the philosophical
idea, see deconstruction. For other uses, see deconstruction (disambiguation).
Libeskind's Imperial War Museum North in Manchestercomprises three apparently intersecting curved volumes.

Deconstructivism is a development of postmodern architecture that began in the late 1980s. It is

characterized by ideas of fragmentation, an interest in manipulating ideas of a structure's surface or skin,
non-rectilinear shapes which serve to distort and dislocate some of the elements of architecture, such as
structure and envelope. The finished visual appearance of buildings that exhibit the many deconstructivist
"styles" is characterized by a stimulating unpredictability and a controlled chaos.

Important events in the history of the deconstructivist movement include the 1982 Parc de la
Villette architectural design competition (especially the entry from Jacques Derrida and Peter
Eisenman[1] and Bernard Tschumi's winning entry), theMuseum of Modern Art’s 1988 Deconstructivist
Architecture exhibition in New York, organized by Philip Johnson and Mark Wigley, and the 1989 opening
of the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, designed by Peter Eisenman. The New York exhibition
featured works by Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind, Rem Koolhaas, Peter Eisenman, Zaha Hadid, Coop
Himmelb(l)au, and Bernard Tschumi. Since the exhibition, many of the architects who were associated with
Deconstructivism have distanced themselves from the term. Nonetheless, the term has stuck and has now,
in fact, come to embrace a general trend within contemporary architecture.

Originally, some of the architects known as Deconstructivists were influenced by the ideas of the French
philosopher Jacques Derrida. Eisenman developed a personal relationship with Derrida, but even so his
approach to architectural design was developed long before he became a Deconstructivist. For him
Deconstructivism should be considered an extension of his interest in radical formalism. Some practitioners
of deconstructivism were also influenced by the formal experimentation and geometric imbalances of
Russian constructivism. There are additional references in deconstructivism to 20th-century movements:
the modernism/postmodernism interplay, expressionism, cubism, minimalism and contemporary art. The
attempt in deconstructivism throughout is to move architecture away from what its practitioners see as the
constricting 'rules' of modernism such as "form follows function," "purity of form," and "truth to materials."

Contents
[hide]
1 History, context and influences

o 1.1 Modernism and postmodernism

o 1.2 Deconstructivist philosophy

o 1.3 Constructivism and Russian Futurism

o 1.4 Contemporary art

o 1.5 1988 MOMA exhibition

o 1.6 Computer-aided design

2 Critical responses

3 See also

4 Notes

5 References

6 External links

[edit]History, context and influences

[edit]Modernism and postmodernism

Seattle Central Library by Rem Koolhaas and OMA

Deconstructivism in contemporary architecture stands in opposition to the ordered rationality of Modernism.

Its relationship with Postmodernism is also decidedly contrary. Though postmodernist and nascent
deconstructivist architects published theories alongside each other in the journalOppositions (published
1973–84), that journal's contents mark the beginning of a decisive break between the two movements.
Deconstructivism took a confrontational stance toward much of architecture and architectural history,
wanting to disjoin and disassemble architecture. [2] While postmodernism returned to embrace— often slyly
or ironically—the historical references that modernism had shunned, deconstructivism rejects the
postmodern acceptance of such references. It also rejects the idea of ornament as an after-thought or
decoration.

In addition to Oppositions, another text that separated deconstructivism from the fray of modernism and
postmodernism was the publication ofRobert Venturi's Complexity and Contradiction in architecture (1966).
A defining point for both postmodernism and for deconstructivism, Complexity and Contradiction argues
against the purity, clarity and simplicity of modernism. With its publication, functionalism and rationalism,
the two main branches of modernism, were overturned as paradigms according to postmodernist and
deconstructivist readings, with differing readings. The postmodern reading of Venturi (who was himself a
postmodernist) was that ornament and historical allusion added a richness to architecture that modernism
had foregone. Some Postmodern architects endeavored to reapply ornaments even to economical and
minimal buildings, an effort best illustrated by Venturi's concept of "the decorated shed." Rationalism of
design was dismissed but the functionalism of the building was still somewhat intact. This is close to the
thesis of Venturi's next major work, [3] that signs and ornament can be applied to a pragmatic architecture,
and instill the philosophic complexities of semiology.

Vitra Design Museum by Frank Gehry,Weil am Rhein

The deconstructivist reading of Complexity and Contradiction is quite different. The basic building was the
subject of problematics and intricacies in deconstructivism, with no detachment for ornament. Rather than
separating ornament and function, like postmodernists such as Venturi, the functional aspects of buildings
were called into question. Geometry was to deconstructivists what ornament was to postmodernists, the
subject of complication, and this complication of geometry was in turn, applied to the functional, structural,
and spatial aspects of deconstructivist buildings. One example of deconstructivist complexity is Frank
Gehry's Vitra Design Museum in Weil-am-Rhein, which takes the typical unadorned white cube of
modernist art galleriesand deconstructs it, using geometries reminiscent of cubism and abstract
expressionism. This subverts the functional aspects of modernist simplicity while taking modernism,
particularly the international style, of which its white stucco skin is reminiscent, as a starting point. Another
example of the deconstructivist reading of Complexity and Contradiction is Peter Eisenman's Wexner
Center for the Arts. The Wexner Center takes the archetypal form of the castle, which it then imbues with
complexity in a series of cuts and fragmentations. A three-dimensional grid, runs somewhat arbitrarily
through the building. The grid, as a reference to modernism, of which it is an accoutrement, collides with
the medieval antiquity of a castle. Some of the grid's columns intentionally don't reach the ground, hovering
over stairways creating a sense of neurotic unease and contradicting the structural purpose of the  column.
The Wexner Center deconstructs the archetype of the castle and renders its spaces and structure with
conflict and difference.

[edit]Deconstructivist philosophy
The main channel from deconstructivist philosophy to architectural theory was through the
philosopher Jacques Derrida's influence with Peter Eisenman. Eisenman drew some philosophical bases
from the literary movement Deconstruction, and collaborated directly with Derrida on projects including an
entry for the Parc de la Villette competition, documented inChora l Works. Both Derrida and Eisenman, as
well as Daniel Libeskind[4] were concerned with the "metaphysics of presence," and this is the main subject
of deconstructivist philosophy in architecture theory. The presupposition is that architecture is a language
capable of communicating meaning and of receiving treatments by methods of linguistic philosophy. [5] The
dialectic of presence and absence, or solid and void occurs in much of Eisenman's projects, both built and
unbuilt. Both Derrida and Eisenman believe that the locus, or place of presence, is architecture, and the
same dialectic of presence and absence is found in construction and deconstructivism. [6]

According to Derrida, readings of texts are best carried out when working with classical narrative
structures. Any architectural deconstruction requires the existence of a particular archetypal construction, a
strongly-established conventional expectation to play flexibly against. [7] The design of Frank Gehry’s
own Santa Monica residence, (from 1978), has been cited as a prototypical deconstructivist building. His
starting point was a prototypical suburban house embodied with a typical set of intended social meanings.
Gehry altered its massing, spatial envelopes, planes and other expectations in a playful subversion, an act
of "de"construction"[8]

In addition to Derrida's concepts of the metaphysics of presence and deconstructivism, his notions of trace
and erasure, embodied in his philosophy of writing and arche-writing [9] found their way into
deconstructivist memorials. Daniel Libeskind envisioned many of his early projects as a form of writing or
discourse on writing and often works with a form of concrete poetry. He made architectural sculptures out
of books and often coated the models in texts, openly making his architecture refer to writing. The notions
of trace and erasure were taken up by Libeskind in essays and in his project for the Jewish Museum Berlin.
The museum is conceived as a trace of the erasure of the  Holocaust, intended to make its subject legible
and poignant. Memorials such as Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial and Peter Eisenman's Memorial
to the Murdered Jews of Europe also reflect themes of trace and erasure.

[edit]Constructivism and Russian Futurism

Another major current in deconstructivist architecture takes inspiration from the
Russian Constructivist and Futurist movements of the early twentieth century, both in their graphics and in
their visionary architecture, little of which was actually constructed.

Artists Naum Gabo, El Lissitzky, Kazimir Malevich, and Alexander Rodchenko, have influenced the graphic
sense of geometric forms of deconstructivist architects such as Zaha Hadidand Coop Himmelb(l)au. Both
Deconstructivism and Constructivism have been concerned with the tectonics of making an abstract
assemblage. Both were concerned with the radical simplicity of geometric forms as the primary artistic
content, expressed in graphics, sculpture and architecture. The Constructivist tendency toward  purism,
though, is absent in Deconstructivism: form is often deformed when construction is deconstructed. Also
lessened or absent is the advocacy of socialist and collectivist causes.

The primary graphic motifs of constructivism were the rectangular bar and the triangular wedge, others
were the more basic geometries of the square and the circle. In his series  Prouns, El Lizzitzky assembled
collections of geometries at various angles floating free in space. They evoke basic structural units such as
bars of steel or sawn lumber loosely attached, piled, or scattered. They were also often  drafted and share
aspects with technical drawing and engineering drawing. Similar in composition is the deconstructivist
series Micromegas by Daniel Libeskind.

The symbolic breakdown of the wall effected by introducing the Constructivist motifs of tilted and crossed bars

sets up a subversion of the walls that define the bar itself. ...This apparent chaos actually constructs the walls

that define the bar; it is the structure. The internal disorder produces the bar while splitting it even as gashes

open up along its length.

– Phillip Johnson and Mark Wigley, Deconstructive Architecture, p.34

[edit]Contemporary art
Two strains of modern art, minimalism and cubism, have had an influence on deconstructivism. Analytical
cubism had a sure effect on deconstructivism, as forms and content are dissected and viewed from
different perspectives simultaneously. A synchronicity of disjoined space is evident in many of the works
of Frank Gehry and Bernard Tschumi. Synthetic cubism, with its application of found art, is not as great an
influence on deconstructivism as Analytical cubism, but is still found in the earlier and more vernacular
works of Frank Gehry. Deconstructivism also shares with minimalism a disconnection from cultural
references.

UFA-Palast in Dresden by Coop Himmelb(l)au

With its tendency toward deformation and dislocation, there is also an aspect
of expressionism and expressionist architecture associated with deconstructivism. At times
deconstructivism mirrors varieties of expressionism, neo-expressionism, and abstract expressionism as
well. The angular forms of the Ufa Cinema Center by Coop Himmelb(l)au recall the abstract geometries of
the numbered paintings of Franz Kline, in their unadorned masses. The UFA Cinema Center also would
make a likely setting for the angular figures depicted in urban German street scenes by Ernst Ludwig
Kirchner. The work of Wassily Kandinsky also bears similarities to deconstructivist architecture. His
movement into abstract expressionism and away from figurative work, [10] is in the same spirit as the
deconstructivist rejection of ornament for geometries.

Several artists in the 1980s and 1990s contributed work that influenced or took part in
deconstructivism. Maya Lin and Rachel Whitereadare two examples. Lin's 1982 project for the Vietnam
Veterans Memorial, with its granite slabs severing the ground plane, is one. Its shard-like form and
reduction of content to a minimalist text influenced deconstructivism, with its sense of fragmentation and
emphasis on reading the monument. Lin also contributed work for Eisenman's Wexner Center. Rachel
Whiteread's cast architectural spaces are another instance where contemporary art is confluent with
architecture. Ghost (1990), an entire living space cast in plaster, solidifying the void, alludes to Derrida's
notion of architectural presence. Gordon Matta-Clark's Building cuts were deconstructed sections of
buildings exhibited in art galleries.

[edit]1988 MOMA exhibition

Mark Wigley and Phillip Johnson curated the 1988 Museum of Modern Art exhibition Deconstructivist
architecture, which crystallized the movement, and brought fame and notoriety to its key practitioners. The
architects presented at the exhibition were Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Coop
Himmelblau, Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind, and Bernard Tschumi. Mark Wigley wrote the
accompanying essay and tried to show a common thread among the various architects whose work was
usually more noted for their differences.

The projects in this exhibition mark a different sensibility, one in which the dream of pure form has been
disturbed. It is the ability to disturb our thinking about form that makes these projects deconstructive. The show

examines an episode, a point of intersection between several architects where each constructs an unsettling

building by exploiting the hidden potential of modernism.

– Phillip Johnson and Mark Wigley, Excerpts from Deconstructivist Architecture

[edit]Computer-aided design

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao by Frank Gehry, in Bilbao, Spain.

Computer aided design is now an essential tool in most aspects of contemporary architecture, but the
particular nature of deconstrucivism makes the use of computers especially pertinent. Three-dimensional
modelling and animation (virtual and physical) assists in the conception of very complicated spaces, while
the ability to link computer models to manufacturing jigs (CAM - Computer-aided manufacturing) allows the
mass production of subtly different modular elements to be achieved at affordable costs. In retrospect
many early deconstructivist works appear to have been conceived with the aid of a computer, but were
not; Zaha Hadid's sketches for instance. Also, Gehry is noted for producing many physical models as well
as computer models as part of his design process. Though the computer has made the designing of
complex shapes much easier, not everything that looks odd is "deconstructivist."

[edit]Critical responses

Since the publication of Kenneth Frampton's Modern Architecture: A Critical History (first edition 1980)
there has been a keen consciousness of the role of criticism within architectural theory. Whilst referencing
Derrida as a philosophical influence, deconstructivism can also be seen as having as much a basis
incritical theory as the other major offshoot of postmodernism, critical regionalism. The two aspects of
critical theory, urgency and analysis, are found in deconstructivism. There is a tendency to re-examine and
critique other works or precedents in deconstructivism, and also a tendency to set esthetic issues in the
foreground. An example of this is the Wexner Center. Critical Theory, however, had at its core a critique of
capitalism and its excess, and from that respect many of the works of the Deconstructivists would fail in
that regard if only they are made for an elite and are, as objects, highly expensive, despite whatever
critique they may claim to impart on the conventions of design.

The difference between criticality in deconstructivism and criticality in critical regionalism, is that critical
regionalism reduces the overall level of complexity involved and maintains a clearer analysis while
attempting to reconcile modernist architecture with local differences. In effect, this leads to a modernist
"vernacular." Critical regionalism displays a lack of self-criticism and a utopianism of place.
Deconstructivism, meanwhile, maintains a level of self-criticism, as well as external criticism and tends
towards maintaining a level of complexity. Some architects identified with the movement, notably Frank
Gehry, have actively rejected the classification of their work as deconstructivist. [11]

Critics of deconstructivism see it as a purely formal exercise with little social significance. Kenneth
Frampton finds it "elitist and detached." [12] Nikos Salingaros calls deconstructivism a "viral expression" that
invades design thinking in order to build destroyed forms; while curiously similar to both Derrida's and Philip
Johnson's descriptions, this is meant as a harsh condemnation of the entire movement. [13] Other criticisms
are similar to those of deconstructivist philosophy—that since the act of deconstructivism is not an
empirical process, it can result in whatever an architect wishes, and it thus suffers from a lack of
consistency. Today there is a sense that the philosophical underpinnings of the beginning of the movement
have been lost, and all that is left is the aesthetic of deconstructivism. [14] Other criticisms reject the premise
that architecture is a language capable of being the subject of linguistic philosophy, or, if it was a language
in the past, critics claim it is no longer. [5] Others question the wisdom and impact on future generations of
an architecture that rejects the past and presents no clear values as replacements and which often pursues
strategies that are intentionally aggressive to human senses. [5]

Peter Eisenman
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Peter Eisenman

Personal information

Nationality American

Born August 11, 1932 (age 78)

Newark, New Jersey, U.S.

Work

Buildings House VI

Wexner Center for the Arts

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

City of Culture of Galicia

Peter Eisenman (born August 11, 1932 in Newark, New Jersey[1]) is an American architect of global
renown. Eisenman's professional work is often referred to as formalist, deconstructive, late avant-garde,
late or high modernist, etc. A certain fragmenting of forms visible in some of Eisenman's projects has been
identified as characteristic of an eclectic group of architects that were (self-)labeled as deconstructivists,
and who were featured in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art by the same name. The heading also
refers to the storied relationship and collaborations between Peter Eisenman and post-structuralist
thinker Jacques Derrida. [2] Peter Eisenman is one of the most famous and influential living architects,
whose contributions to the practice and discourse of Modern Architecture may only be rivaled by Philip
Johnson,Le Corbusier, Claude Nicholas Ledoux, or Andrea Palladio himself.

Eisenman's vast writings have pursued topics including emancipation and autonomy of the discipline,
histories of Architects including, but not limited to, Giuseppe Terragni, Andrea Palladio, Le Corbusier and
James Sterling. While Eisenman's work and discourse are considered polarizing (due to a supposed
pursuit to liberate form from external references), such antagonistic associations are equally prompted by
Colin Rowe's 1972 criticism that the work pursues physique form of European modernism rather than the
utopian social agendas (See "Five Architects," (New York: Wittenborn, 1972)) or more recent accusations
that Eisenman's work is "post-humanist" (Perhaps because his references to the Renaissance are 'merely'
formal?). Despite the claims of "autonomization," Eisenman has famously pursued dialogues with important
cultural figures internationally, including his English mentor Colin Rowe, the Italian historian Manfredo
Tafuri, George Baird, Fredric Jameson,[citation needed] and Jacques Derrida.[3]

Contents
[hide]

1 Education

2 Practice

3 Awards

4 Buildings and works

5 See also

6 Bibliography

7 References

8 External links

[edit]Education

As a child Eisenman attended Columbia High School located in Maplewood, New Jersey. He discovered

architecture as an undergraduate at Cornell University and gave up his position on the swimming team in
order to immerse himself in the architecture program there. Eisenman received a Bachelor of Architecture
Degree from Cornell, a Master of Architecture Degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of
Architecture, Planning and Preservation, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Cambridge.
He received an honorary degree from Syracuse University School of Architecture in 2007.

Eisenman currently teaches theory seminars and advanced design studios at the Yale School of
Architecture.[4] He is Professor Emeritus at the Cooper Union School of Architecture. [5]

[edit]Practice

Eisenman first rose to prominence as a member of the New York Five (also known as the Whites, as
opposed to the Grays of Yale: Bob Stern, Charles Moore, etc.), five architects (Eisenman, Charles
Gwathmey, John Hejduk, Richard Meier, and Michael Graves) some of whose work was presented at a
CASE Studies conference in 1967. Eisenman received a number of grants from the Graham Foundation for
work done in this period. These architects' work at the time was often considered a reworking of the ideas
of Le Corbusier. Subsequently, the five architects each developed unique styles and ideologies, with
Eisenman becoming more affiliated with the Deconstructivist movement.

Eisenman's focus on "liberating" architectural form was notable from an academic and theoretical
standpoint but resulted in structures that were both badly built and hostile to users. The Wexner Center,
hotly anticipated as the first major public deconstructivist building, has required extensive and expensive
retrofitting because of elementary design flaws (such as incompetent material specifications, and fine art
exhibition space exposed to direct sunlight). It was frequently repeated that the Wexner's colliding planes
tended to make its users disoriented to the point of physical nausea; in 1997 researcher Michael Pollan
tracked the source of this rumor back to Eisenman himself. In the words of Andrew Ballantyne, "By some
scale of values he was actually enhancing the reputation of his building by letting it be known that it was
hostile to humanity."

Eisenman's House VI, designed for clients Richard and Suzanne Frank in the mid 1970's, confounds
expectations of structure and function. Suzanne Frank was initially sympathetic and patient with
Eisenman's theories and demands. But after years of fixes to the badly-specified and misbegotten House
VI (which had first broken the Franks' budget then consumed their life savings), Suzanne Frank was
prompted to strike back with Peter Eisenman's House VI: The Client's Response, in which she admitted
both the problems of the building, as much as its virtues.

Eisenman has also embarked on a larger series of building projects in his career, including the recently
completed Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin and the newUniversity of Phoenix
Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. His largest project to date is the soon-to-be completed City of Culture of
Galicia in Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

Eisenman is featured in wide print and many films, including the 30 minute 2008 film Peter Eisenman:
University of Phoenix Stadium for the Arizona Cardinals where he provides a tour of his recent
construction.

[edit]Awards

In 2001, Eisenman won the National Design Award for Architecture from the Cooper-Hewitt National
Design Museum.[6]

[edit]Buildings and works

USGS satellite image of the Greater Columbus Convention Center.

 House VI (Frank residence), Cornwall, Connecticut, Design: 1972.

 Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, 1989

 Nunotani building, Edogawa Tokyo Japan, 1991 [1]

 Greater Columbus Convention Center, Columbus, Ohio, 1993 [2]

 Aronoff Center for Design and Art , University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati,

Ohio, 1996

 City of Culture of Galicia, Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain, 1999

 Il giardino dei passi perduti, Castelvecchio Museum, Verona, 2004

 Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin, 2005

 University of Phoenix Stadium, Glendale, Arizona, 2006

Frank Gehry
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Frank Owen Gehry

Personal information

Nationality Canadian, American

Born February 28, 1929 (age 82)

Toronto, Ontario
 Practice Gehry Partners, LLP

Work

Buildings Guggenheim Museum, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Gehry

Residence,Weisman Art Museum, Dancing House, Art

Gallery of Ontario,EMP/SFM, Cinémathèque française

Awards AIA Gold Medal

National Medal of Arts

Order of Canada

Pritzker Prize

Frank Owen Gehry, CC (born Frank[1] Owen Goldberg; February 28, 1929) is a Canadian

American Pritzker Prize-winning architectbased in Los Angeles, California.

His buildings, including his private residence, have become tourist attractions. His works are often cited as
being among the most important works of contemporary architecture in the 2010 World Architecture
Survey, which led Vanity Fair to label him as "the most important architect of our age".[2]

Gehry's best-known works include the titanium-covered Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; MIT Stata

Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles; Experience
Music Project in Seattle; Weisman Art Museum inMinneapolis; Dancing House in Prague; the Vitra Design
Museum and MARTa Museum in Germany; the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto and the Cinémathèque
française in Paris. But it was his private residence in Santa Monica, California, which jump-started his
career, lifting it from the status of "paper architecture" – a phenomenon that many famous architects have
experienced in their formative decades through experimentation almost exclusively on paper before
receiving their first major commission in later years.

Contents
[hide]

1 Personal life

2 Architectural style

3 Criticism

4 Other notable aspects of career

o 4.1 Awards

o 4.2 Academia

o 4.3 Budgets

o 4.4 Celebrity status
 o 4.5 Documentary

o 4.6 Fish and furniture

5 Software development

6 Works

7 Awards

8 Honorary doctorates

9 See also

10 Notes

11 References

12 External links

[ edit]Personal life
Gehry was born Frank[1] Owen Goldberg on February 28, 1929, in Toronto, Ontario; his parents were Polish
Jews.[3] A creative child, he was encouraged by his grandmother, Mrs. Caplan, with whom he would build
little cities out of scraps of wood. [4] His use of corrugated steel, chain link fencing, and other materials was
partly inspired by spending Saturday mornings at his grandfather's hardware store. He would spend time
drawing with his father and his mother introduced him to the world of art. "So the creative genes were
there," Gehry says. "But my father thought I was a dreamer, I wasn't gonna amount to anything. It was my
mother who thought I was just reticent to do things. She would push me." [5]

He was given the Hebrew name "Ephraim" by his grandfather but only used it at his bar mitzvah.[1]

In 1947 Gehry moved to California, got a job driving a delivery truck, and studied at Los Angeles City
College, eventually to graduate from the University of Southern California's School of Architecture. After
graduation from USC in 1954, he spent time away from the field of architecture in numerous other jobs,
including service in the United States Army. He studied city planning at the Harvard Graduate School of
Design for a year, leaving before completing the program. In 1952, still known as Frank Goldberg, he
married Anita Snyder, who he claims was the one who told him to change his name, which he did, to Frank
Gehry. In 1966 he and Snyder divorced. In 1975 he married Berta Isabel Aguilera, his current wife. He has
two daughters from his first marriage, and two sons from his second marriage.

Having grown up in Canada, Gehry is a huge fan of hockey. He began a hockey league in his office, FOG
(which stands for Frank Owen Gehry), though he no longer plays with them. [citation needed] In 2004, he designed
the trophy for the World Cup of Hockey.[citation needed] Gehry holds dual citizenship in Canada and the United
States. He lives in Santa Monica, California, and continues to practice out of Los Angeles.

[ edit]Architectural style
The tower at 8 Spruce Street in lower Manhattan which was completed in February 2011 has a titanium and glass
exterior and is 76 stories high.

Much of Gehry's work falls within the style of Deconstructivism. Deconstructivism, also known as DeCon
Architecture, is often referred to aspost-structuralist in nature for its ability to go beyond current modalities
of structural definition. In architecture, its application tends to depart from modernism in its inherent
criticism of culturally inherited givens such as societal goals and functional necessity. Because of this,
unlike early modernist structures, DeCon structures are not required to reflect specific social or universal
ideas, such as speed or universality of form, and they do not reflect a belief that form follows function.
Gehry's own Santa Monica residence is a commonly cited example of deconstructivist architecture, as it
was so drastically divorced from its original context, and in such a manner as to subvert its original spatial
intention.

The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain

Gehry is sometimes associated with what is known as the "Los Angeles School," or the "Santa Monica
School" of architecture. The appropriateness of this designation and the existence of such a school,
however, remains controversial due to the lack of a unifying philosophy or theory. This designation stems
from the Los Angeles area's producing a group of the most influential postmodern architects, including such
notable Gehry contemporaries as Eric Owen Moss and Pritzker Prize-winner Thom Mayne of Morphosis,
as well as the famous schools of architecture at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (co-
founded by Mayne), UCLA, and USC where Gehry is a member of the Board of Directors.

Gehry’s style at times seems unfinished or even crude, but his work is consistent with the California ‘funk’
art movement in the 1960s and early 1970s, which featured the use of inexpensive found objects and non-
traditional media such as clay to make serious art [citation needed]. Gehry has been called "the apostle of chain-
link fencing and corrugated metal siding". [6] However, a retrospective exhibit at New York's Whitney
Museum in 1988 revealed that he is also a sophisticated classical artist, who knows European art history
and contemporary sculpture and painting[citation needed].

[ edit]Criticism

The Experience Music Project in Seattle

Walt Disney Concert Hall

Dancing House in Prague

Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto

Gehry's work has its detractors. Some have said:[7][8]

 The buildings waste structural resources by creating functionless forms.

 The buildings are apparently designed without accounting for the local
climate.

 The spectacle of a building often overwhelms its intended use, especially

in the case of museums and arenas.

 The buildings do not seem to belong in their surroundings.

[ edit]Other notable aspects of career

[edit]Awards

Gehry was elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in 1974, and he
has received many national, regional, and local AIA awards, including AIA Los Angeles Chapter Gold
Medal. He presently serves on the steering committee of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. Gehry was
awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize at the Tōdai-ji Buddhist Temple in 1989. The Pritzker Prize serves
to honor a living architect whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision,
and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built
environment through the art of architecture. In 1999, he was awarded the AIA Gold Medal "in recognition of
a significant body of work of lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture." He accepted the
2007The Henry C. Turner Prize for Innovation in Construction Technology from the National Building
Museum on behalf of Gehry Partners and Gehry Technologies.

[edit]Academia

Gehry is a Distinguished Professor of Architecture at Columbia University and teaches advanced design

studios at the Yale School of Architecture. He has received honorary doctoral degrees from Occidental
College, Whittier College, the Southern California Institute of Architecture, the University of Toronto,
the California College of Arts and Crafts, the Technical University of Nova Scotia, the Rhode Island School
of Design, the California Institute of the Arts, and the Otis Art Institute at the Parsons School of Design. In
1982 and 1989, he held the Charlotte Davenport Professorship in Architecture at Yale University. In 1984,
he held the Eliot Noyes Chair at Harvard University. In January 2011, he joined the University of Southern
California (USC) faculty, as the Judge Widney Professor of Architecture.[9]

[edit]Budgets

Gehry has gained a reputation for taking the budgets of his clients seriously, in an industry where complex
and innovative designs like Gehry's typically go over budget. Sydney Opera House, which has been
compared with the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in terms of architectural innovation, had a cost overrun of
1,400 percent. It was therefore duly noted when the Guggenheim Bilbao was constructed on time and
budget. In an interview in Harvard Design Magazine[10] Gehry explained how he did it. First, he ensured that
what he calls the "organization of the artist" prevailed during construction, in order to prevent political and
business interests from interfering with the design. Second, he made sure he had a detailed and realistic
cost estimate before proceeding. Third, he used CATIA (computer-aided three-dimensional interactive
application) and close collaboration with the individual building trades to control costs during construction.

However, not all of Gehry's projects have gone smoothly. The Walt Disney Concert Hall in Downtown Los
Angeles resulted in over 10,000 RFIs (requests for information) and was $174 million over budget.
Furthermore, there was a dispute which ended with a $17.8 million settlement. [11]

[edit]Celebrity status
Gehry is considered a modern architectural icon and celebrity, a major "Starchitect" —
a neologism describing the phenomenon of architects attaining a sort of celebrity status. Although Gehry
has been a vocal opponent of the term, it usually refers to architects known for dramatic, influential designs
that often achieve fame and notoriety through their spectacular effect. Other notable celebrity architects
include Jean Nouvel,Zaha Hadid, Thom Mayne, Steven Holl, Rem Koolhaas, and Norman Foster. Gehry
came to the attention of the public in 1972 with his "Easy Edges" cardboard furniture. He has appeared
in Apple's black and white "Think Different" pictorial ad campaign that associates offbeat but revered
figures with Apple's design philosophy. He even once appeared as himself in The Simpsons in the episode
"The Seven-Beer Snitch", where he parodied himself by intimating that his ideas are derived by looking at a
crumpled paper ball. He also voiced himself on the TV showArthur, where he helped Arthur and his friends
design a new treehouse. Steve Sample, President of the University of Southern California, told Gehry that
"...After George Lucas, you are our most prominent graduate." In 2009, Gehry designed a hat for pop
star Lady Gaga, reportedly by using his iPhone.[12]

[edit]Documentary

In 2005, veteran film director Sydney Pollack, a friend of Gehry's, made the documentary Sketches of

Frank Gehry with appreciative comments by Philip Johnson, Ed Ruscha, Julian Schnabel, and Dennis
Hopper, and critical ones by Hal Foster supplementing dialogue between Gehry and Pollack about their
work in two collaborative art forms with considerable commercial constraints and photography of some
buildings Gehry designed. It was released on DVD by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment on August 22,
2006, together with an interview of Sydney Pollack by fellow director Alexander Payne and some audience
questions following the premiere of the film.

[edit]Fish and furniture

Gehry is very much inspired by fish. Not only do they appear in his buildings, he created a line of jewelry,
household items, and sculptures based on this motif. "It was by accident I got into the fish image", claimed
Gehry. One thing that sparked his interest in fish was the fact that his colleagues are recreating Greek
temples. He said, "Three hundred million years before man was fish....if you gotta go back, and you're
insecure about going forward...go back three hundred million years ago. Why are you stopping at
the Greeks? So I started drawing fish in my sketchbook, and then I started to realize that there was
something in it."[13]

Standing Glass Fish is just one of many works featuring fish which Gehry has created. The gigantic fish is
made of glass plates and silicone, with the internal supporting structure of wood and steel clearly visible. It
soars above a reflecting pool in a glass building built especially for it, in the  Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.
Another huge Gehry fish sculpture dominates a public garden in front of the Fishdance Restaurant in  Kobe,
Japan.

In addition to architecture, Gehry has made a line of furniture, jewelry, various household items, sculptures,
and even a glass bottle for Wyborowa Vodka. His first line of furniture, produced from 1969–1973, was
called "Easy Edges", constructed out of cardboard. Another line of furniture released in the spring of 1992
is "Bentwood Furniture". Each piece is named after a different hockey term. He was first introduced to
making furniture in 1954 while serving in the U.S. Army, where he designed furniture for the enlisted
soldiers. Gehry claims that making furniture is his "quick fix". [14]

[ edit]Software development
Gehry's firm was responsible for innovation in architectural software. His firm spun off another firm called
Gehry Technologies which developed Digital Project.

[ edit]Works
Main article: List of Frank Gehry buildings

[ edit]Awards

 On December 6, 2006, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and

First Lady Maria Shriver inducted Frank Gehry into the California Hall of
Fame located at The California Museum for History, Women, and the Arts.

 On November 3, 2004, Gehry was awarded the prestigious Woodrow

Wilson Award for public service by the Woodrow Wilson Center of the
Smithsonian Institution in New York City.

 Gehry is a Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council

 In 1989, Gehry was the recipient of the Pritzker Prize for architecture.

 In 1994, Gehry was the recipient of The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize.

 In 1995, Gehry was the recipient of the Academy of Achievement Golden

Plate Award

 In 1998, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.[15]

 In 1999, he was awarded the AIA Gold Medal.

 In 2000, Gehry was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the
Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum[16]

Zaha Hadid
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Zaha Hadid

Personal information

Born 31 October 1950 (age 60)

Baghdad, Iraq

Practice Zaha Hadid Architects

Work
 Buildings Maxxi, Bridge Pavilion, Maggie's Centre, Contemporary Arts

Center

Maxxi, Rome

Bridge Pavilion in Zaragoza, Spain

Bergisel Ski Jump, Innsbruck, Austria
BMW Central Building, Leipzig, Germany

Vitra fire station, Weil am Rhein, Germany

Maggie's Centre, Kirkcaldy

Contemporary Arts Center Hadid's first American work in Cincinnati, Ohio

Zaha Hadid, CBE (Arabic: ‫حديد‬ ‫زها‬ Zahā Ḥadīd; born 31 October 1950) is an Iraqi-British architect.

Contents
[hide]

1 Life and career

2 Non-architectural work

3 Architectural work

o 3.1 Conceptual projects

o 3.2 Completed projects

o 3.3 Ongoing and future projects

4 Exhibitions

5 Films and Videos

6 Awards

7 See also

8 Further reading

9 References

10 External links

[edit]Life and career

Hadid was born in 1950 in Baghdad, Iraq. She received a degree in mathematics from the American
University of Beirut before moving to study at the Architectural Association School of
Architecture in London.

After graduating she worked with her former teachers, Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis at the Office for
Metropolitan Architecture, becoming a partner in 1977. It was with Koolhaas that she met the
engineer Peter Rice who gave her support and encouragement early on, at a time when her work seemed
difficult to build. In 1980 she established her own London-based practice. During the 1980s she also taught
at the Architectural Association. She has also taught at prestigious institutions around the world; she held
the Kenzo Tange Chair at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, the Sullivan Chair at
the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Architecture, guest professorships at the Hochschule für
Bildende Künste in Hamburg, the Knowlton School of Architecture, at The Ohio State University, the
Masters Studio at Columbia University, New York and the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor of Architectural
Design at the Yale School of Architecture in New Haven, Connecticut. In addition, she was made Honorary
Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and an Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of
Architects.[1] She has been on the Board of Trustees of The Architecture Foundation. She is currently
Professor at theUniversity of Applied Arts Vienna in Austria.

A winner of many international competitions, theoretically influential and groundbreaking, a number of

Hadid's winning designs were initially never built: notably, The Peak Club in Hong Kong (1983) and
the Cardiff Bay Opera House in Wales (1994). In 2002 Hadid won the international design competition to
design Singapore's one-north masterplan. In 2005, her design won the competition for the new city casino
of Basel,Switzerland. In 2004 Hadid became the first female recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize,
architecture's equivalent of the Nobel Prize. Previously, she had been awarded a CBE for services to
architecture. She is a member of the editorial board of the Encyclopædia Britannica. In 2006, Hadid was
honored with a retrospective spanning her entire work at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. In that
year she also received an Honorary Degree from the American University of Beirut.

Zaha Hadid's architectural design firm - Zaha Hadid Architects - is over 350 people strong, headquartered
in a Victorian former school building in Clerkenwell, London.

In 2008, she ranked 69th on the Forbes list of "The World's 100 Most Powerful Women".[2] On 2 January
2009, she was the guest editor of theBBC's flagship morning radio news programme, Today.[3]

In 2010 she was named by Time magazine as influential thinker in the 2010 TIME 100 issue. [4] In
September 2010, The British magazine New Statesman listed Zaha Hadid at number 42 in their annual
survey of "The World's 50 Most Influential Figures 2010".[5]

She won the 2010 Stirling Prize for one of her most celebrated work, the Maxxi in Rome.

Hadid is the designer of the Dongdaemun Design Plaza & Park in Seoul, South Korea, which is expected to
be the centerpiece of the festivities for the city's designation as World Design Capital 2010. The complex is
scheduled to be completed in 2011.

[edit]Non-architectural work

She has also undertaken some high-profile interior work, including the Mind Zone and Feet zone at
the Millennium Dome in London and the Z.CAR hydrogen-powered, three-wheeled automobile. In 2009,
she worked with the clothing brand Lacoste, to create a new, high fashion, and advanced boot. [6] In the
same year, she also collaborated with the brassware manufacturer Triflow Concepts [7] to produce two new
designs in her signature parametric architectural style. Her unique contributions to brassware design and
other fields continue to push the boundaries of innovation.

In 2007, Zaha Hadid designed the Moon System Sofa for leading Italian furniture manufacturer B&B Italia.[8]

[edit]Architectural work
[edit]Conceptual projects

 Price Tower extension hybrid project (2002), Bartlesville, Oklahoma -

pending

 Guggenheim-Hermitage Vilnius, Vilnius, Lithuania, (2008-) - not realized

 Kartal-Pendik Waterfront Regeneration, Istanbul, Turkey

 Szervita square bubble office building Budapest, Hungary - not realized

[edit]Completed projects

 Vitra Fire Station (1994), Weil am Rhein, Germany

 Hoenheim-North Terminus & Car Park (2001), Hoenheim, France. Project

architect: Stephane Hof

 Bergisel Ski Jump (2002), Innsbruck, Austria

  Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art (2003), Cincinnati, Ohio

 BMW Central Building (2005), Leipzig, Germany

 Ordrupgaard annexe (2005), Copenhagen, Denmark

 Phaeno Science Center (2005), Wolfsburg, Germany

 Maggie's Centres at the Victoria Hospital (2006), Kirkcaldy, Scotland

 Tondonia Winery Pavilion (2001–2006),[9] Haro, Spain

 Eleftheria square redesign (2007), Nicosia, Cyprus

 Hungerburgbahn new stations (2007), Innsbruck, Austria

 Chanel Mobile Art Pavilion (Worldwide) Tokyo, Hong Kong, New

York, London, Paris, Moscow, (2006–2008)

 Bridge Pavilion (2008), Zaragoza, Spain

 J. S. Bach Pavilion, Manchester International Festival (2009), Manchester,

UK

 CMA CGM Tower (2007–2010), Marseille, France

 Pierres vives (2002–2012), Montpellier, France. Project architect:

Stephane Hof

 MAXXI - National Museum of the 21st Century Arts  (1998–2010), Rome,

Italy.[10] Stirling Prize 2010 winner.

 Guangzhou Opera House (2010), Guangzhou, People's Republic of China

[edit]Ongoing and future projects

 New Maritime Terminal, Salerno, Italy (to be completed by 2011).

 Riverside Museum (2007–2011) (projected) development of Glasgow

Transport Museum, Scotland

 Eli and Edythe Broad Museum, Michigan State University, (2008–12)[11]

 Mandarin Oriental Dellis Cay, Villa D (2012) (private home under

construction), Dellis Cay, Turks & Caicos Islands

 London Aquatics Centre, London, UK, (2008–2013), a 17,500-seat venue

for the 2012 Summer Olympics.

 Napoli Afragola railway station, Italy (completion delayed to 2013)[12]

 Citylife office tower (Storto) and residentials, Milan, Italy (to be completed

by 2014)

 Nuragic and Contemporary art museum (2006) (on hold), Cagliari, Italy

 d'Leedon, Singapore (2011)

 Heydar Aliyev Cultural Centre in Baku, Azerbaijan.[13]

 Dongdaemun Design Plaza & Park in Seoul, South Korea.[14]

Recently[when?] Hadid has been commissioned by the Iraqi government to design the new building for the
Central Bank of Iraq. This project will be her first project for her native country. [15]

Other work includes the new departmental records building, Pierres vives, for Hérault in Montpellier.[16]

Zaha Hadid's project was named as the best for the Vilnius Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in 2008. She
designed the Innovation Tower for Hong Kong Polytechnic University, scheduled for completion in 2011,
and the Chanel Mobile Art Pavilion that was displayed in Hong Kong in 2008. [17][18][19] She has been
commissioned to design new buildings for Evelyn Grace Academy, Brixton.[20]

[edit]Exhibitions

 1978 - Guggenheim Museum, New York

 1983 - Retrospective at the Architectural Association, London

 1985 - GA Gallery, Tokyo

 1988 - Deconstructivist Architecture show at MoMA, New York

 1995 - Graduate School of Design at Harvard University

 1997 - San Francisco MoMA

 2000 - British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale

 2001 - Kunstmuseum, Wolfsburg

 2002 - (10 May-11 August) Centro nazionale per le arti

contemporanee, Rome [21]

 2003 - (4 May - 17 August) - MAK - Museum für angewandte

Kunst (Museum of Applied Arts) in Vienna

 2006 - (3 June - 25 October) – Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New

York

 2006 - (1 June - 29 July) – Ma10 Mx Protetch Gallery, Chelsea, NYC

 2007 - (29 June - 25 November) - Design Museum, London

[edit]Films and Videos

 A Day with Zaha Hadid 2004, 52 minutes, colour. New York: Michael

Blackwood Productions.
[edit]Awards

 2001 Equerre d'argent Prize, special mention

 2003 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture

 2004 Pritzker Prize

 2005 Designer of the Year Award for Design Miami

 2005 RIBA European Award for BMW Central Building[22]

  2006 RIBA European Award for Phaeno Science Center[23]

 2007 Thomas Jefferson Medal in Architecture

 2008 RIBA European Award for Nordpark Cable Railway[23]

 2009 Praemium Imperiale

 2010 RIBA European Award for MAXXI[24]

Coop Himmelb(l)au
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Coop Himmelblau)

BMW Welt in Munich

UFA-Palast in Dresden
Gasometer in Vienna

Groninger Museum, in the Netherlands

Arteplage in Biel/Bienne from Expo.02

Coop Himmelb(l)au (1968-) is a cooperative architectural design firm primarily located

in Vienna, Austria and which now also maintains offices in Los Angeles, United
States and Guadalajara, Mexico. The firm's name Himmelblau translates from German into English as 'sky
blue', Himmelbau translates to 'heaven construction'. The term Coop in the title is pronounced as is the
business abbreviation for cooperative, co-op.

Coop Himmelblau was founded by Wolf Prix, Helmut Swiczinsky and Michael Holzer and gained

international acclaim alongside Peter Eisenman, Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry with the 1988 exhibition,
"Deconstructivist Architecture" at the Museum of Modern Art. Their work ranges from commercial buildings
to residential projects.

Contents
[hide]

1 Selected projects

2 Awards

3 See also

4 External links

[edit]Selected projects
  The European Central Bank in Frankfurt (Under construction)

 Musée des Confluences, Lyon, France (Under construction)

 Hotel - 55th Street & 8th Avenue, New York City (proposed)

 Akron Art Museum addition (2007)

 High School for the Visual and Performing Arts  with HMC Architects (Los
Angeles Area High School #9, California, USA) (2002–2008)

 BMW World (BMW Welt) Munich, Germany (2001–2007)

 Great Egyptian Museum, Cairo, Egypt (2002–2003)

 Arteplage in Biel/Bienne from Swiss Expo.02

 The Media Pavilion at the 6th International Architecture Exhibition,

Biennale di Venezia (1995)

 UFA-Cinema Center in Dresden (1993–98)

 Groninger Museum, Groningen (city), Netherlands (1993–1994)

 Academy of Fine Arts Munich (1992/2002-2005)

 Gasometer, Vienna, Austria (1999-2001)

[edit]Awards

 2008 RIBA European Award for BMW World

 American Architecture Awards 2005

 The Chicago Athenaeum, Illinois

 Akron Art Museum, Ohio, USA (2001-2006)

 Annie Spink Award for excellence in architectural education, RIBA,

London, UK, 2004

 Gold Medal for merits to the federal state of Vienna, Austria 2002

Rem Koolhaas
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rem Koolhaas
Rem Koolhaas in 2005

Personal information

Nationality Dutch

Born 17 November 1944 (age 66)

Rotterdam, Netherlands

Alma mater Netherlands Film and Television Academy, Architectural

Association School of Architecture, Cornell University

Practice Office for Metropolitan Architecture

Work

Buildings Casa da Música in Porto

Seattle Central Library

Netherlands Embassy Berlin

Projects Volume Magazine

Awards Pritzker Prize (2000)

Praemium Imperiale (2003)

Royal Gold Medal (2004)

Remment Lucas Koolhaas (English pronunciation: /ˈrɛm ˈkɔːlhɑːs/; born 17 November 1944) is a
Dutch architect, architectural theorist, urbanistand "Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design"
at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, USA. Koolhaas studied at the Netherlands Film
and Television Academy in Amsterdam, at the Architectural Association School of
Architecture in London and atCornell University in Ithaca, New York. Koolhaas is the founding partner
of OMA, and of its research-oriented counterpart AMO, currently based in Rotterdam, Netherlands. In 2005
he co-founded Volume Magazine together with Mark Wigley and Ole Bouman.

In 2000 Rem Koolhaas won the Pritzker Prize. In 2008 Time put him in their top 100 of The World's Most
Influential People.[1]

Contents
[hide]

1 Early life and career

2 Theoretical position

o 2.1 Delirious New York

o 2.2 S,M,L,XL

o 2.3 Project on the city

o 2.4 AMO

o 2.5 Volume Magazine

o 2.6 European Flag proposal

o 2.7 Architecture, fashion, and theatre

o 2.8 21st Century Office

3 Quotes

4 Awards

5 Selected projects

6 Bibliography

7 Gallery

8 References

9 External links

[ edit]Early life and career

Remment Koolhaas, usually abbreviated to Rem Koolhaas, was born on 17 November 1944
in Rotterdam, Netherlands to Anton Koolhaas(1912–1992) and Selinde Pietertje Roosenburg (born 1920).
His father was a novelist, critic, and screenwriter. Two documentary films by Bert Haanstra for which his
father wrote the scenarios were nominated for an Academy Award for Documentary Feature, one won
a Golden Bearfor Short Film. His maternal grandfather, Dirk Roosenburg (1887–1962), was a modernist
architect. His grandfather had worked for Hendrik Petrus Berlage, before he opened his own practice. Rem
Koolhaas has a brother, Thomas, and a sister, Annabel. The family lived consecutively in Rotterdam (until
1946), Amsterdam (1946–1952), Jakarta (1952–1955), and Amsterdam (from 1955).[2][3][4]

His father strongly supported the Indonesian cause for autonomy from the colonial Dutch in his writing.
When the war of independence was won, he was invited over to run a cultural programme for three years
and the family moved to Jakarta in 1952. "It was a very important age for me," Koolhaas recalls, "and I
really lived as an Asian."[5]

Koolhaas first studied scriptwriting at the Netherlands Film and Television Academy in Amsterdam.
Koolhaas co-wrote The White Slave, a 1969 Dutch film noir, and later wrote an unproduced script for
American soft-porn king Russ Meyer.[6]

He then was a journalist for the Haagse Post before starting studies, in 1968, in architecture at
the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, followed, in 1972, by further studies
at Cornell University in New York.

Koolhaas first came to public and critical attention with OMA (The Office for Metropolitan Architecture), the
office he founded in 1975 together with architects Elia Zenghelis, Zoe Zenghelis and (Koolhaas's
wife) Madelon Vriesendorp in London. They were later joined by one of Koolhaas's students, Zaha Hadid -
who would soon go on to achieve success in her own right. An early work which would mark their
difference from the then dominant postmodern classicism of the late 1970s, was their contribution to
the Venice Biennale of 1980, curated by Italian architect Paolo Portoghesi, titled "Presence of the Past".
Each architect had to design a stage-like "frontage" to a Potemkin-type internal street; and the OMA
scheme was the only modernist scheme among them.

Other early critically received (yet unbuilt) projects included the Parc de la Villette, Paris (1982) and the
residence for the President of Ireland (1981). The first large project by OMA to be built was the Kunsthal in
Rotterdam (1992). These schemes would attempt to put into practice many of the findings Koolhaas made
in his book Delirious New York (1978),[7] which was written while he was a visiting scholar at the Institute for
Architecture and Urban Studies in New York, directed by Peter Eisenman.[8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]
 In September 2006, Rem Koolhaas was commissioned to develop 111 First Street in Jersey
[24][25][26][27]

City across theHudson River from Manhattan, working with real estate developer Louis Dubin.[28]

In October 2008 Rem Koolhaas was invited for a European "group of the wise" under the chairmanship of
former Spanish prime minister Felipe González to help 'design' the futureEuropean Union. Other members
include Nokia chairman Jorma Ollila, former European Commissioner Mario Monti and former president of
Poland Lech Wałęsa.[29][30]

[ edit]Theoretical position
[edit]Delirious New York
Delirious New York set the pace for Koolhaas's career. Koolhaas celebrates the "chance-like" nature of city
life: "The City is an addictive machine from which there is no escape" "Rem Koolhaas...defined the city as a
collection of “red hot spots.” [31](Anna Klingmann). As Koolhaas himself has acknowledged, this approach
had already been evident in the JapaneseMetabolist Movement in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Seattle Central Library Seattle, USA, designed by OMA

A key aspect of architecture that Koolhaas interrogates is the "Program": with the rise of modernism in the
20th century the "Program" became the key theme of architectural design. The notion of the Program
involves "an act to edit function and human activities" as the pretext of architectural design: epitomised in
the maxim Form follows function, first popularised by architect Louis Sullivan and Nicolas Cisneros at the
beginning of the 20th century. The notion was first questioned in Delirious New York, in his analysis of
high-rise architecture in Manhattan. An early design method derived from such thinking was "cross-
programming", introducing unexpected functions in room programmes, such as running tracks in
skyscrapers. More recently, Koolhaas (unsuccessfully) proposed the inclusion of hospital units for the
homeless into the Seattle Public Library project (2003).

[edit]S,M,L,XL

The next landmark publication by Koolhaas was S,M,L,XL, together with Bruce Mau, Jennifer Sigler,
and Hans Werlemann (1995),[32] a 1376-page tome combining essays, manifestos, diaries, fiction,
travelogues, and meditations on the contemporary city. The layout of the huge book transformed
architectural publishing, and such books—full-colour graphics and dense texts—have since become
common. Ostensibly, S,M,L,XL gives a record of the actual implementation of "Manhattanism" throughout
the various (mostly un-) realized projects and texts OMA had generated up to that time. The part lexicon-
type layout (with a marginal "dictionary" composed by Jennifer Sigler, who also edited the book) spawned a
number of concepts that have become common in later architectural theory, in particular "Bigness": 'old'
architectural principles (composition, scale, proportion, detail) no longer apply when a building acquires
Bigness. This was demonstrated in OMA's scheme for the development of "Euralille" (1990–94), a new
centre for the city of Lille in France, a city returned to prominence by its position on the new rail route from
Paris to London via the Channel Tunnel. OMA sited a train station, two centres for commerce and trade, an
urban park, and 'Congrexpo' (a contemporary Grand Palais with a large concert hall, three auditoria and an
exhibition space). In another essay in the book, titled "The Generic City", Koolhaas declares that progress,
identity, architecture, the city and the street are things of the past: “Relief … it’s over. That is the story of
the city. The city is no longer. We can leave the theatre now...”

[edit]Project on the city

Netherlands Embassy in Berlin, Germany, opened in 2004. Koolhaas's design won theArchitekturpreis Berlin in 2003
and the Mies van der Rohe Award for European Architecture in 2005.

Koolhaas's next landmark publications were a product of his position as professor at  Harvard University, in
the design school's "Project on the City"; firstly the 720-page Mutations,[33] followed by The Harvard Design
School Guide to Shopping (2002)[34] and The Great Leap Forward (2002).[35] All three books involved
Koolhaas's students analysing what others would regard as "non-cities", sprawling conglomerates such
as Lagos in Nigeria, west Africa, which the authors argue are highly functional despite a lack of
infrastructure. The authors also examine the influence of shopping habits and the recent rapid growth of
cities in China. Critics of the books have criticised Koolhaas for being cynical - as if
Western capitalism and globalization demolish all cultural identity - highlighted in the notion expounded in
the books that "In the end, there will be little else for us to do but shop". However, such cynicism can
alternatively be read as a "realism" about the transformation of cultural life, where airports and even
museums (due to finance problems) rely just as much on operating gift shops.

When it comes to transforming these observations into practice, Koolhaas mobilizes what he regards as
the omnipotent forces of urbanism into unique design forms and connections organised along the lines of
present day society. Koolhaas continuously incorporates his observations of the contemporary city within
his design activities: calling such a condition the ‘culture of congestion’. Again, shopping is examined for
"intellectual comfort", whilst the unregulated taste and densification of Chinese cities is analysed according
to "performance", a criterion involving variables with debatable credibility: density, newness, shape, size,
money etc. For example, in his design for the new CCTV headquarters in Beijing (2009), Koolhaas did not
opt for the stereotypical skyscraper, often used to symbolise and landmark such government enterprises,
but instead designed a series of volumes which not only tie together the numerous departments onto the
nebulous site, but also introduced routes (again, the concept of cross-programming) for the general public
through the site, allowing them some degree of access to the production procedure. Through his ruthlessly
raw approach, Koolhaas hopes to extract the architect from the anxiety of a dead profession and resurrect
a contemporary interpretation of the sublime, however fleeting it may be.

In 2003 Content, a 544-page magazine-style book designed by &&& Creative and published by Koolhaas,

gives an overview of the last decade of OMA projects [36] including his designs for the Prada shops,
the Seattle Public Library, a plan to save Cambridge from Harvard by rechanneling the Charles River,
Lagos' future as Earth's third-biggest town, as well as interviews with Martha Stewart and Robert
Venturi and Denise Scott Brown.

[edit]AMO

In the late nineties, while working on the design for the new headquarters for Universal (currently Vivendi),
OMA was first exposed to the full pace of change that engulfed the world of media and with it the
increasing importance of the virtual domain. It led Rem Koolhaas and the Office for Metropolitan
Architecture (OMA) to create a new company, AMO, exclusively dedicated to the investigation and
performance in this realm. He is heading the think tank ever since with Reinier de Graaf.

[edit]Volume Magazine
In 2005 Rem Koolhaas co-founded Volume Magazine together with Mark Wigley and Ole Bouman. Volume
Magazine - the collaborative project by Archis (Amsterdam), AMO Rotterdam and C-lab (Columbia
University NY) - is a dynamic experimental think tank devoted to the process of spatial and cultural
reflexivity. It goes beyond architecture’s definition of ‘making buildings’ and reaches out for global views on
architecture and design, broader attitudes to social structures, and creating environments to live in. The
magazine stands for a journalism which detects and anticipates, is proactive and even pre-emptive - a
journalism which uncovers potentialities, rather than covering done deals.

[edit]European Flag proposal

European Flag proposal

Following the signing of Treaties of Nice in May 2001, which made Brussels the de facto capital of the
European Union, the then President of the European Commission, Romano Prodi and the Belgian Prime
Minister Guy Verhofstadt invited Koolhaas to discuss the necessities and requirements of a European
capital.

During these talks and as an impetus for further discussion, Koolhaas and his think-tank AMO – an
independent part of OMA – suggested the development of a visual language. This idea inspired a series of
drawings and drafts, including the "Barcode". The barcode seeks to unite the flags of the EU member
countries into a single, colourful symbol. In the current European flag, there is a fixed number of stars. In
the barcode however, new Member States of the EU can be added without space constraints. Originally,
the barcode displayed 15 EU countries. In 2004, the symbol was adapted to include the ten new Member
States.

Since the time of the first drafts of the barcode it has very rarely been officially used by commercial or
political institutions. During theAustrian EU Presidency 2006 it was officially used for the first time. The logo
has already been used for the EU information campaign which will also be continued during the Austrian
EU Presidency. There was initially some uproar caused, as the stripes of the flag ofEstonia were displayed
incorrectly.

[edit]Architecture, fashion, and theatre

Prada, Beverly Hills, USA

Second Stage Theatre, New York, USA

With his Prada projects, Koolhaas ventured into providing architecture for the fleeting world of fashion and
with celebrity-studded cachet: not unlike Garnier's Opera, the central space of Koolhaas' Beverly
Hills Prada store is occupied by a massive central staircase, ostensibly displaying select wares, but mainly
the shoppers themselves. The notion of selling a brand rather than marketing clothes was further
emphasised in the Prada store in New York, which had previously been owned by the Guggenheim: the
museum signs were not removed during the outfitting of the new store, as if emphasizing the premises as a
cultural institution.[37]

Prior to his Prada project in New York, Koolhaas was behind another remodeling project on the other side
of town. Koolhaas redesigned a 1929 bank and transformed it into a one-of-a-kind, 296 seat, performance
space for Second Stage Theatre.

Koolhaas is currently developing new projects with the up and coming New Wave Architect Jim Bogle of
the University at Buffalo.

[edit]21st Century OfficeAt the moment Koolhaas' constructions sites are in China[citation needed]: the
massive Central China Television Headquarters Building in Beijing, China, and the new building for the
Shenzhen Stock Exchange, the equivalent of the NASDAQ in China.

Recently[when?] he has changed the organization of his office to a

partnership. Partners next to him are Ellen van Loon, Reinier de Graaf,
Shohei Shigematsu and managing partner Victor van der Chijs. The
partner Ole Scheeren left OMA in March 2010 to start his own practice.

Koolhaas now heads offices in Europe (OMA*AMO Rotterdam), North

America (OMA*AMO Architecture PC New York) and Asia (OMA
Beijing).

OMA Rotterdam: the head office is working on a master plan for the
White City area of London; a harbour redevelopment and contemporary
art Museum in Riga, the Cordoba Congress Centre in Spain; the
redevelopment of the Mercati Generali in Rome, an architectural centre,
offices and housing in Copenhagen, the new head office of Rothschild
Bank in London and multi-use towers in Rotterdam and The Hague. It is
also working on various masterplans in the Netherlands and Belgium
and shopping centres in Rotterdam and Ostrava. In addition the
Rotterdam office has a number of activities in the Middle East including
office and residential towers and master plans in Dubai, three master
plans in Ras -Al-Khaimah and several public buildings in Qatar. With his
Rotterdam office Koolhaas is also designing a science center for
Hamburg’s Hafencity.
OMA New York: the office in Manhattan Koolhaas is leading by Shohei
Shigematsu is now designing an extension of Cornell University (NY),
111 First Street, a high rise residential building and hotel in Jersey City
(NJ) and a high end residential tower with CAA screening room at One
Madison Park in NYC.

OMA Beijing: In Asia, Koolhaas is working with his team on the office’s
largest project to date, the 575,000 m2 China Central Television
Headquarters (CCTV) and Television Cultural Center (TVCC), currently
under construction in Beijing and due for completion in 2008. (However,
the TVCC was damaged by an enormous fire in 2009.) Other projects in
development include the new Shenzhen Stock Exchange and a lush
residential tower and residential masterplan in Singapore.

[ edit]Quotes

 Noting that architecture can no longer keep up with the world: "The
areas of consensus shift unbelievably fast; the bubbles of certainty
are constantly exploding. Any architectural project we do takes at
least four or five years, so increasingly there is a discrepancy
between the acceleration of culture and the continuing slowness of
architecture." —interview inIconeye, 2004[38]

 Reference to the article 'Generic city', a critic to current mode of

urbanization: "People can inhabit anything. And they can be
miserable in anything and ecstatic in anything. More and more I
think that architecture has nothing to do with it. Of course, that's both
liberating and alarming. But the generic city, the general urban
condition, is happening everywhere, and just the fact that it occurs in
such enormous quantities must mean that it's habitable. Architecture
can't do anything that the culture doesn't. We all complain that we
are confronted by urban environments that are completely similar.
We say we want to create beauty, identity, quality, singularity. And
yet, maybe in truth these cities that we have are desired. Maybe
their very characterlessness provides the best context for living." —
interview in Wired 4.07, July 1996 [39]

 Asked if there is a certain contribution he aspires to make: "It's very

simple and it has nothing to do with identifiable goals. It is to keep
thinking about what architecture can be, in whatever form. That is an
answer, isn't it? I think that S,M,L,XL has one beautiful ambiguity: it
 used the past to build a future and is very adamant about giving
notice that this is not the end. That's how it felt to me, anyway. That
is in itself evidence of a kind of discomfort with achievement
measured in terms of identifiable entities, and an announcement that
continuity of thinking in whatever form, around whatever subject, is
the real ambition." —Interview with Jennifer Sigler in Index
Magazine, 2000[40]

[ edit]Awards

 Pritzker Prize (2000)

 Chevallier de Légion d'honneur (2001)

 Praemium Imperiale (2003)

 Royal Gold Medal (2004)

 Doctor honoris causa by the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (2007)

 Golden Lion of the Venice Biennale of Architecture for lifetime

achievement (2010)

[ edit]Selected projects

McCormick Tribune Campus Center, Chicago, USA

Casa da Música, Porto, Portugal

 Lille Grand Palais (Lille, 1988)

 Netherlands Dance Theater (The Hague, 1988)

 Villa dall’Ava (Saint-Cloud, 1991)

 Nexus Housing (Fukuoka, 1991)

 Kunsthal (Rotterdam, 1993)

 Educatorium (Utrecht, 1993–1997)

 Maison à Bordeaux (Bordeaux, 1998)

 Second Stage Theatre (New York City, 1999)

 Guggenheim Hermitage Museum (Las Vegas, 1980, 2002?)

 McCormick Tribune Campus Center, IIT (Chicago, 1997–2003)

 Netherlands Embassy Berlin (2003)

 Retail design for Prada stores (New York: 2003, Los Angeles: 2004)

 Seattle Central Library (Seattle, 2004)

 Casa da Música (Porto, 2001–2005)

 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, (London, 2006)

 Shenzhen Stock Exchange, (Shenzhen, 2006)

 Córdoba International Congress Center (Palacio del Sur), Córdoba,

Spain

 Seoul National University Museum of Art (Seoul, 2003–2005) [1]

 Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre, (Dallas, Texas, 2004–2009)

 Milstein Hall, (Cornell, 2006–2009) [2]

 CCTV HQ (Beijing, 2004–2009)

 Riga Port City, (Riga, 2009)

 23 East 22nd Street, (New York City, 2008–2010)[41]

 Bryghusprojektet, (Copenhagen, 2008–2010)[42]

 Torre Bicentenario (Bicentennial Tower), (Mexico City, 2007, unbuilt)

[43]

 New Court, St. Swithin's Lane (London, 2010)

 De Rotterdam, (Rotterdam, 2009–2013)

[ edit]Bibliography

 Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto of Manhattan (1978)

 ISBN 978-1885254009
[44]

 S,M,L,XL (1995)[45] ISBN 978-1885254863

 Serpentine Gallery: 24 Hour Interview Marathon (2007)[46] ISBN 978-

1-904563-69-3
  Living Vivre Leben (1998)[47]

 Content (2004)[48] ISBN 978-3822830703

 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2006; Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther

König, Köln, Germany 2008 ISBN 978-3-86560-393-7

[ edit]Gallery


McCormick Tribune Campus Center

Rem Koolhaas

Chicago, USA

CCTV Headquarters

Rem Koolhaas (OMA)

Beijing, China

Casa da Música

Rem Koolhaas

Porto, Portugal


Dutch Embassy

Rem Koolhaas

Berlin, Germany

Seattle Central Library

Rem Koolhaas

Seattle, USA

Kunsthal Rotterdam

Rem Koolhaas (OMA)

Rotterdam, Netherlands

Street toilet

Rem Koolhaas (OMA) andErwin Olaf

Groningen, Netherlands
 

Bus stop

Rem Koolhaas (1990)

Groningen, Netherlands

Daniel Libeskind
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Daniel Libeskind

Daniel Libeskind in front of his extension to theDenver Art Museum.

Personal information

Nationality American

Born May 12, 1946 (age 64)

Łódź, Poland

Practice Studio Daniel Libeskind

 Work

Buildings Jewish Museum Berlin

Imperial War Museum North

Contemporary Jewish Museum

Royal Ontario Museum(expansion)

Daniel Libeskind, (born May 12, 1946 in Łódź, Poland) is an American architect, artist, and set

designer of Polish-Jewish descent.

Contents
[hide]

1 Rundown

2 Personal

3 Career

4 Work

o 4.1 Completed

o 4.2 Under Construction

o 4.3 Proposed/In Design

o 4.4 Unbuilt

5 Recognition

6 Bibliography

7 References

8 External links

[ edit]Rundown
Libeskind founded Studio Daniel Libeskind in 1989 with his wife, Nina, and is its principal design architect.
[1]
 His buildings include the Jewish Museum in Berlin, Germany, the extension to the Denver Art Museum in
the United States, the Grand Canal Theatre in Dublin, the Imperial War Museum North in Salford Quays,
England, the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada, the Felix
Nussbaum Haus in Osnabrück, Germany, the Danish Jewish Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark, and
the Wohl Centre at the Bar-Ilan University in Ramat-Gan, Israel.[2] His portfolio also includes several
residential projects. Libeskind's work has been exhibited in major museums and galleries around the world,
including the Museum of Modern Art, the Bauhaus Archives, the Art Institute of Chicago, and theCentre
Pompidou.[3] On February 27, 2003, Libeskind won the competition to be the master plan architect for the
reconstruction of the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan.[4]

[ edit]Personal
Libeskind's addition to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto (2007).

Born in Łódź, Poland on May 12, 1946, Libeskind was the second child of Dora and Nachman Libeskind,
both Polish Jews and Holocaustsurvivors.

As a young child, Libeskind learned to play the accordion and quickly became a virtuoso, performing on
Polish television in 1953. He won a prestigious America Israel Cultural Foundation scholarship in 1959 and
played alongside a young Itzhak Perlman.[5] That summer, the Libeskinds moved to New York City on one
of the last immigrant boats to the United States.

In New York, Libeskind attended the Bronx High School of Science. The print shop where his father worked
was on Stone Street in lower Manhattan, and Libeskind watched the original World Trade Center being
built in the 1960s.[6]

Libeskind became a United States citizen in 1965. [7] In 1970, he received his professional architectural
degree from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art; he received a postgraduate
degree in History and Theory of Architecture at the School of Comparative Studies at Essex University in
1972.

In 1968, Libeskind briefly worked as an apprentice to architect Richard Meier. In 1972, he was hired to
work at Peter Eisenman's New YorkInstitute for Architecture and Urban Studies, but he quit almost
immediately.[8]

Daniel Libeskind met Nina Lewis, his future wife and business partner, at the Bundist-run Camp
Hemshekh in upstate New York in 1966. They married a few years later and, instead of a
traditional honeymoon, traveled across the United States visiting Frank Lloyd Wright buildings on a Cooper
Union fellowship.[9]

Since then, Libeskind has lived, among other places, in New York, Toronto,  Michigan, Italy, Germany, and
Los Angeles,[9] and has taught at numerous universities across the world, including the University of
Kentucky, Yale University, and the University of Pennsylvania.[7] Since 2007, Libeskind is visiting professor
at the Leuphana University Lueneburg, Germany.

Nina and Daniel Libeskind have three children, Lev, Noam and Rachel. [10]

[ edit]Career
Though he had been an architectural theorist and professor for many years, Libeskind completed his first
building at the age of 52, with the opening of the Felix Nussbaum Haus in 1998.[11] Prior to this, critics had
dismissed his designs as "unbuildable or unduly assertive." [12] The first design competition that Libeskind
won was in 1987 for housing in West Berlin, but soon thereafter the Berlin Wall fell and the project was
cancelled. Libeskind won the first four projects he entered into competition for.

The Ascent at Roebling's Bridge

The Jewish Museum Berlin, completed in 1999, was Libeskind's first major international success and was
one of the first buildings designed after reunification. Libeskind has also designed cultural and commercial
institutions, museums, concert halls, convention centers, universities, residences, hotels, and shopping
centers. Critics often describe Libeskind's work as deconstructivist.[13]

Libeskind is perhaps most famous for being selected by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation to
oversee the rebuilding of the World Trade Center, which was destroyed in the September 11, 2001 attacks.
He titled his concept for the site Memory Foundations.

Studio Daniel Libeskind, headquartered two blocks south of the World Trade Center site in New York, is
currently working on over 40 projects across the world. The studio's most recent completed projects include
the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, California, The Ascent at Roebling's
Bridge in Covington, Kentucky, and the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Ontario.

In addition to his architectural projects, Libeskind also designs opera sets for productions such as
the Norwegian National Theatre's The Architect in 1998 and Saarländisches Staatstheater's Tristan und
Isolde in 2001. He also designed the sets and costumes for Intolleranza byLuigi Nono and for a production
of Messiaen's Saint Francis of Assisi by Deutsche Oper Berlin. He has also written free verse prose,
included in his book Fishing from the Pavement.[14]

[ edit]Work
The following projects are listed on the Studio Daniel Libeskind website. The first date is the competition,
commission, or first presentation date. The second is the completion date or the estimated date of
completion.

[edit]Completed

Jewish Museum Berlin, 1999

Imperial War Museum North, 2001

Westside interior, 2008
London Metropolitan University, London

 1989–1999 Jewish Museum Berlin - Berlin, Germany

 1995–1998 Felix Nussbaum Haus - Osnabrück, Germany

 1997–2001 Imperial War Museum North - Greater Manchester, England

 1998–2008 Contemporary Jewish Museum - San Francisco, California,

United States

 2000–2003 Studio Weil - Majorca, Spain

 2000–2006 Extension to the Denver Art Museum, Frederic C. Hamilton

Building - Denver, Colorado, United States

 2000–2006 Denver Art Museum Residences - Denver, Colorado, United

States

 2000–2008 Westside Shopping and Leisure Centre - Bern, Switzerland

 2001–2003 Danish Jewish Museum - Copenhagen, Denmark

 2001–2004 London Metropolitan University Graduate Centre - London,

England

 2001–2005 The Wohl Centre - Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel

 2002–2007 Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, extension to Royal Ontario

Museum and renovation of ten of its existing galleries - Toronto, Ontario,
Canada

 2003–2005 Tangent, Facade for Hyundai Development Corporation

Headquarters - Seoul, South Korea

 2004–2005 Memoria e Luce, 9/11 Memorial - Padua, Italy

 2004–2007 Glass Courtyard addition to the Jewish Museum Berlin -

Berlin, Germany

 2004–2008 The Ascent at Roebling's Bridge, residential condominium

building - Covington, Kentucky, United States

 2005–2009 MGM Mirage's CityCenter, retail and public space on the Las

Vegas Strip - Las Vegas, Nevada
  2004–2010 Grand Canal Square, Grand Canal Theatre and Commercial
Development - Dublin, Republic of Ireland

 2010 Wheel of Conscience monument, M.S. St. Louis Memorial, Pier 21

- Halifax, Canada
[edit]Under Construction

Military History Museum - Dresdenconstruction, 2010

 2001–2009 Military History Museum - Dresden, Germany

 2002–2010 Creative Media Centre - Hong Kong

 2003-2012 One World Trade Center - New York City, New York

 2005–2012 Złota 44, apartment tower - Warsaw, Poland

 2005–2011 L Tower and Sony Centre for the Performing

Arts Redevelopment - Toronto, Canada

 2006–2011 Reflections at Keppel Bay, high-rise and low-rise villa

apartment blocks - Keppel Bay, Singapore
[edit]Proposed/In Design

 2004–2010 New Center for Arts and Culture - Boston, Massachusetts,

United States

 2004–2014 Fiera Milano - Milan, Italy

 2005-? Edwards Condominiums, urban infill residential and commercial

spaces - Edwards, Colorado, United States

 2006-? Ørestad Downtown Master Plan, urban development - just south

of Copenhagen, Denmark

 2006-? Rejuvenation, Forest Heights Boys and Girls

Club - Gulfport, Mississippi, United States

 2006–2011 Haeundae Udong Hyundai I'Park, five waterfront towers

- Busan, South Korea

 2006–2013 New Songdo City, shopping mall, department store, cinema,

ice rink, food court in Riverstone complex - Incheon, South Korea
  2004–2010 Editoriale Bresciana Tower, 23-story office and luxury
apartment building - Brescia, Italy

 2007-2009 18.36.54, residence - Connecticut, United States

 2010-2013 Tampere Central Arena - Tampere, Finland

[edit]Unbuilt

 'The Spiral' extension to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, was

canceled following its failure to attract funding from the Heritage Lottery
Fund

[ edit]Recognition

 Gold medal for Architecture at the National Arts Club (2007)

 RIBA International Award for Wohl Centre at Bar-Ilan University (2006)

 RIBA International Award for the Imperial War Museum North (2004)

 RIBA Award for the London Metropolitan University Graduate Centre

(2004)

 Appointed as the first Cultural Ambassador for Architecture by the U.S.

Department of State (2004)[15]

 Honorary member of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, England

(2004)

 Man of the Year Award from the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2004)

 First architect to win the Hiroshima Art Prize, awarded to an artist whose
work promotes international understanding and peace (2001) [16]

 Goethe Medal for cultural contribution by the Goethe Institute (2000)

 Time Magazine Best of 1998 Design Awards for the Felix Nussbaum Haus
(1998)

 Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1996)

 Venice Biennale First Prize Stone Lion Award for Palmanova Project

(1985)

 National Endowment for the Arts  Design Arts Grant for Studies in
Architecture (1983)

 American Institute of Architects Medal for Highest Scholastic Achievement

(1970)

 First recipient of honorary degree of Doctor of Fine Art (DFA)

from University of Ulster in recognition of his outstanding services to
global architecture and design (2009)[17]
  In 2003, he received the Leo Baeck Medal for his humanitarian work
promoting tolerance and social justice.

Bernard Tschumi
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bernard Tschumi

Personal information

Born January 25, 1944 (age 67)

Lausanne, Switzerland

Work

Buildings Limoges Concert Hall

Awards More Than 20 Awards[show]

Bernard Tschumi (born January 25, 1944 Lausanne, Switzerland) is an architect, writer, and educator,

commonly associated withdeconstructivism. Born of French and Swiss parentage, he works and lives in
New York and Paris. He studied in Paris and at ETH in Zurich, where he received his degree in architecture
in 1969. Tschumi has taught at Portsmouth Polytechnic in Portsmouth, UK, the Architectural Association in
London, the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York, Princeton University, the Cooper
Union in New York andColumbia University where he was Dean of the Graduate School of Architecture,
Planning and Preservation from 1988 to 2003. Tschumi is a permanent U.S. resident.

Contents
[hide]

1 Theory

o 1.1 1960s-70s

o 1.2 1980s-90s

o 1.3 Present

2 Criticism

3 Buildings

o 3.1 Completed

4 Bibliography

o 4.1 Proposed
5 Quotes

6 References

7 Articles

8 External links

[edit]Theory

[edit]1960s-70s

Throughout his career as an architect, theorist, and academic, Bernard Tschumi's work has reevaluated
architecture's role in the practice of personal and political freedom. Since the 1970s, Tschumi has argued
that there is no fixed relationship between architectural form and the events that take place within it. The
ethical and political imperatives that inform his work emphasize the establishment of a proactive
architecture which non-hierarchically engages balances of power through programmatic and spatial
devices. In Tschumi's theory, architecture's role is not to express an extant social structure, but to function
as a tool for questioning that structure and revising it.

The experience of the May 1968 uprisings and the activities of the Situationist International oriented
Tschumi's approach to design studios and seminars he taught at the Architectural Association in London
during the early 1970s. Within that pedagogical context he combined film and literary theory with
architecture, expanding on the work of such thinkers as Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault, in order to
reexamine architecture's responsibility in reinforcing unquestioned cultural narratives. A big influence on
this work were the theories and structural diagramming by the Russian Cinematographer Sergei
Eisenstein produced for his own films. Tschumi adapted Eisenstein's diagrammatic methodology in his
investigations to exploit the interstitial condition between the elements of which a system is made of: space,
event, and movement (or activity). Best exemplified in his own words as, "the football player skates across
the battlefield." In this simple statement he was highlighting the dislocation of orientation and any possibility
of a singular reading; a common resultant of the post-structuralist project.
The Paul Cejas School of Architecture Building at Florida International University in Miami, Florida.

This approach unfolded along two lines in his architectural practice: first, by exposing the conventionally
defined connections between architectural sequences and the spaces, programs, and movement which
produce and reiterate these sequences; and second, by inventing new associations between space and the
events that 'take place' within it through processes of defamiliarization, de-structuring, superimposition, and
cross programming.

Tschumi's work in the later 1970s was refined through courses he taught at the Architectural Association
and projects such as The Screenplays (1977) and The Manhattan Transcripts (1981) and evolved from
montage techniques taken from film and techniques of the nouveau roman. His use of event montage as a
technique for the organization of program (systems of space, event, and movement, as well as visual and
formal techniques) challenged the work other contemporary architects were conducting which focused on
montage techniques as purely formal strategies. Tschumi's work responded as well to prevalent strands of
contemporary architectural theory that had reached a point of closure, either through a misunderstanding of
post-structuralist thought, or the failure of the liberal/leftist dream of successful political and cultural
revolution. For example, Superstudio, one such branch of theoretically oriented architectural
postmodernists, began to produce ironic, unrealizable projects such as the 1969 Continuous Monument
project, which functioned as counter design and critique of the existing architecture culture, suggesting the
end of architecture's capacity to affect change on an urban or cultural scale. Tschumi positioned his work to
suggest alternatives to this endgame.

In 1978 he published an essay entitled The Pleasure of Architecture in which he used sexual intercourse as
a characterizing analogy for architecture. He claimed that architecture by nature is fundamentally useless,
setting it apart from "building". He demands a glorification of architectural uselessness in which the chaos
of sensuality and the order of purity combine to form structures that evoke the space in which they are built.
He distinguishes between the forming of knowledge and the knowledge of form, contending that
architecture is too often dismissed as the latter when it can often be used as the former. Tschumi used this
essay as a precursor to a later eponymous series of writings detailing the so-called limits of architecture.

[edit]1980s-90s

Tschumi's winning entry for the 1982 Parc de la Villette Competition in Paris became his first major public
work and made possible an implementation of the design research and theory which had been rehearsed
in The Manhattan Transcripts and The Screenplays. Landscaping, spatial and programmatic sequences in
the park were used to produce sites of alternative social practice that challenged the expected use values
usually reinforced by a large urban park in Paris.

Tschumi has continued this design agenda in a variety of design competitions and built projects since
1983. The 1986 Tokyo National Theater and Opera House project continued the research that Tschumi
began in The Manhattan Transcripts, importing notational techniques from experimental dance and musical
scores, and using the design process itself to challenge habitual ways of thinking about space, in contrast
to earlier static, two dimensional representational techniques which delineated the outline of a building but
not the intensity of life within it. At a local scale in his 1990 Video Pavilion at Groningen, transparent walls
and tilted floors produce an intense dislocation of the subject in relation to norms like wall, interior and
exterior, and horizon. At the urban scale in such projects as the 1992 Le Fresnoy, Studio National des Arts
Contemporains, in Tourcoing, France, and the 1995 architecture school at Marne la Vallee, France (both
completed 1999), larger spaces challenge normative program sequence and accepted use. The Le
Fresnoy complex accomplishes this by its use of the space between the roofs of existing buildings and an
added, huge umbrella roof above them which creates an interstitial zone of program on ramps and
catwalks. This zone is what Tschumi calls the in-between, a negation of pure form or style that had been
practiced in the 1989 ZKM Karlsruhe competition project, where a large atrium space punctuated by
encapsulated circulation and smaller program episodes developed a more local network of interstitial
space.

The capacity of an overlap of programs to effect a reevaluation of architecture on an urban scale had also
been tested in the 1988 Kansai Airport competition, Lausanne Bridge city, and 1989 Bibliothèque de
France competition. In the Bibliothèque de France, a major aspect of the proposed scheme was a large
public running track and sports facility on the roof of the complex, intersecting with upper floors of the
library program so that neither the sports program nor the intellectual program could exist without an impact
on the other.

With these projects Tschumi opposed the methods used by architects for centuries to geometrically
evaluate facade and plan composition. In this way he suggested that habitual routines of daily life could be
more effectively challenged by a full spectrum of design tactics ranging from shock to subterfuge: by
regulating events, a more subtle and sophisticated regime of defamiliarizations was produced than by
aesthetic and symbolic systems of shock. The extreme limit-conditions of architectural program became
criteria to evaluate a building's capacity to function as a device capable of social organization.

[edit]Present

Tschumi's critical understanding of architecture remains at the core of his practice today. By arguing that
there is no space without event, he designs conditions for a reinvention of living, rather than repeating
established aesthetic or symbolic conditions of design. Through these means architecture becomes a
frame for "constructed situations," a notion informed by the theory, city mappings and urban designs of the
Situationist International.

Responding to the absence of ethical structure and the disjunction between use, form, and social values by
which he characterizes the postmodern condition, Tschumi's design research encourages a wide range of
narratives and ambiences to emerge and to self organize. Although his conclusion is that no essentially
meaningful relationship exists between a space and the events which occur within it, Tschumi nonetheless
aligns his work with Foucault's notion that social structures should be evaluated not according to an a priori
notion of good or evil but for their danger to each other. In this way, Tschumi's work is ethologically
motivated, in the sense that Deleuze uses the term to propose an emergent ethics that depends on a
reevaluation of self/identity and body. Freedom is thus defined by the enhanced range of capacity of this
extended body/self in conjunction with an extended self awareness. By advocating recombinations of
program, space, and cultural narrative, Tschumi asks the user to critically reinvent him/herself as a subject.

Tschumi, well known for his radical theories on post-structuralist architecture in the 1960s and ’70s, won
the commission for the New Acropolis Museum in a competition. The museum offers a seemingly placid
stance, focused on the impressive Athenian light and landscape while remaining precise in imagination and
sophisticated in form.[1]

Alfred Lerner Hall

[edit]Criticism

Tschumi's work has been criticized for sacrificing human needs for intellectual purposes. Most currently,
the Greek mathematician Nikos Salingaros claims that the New Acropolis Museum clashes with the
traditional architecture of Athens and continues to unnecessarily threaten historical buildings nearby [1].

The People for Public Spaces inducted his Parc de la Villette into their Hall of Shame for lacking sensitivity
for its human users. It is Paris's largest park, and considered one of the first major breakthroughs
for deconstructivist theory in architecture. However, critics have said that its abstract design has resulted in
unintelligent landscape structures [2] and unsafe spaces [3].

In his writings, Tschumi reveals that he deliberately intends his buildings to have an interrupted, even
violent feel, and that he enjoys not appreciating the great works of architecture but "dismantling" them. [2] [4]

[edit]Buildings

[edit]Completed

 Parc de la Villette, Paris, France (1983–98)

 Alfred Lerner Hall, Columbia University, New York, New York (1999)

 New Acropolis Museum, Athens, Greece (2002–08)

 Paul L. Cejas School of Architecture, Florida International

University, Miami, Florida (2004)

 Vacheron Constantin Headquarters, Geneva, Switzerland (2004)

 Lindner Athletic Center, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio (2006)

  Blue (condominium) at 105 Norfolk Street in the Lower East Side of New
York City (2007)

 Concert Hall, Limoges, France (2007)

[3]

[edit]Proposed

 Alesia, Archeo Museum, Dijon, France

 Elliptic City: International Financial Center of the Americas, Guayacanes,

Dominican Republic (completion after 2008)
[edit]Quotes

"In America, it's more difficult because architects have lost a lot of power; power has fallen into the hands
of the builders... the general strategy is determined by the client himself... That's a big problem. And that's
what we want to avoid."

"Any relationship between a building and its users is one of violence, for any use means the intrusion of a
human body into a given space, the intrusion of one order into another." Tschumi in Architecture and
disjunction (2001, p.122).

Critical regionalism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jørn Utzon, Bagsvaerd Church (1973–6), Denmark; combinations of local culture and universal civilization.

Critical Regionalism is an approach to architecture that strives to counter placelessness and lack of

identity in Modern Architecture by utilizing the building's geographical context. The term Critical
Regionalism was first used by the architectural theorists Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre and, with a
slightly different meaning, by the historian-theorist Kenneth Frampton.
Critical Regionalism is not regionalism in the sense of vernacular architecture, but is, on the contrary, an
avant-gardist, modernist approach, but one that starts from the premises of local or regional architecture.
The idea of critical regionalism emerged at a time during the early 1980s when Postmodern architecture,
itself a reaction to Modernist architecture, was at its height. However, the writer most associated with
Critical Regionalism, Kenneth Frampton, was in fact critical towards postmodernism. Part of the reason for
the confusion over the term Critical Regionalism is that Frampton's famous essay "Towards a Critical
Regionalism: Six points for an architecture of resistance" was first published in the book "The Anti-
Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture" (1983) edited by Hal Foster. In the Preface to the book, Foster
begins by asking whether postmodernism exists at all and what it could even mean. He then states that
what nine of the ten authors in the book have in common - the exception is the philosopher  Jurgen
Habermas - is the common belief that "the project of modernity is now deeply problematic". [1]

Contents
[hide]

1 Kenneth Frampton

2 Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre

3 Critical regionalist architects

4 Critical regionalism in cultural studies

5 See also

6 References

7 Footnotes

8 External links

[edit]Kenneth Frampton
In "Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six points for an architecture of resistance", Frampton recalls Paul
Ricoeur's "how to become modern and to return to sources; how to revive an old, dormant civilization and
take part in universal civilization". According to Frampton's proposal, critical regionalism should adopt
modern architecture, critically, for its universal progressive qualities but at the same time value should be
placed on the geographical context of the building. Emphasis, Frampton says, should be on topography,
climate, light; on tectonic form rather than on scenography (i.e. painting theatrical scenery) and should be
on the sense of touch rather than visual sense. Frampton draws on phenomenology for his argument.[2]
Alvar Aalto, Saynatsalo Town Hall (1952), Finland: the grass steps appeal to the tactile sense.

Two examples Frampton briefly discusses are Jørn Utzon and Alvar Aalto. In Frampton's view, Utzon's
Bagsvaerd Church (1973–6), near Copenhagen is a self-conscious synthesis between universal civilization
and world culture. This is revealed by the rational, modular, neutral and economic, partly prefabricated
concrete outer shell (i.e. universal civilization) versus the specially-designed, 'uneconomic', organic,
reinforced concrete shell of the interior, signifying with its manipulation of light sacred space and 'multiple
cross-cultural references', which Frampton sees no precedent for in Western culture, but rather in the
Chinese pagoda roof (i.e. world culture). In the case of Aalto, Frampton discusses the red brick Säynätsalo
Town Hall (1952), where, he argues, there is a resistance to universal technology and vision which is
effected by utilizing the tactile qualities of the building's materials. He notes, for instance, feeling the
contrast between the friction of the brick surface of the stairs and the springy wooden floor of the council
chamber.

[edit]Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre

According to Tzonis and Lefaivre, critical regionalism need not directly draw from the context; rather
elements can be stripped of context but used in unfamiliar ways. Here the aim is to make evident a
disruption and loss of place, that is already a fait accompli, through reflection and self-evaluation.

[edit]Critical regionalist architects

In addition to Aalto and Utzon, the following architects have used Critical Regionalism (in the Frampton
sense) in their work: Studio Granda, Mario Botta,Mazharul Islam, B. V. Doshi, Charles Correa, Alvaro
Siza, Jorge Ferreira Chaves, Rafael Moneo, Geoffrey Bawa, Raj Rewal, Tadao Ando, Mack Scogin / Merrill
Elam, Glenn Murcutt, Ken Yeang, William S.W. Lim, Tay Kheng Soon, Juhani Pallasmaa, Juha
Leiviskä, Carlo Scarpa, Tan Hock Beng. Dimitris & Suzana Antonakakis are the two Greek architects for
whom the term was used by Tzonis and Lefaivre.

[edit]Critical regionalism in cultural studies

Subsequently, the term "critical regionalism" has also been used in cultural studies, literary studies, and
political theory, specifically in the work of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. In her 2007 work "Who Sings the
Nation-State?", co-authored with Judith Butler, Spivak proposes a deconstructive alternative to nationalism
that is predicated on the deconstruction of borders and rigid national identity. [3] Douglas Reichert Powell's
book Critical Regionalism: Connecting Politics and Culture in the American Landscape (2007) traces the
trajectory of the term critical regionalism from its original use in architectural theory to its inclusion in
literary, cultural, and political studies and proposes a methodology based on the intersection of those fields.

Laurie Baker

Drawing of Laurie Baker

Personal information

Nationality British-origin, Indian

Born March 2, 1917

Birmingham, England

Died April 1, 2007 (aged 90)

Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India

Work

Buildings Centre for Development Studies (Trivandrum), Literacy

Village (Lucknow), Sálim Ali Centre for Ornithology and

Natural History(SACON) (Coimbatore), Chitralekha Film

Studio (Aakulam), The Indian Coffee House (Trivandrum),

Attapadi Hill Area Development Society (Attapadi),

Dakshina Chitra (Chennai), Chengalchoola Slum dwelling

units (Trivandrum), Nirmithi Kendra (Aakulam), Tourist

 Centre (Ponmudi), Mitraniketan (Vellanad)

Awards Padma Shri, MBE

Laurence Wilfred "Laurie" Baker (2 March 1917 – 1 April 2007) was an award-winning British-born Indian
architect, renowned for his initiatives in cost-effective energy-efficient architecture and for his unique space
utilisation and simple but beautiful aesthetic sensibility. In time he made a name for himself both
in sustainable architecture as well as in organic architecture.

He went to India in 1945 in part as a missionary and since then lived and worked in  India for over 50 years.
He obtained Indian citizenship in 1989 and resided in Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum), Kerala, since
1970 , where he later set up an organization called COSTFORD (Centre of Science and Technology for
Rural Development), for spreading awareness for low cost housing.

In 1990, the Government of India awarded him with the Padma Shri in recognition of his meritorious service
in the field of architecture.

Contents
[hide]

1 Education and missionary work

2 Gandhian encouragement and initial work

3 Architectural style

4 Death

5 Awards

6 Further reading

7 References

8 External links

[edit]Education and missionary work

Baker was born into a staunch Methodist family, the youngest son of Birmingham Gas Department's chief
accountant, Wilfred Baker and Emily. [1] His elder brothers, Leonard and Norman, were both studying law,
and he had a married sister, Edna. In his teens Baker began to question what religion meant to him and
decided to become a Quaker, since it was closer to what he believed in. Baker
studied architectureat Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, Birmingham and graduated in 1937, aged
20, in a period of political unrest in Europe.

During the Second World War, as a conscientious objector, he served in the Friends Ambulance Unit in
China and Burma.[2]

His initial commitment to India had him working as an architect for World Leprosy Mission, an international
and interdenominational Mission dedicated to the care of those suffering from leprosy in 1945.[3] As new
medicines for the treatment of the disease were becoming more prevalent, his responsibilities were
focused on converting or replacing asylums once used to house the ostracized sufferers of the disease -
"lepers". Finding his English construction education to be inadequate for the types of issues and materials
he was faced with: termites and the yearly monsoon, as well as laterite, cow dung, and mud walls,
respectively, Baker had no choice but to observe and learn from the methods and practices of
the vernacular architecture. He soon learned that the indigenous architecture and methods of these places
were in fact the only viable means to deal with his once daunting problems.

Inspired by his discoveries (which he modestly admitted were 'discoveries' only for him, and mere common
knowledge to those who developed the practices he observed), he began to turn his style of architecture
towards one that respected the actual culture and needs of those who would actually use his buildings,
rather than just playing to the more "Modern-istic" tunes of his paying clients.

[edit]Gandhian encouragement and initial work

After he came to India Laurie had a chance encounter with Mahatma Gandhi which was to have a lasting
impact on his ideology and also his work and building philosophy. [4] After India gained her independence
and Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated, Baker lived in Kerala with Doctor P.J. Chandy, from whom he
received great encouragement and whose sister he would later wed in 1948. [5] Herself a doctor, Elizabeth
Jacob and Laurie were married and moved to Pithoragarh, a small village in Uttarakhand, where they lived
and worked for the next 16 years. Elizabeth's medical training was put to use aiding the afflicted in the
village while Laurie continued his architectural work and research accommodating the medical needs of the
community through his constructions of various hospitals and clinics. It is here that Baker would acquire
and hone those skills from the local building community which had so fascinated him during his missionary
work. In 1966, Baker moved south and worked with the tribals of Peerumed, Kerala, and in 1970 moved
to Thiruvananthapuram.[6]

Baker sought to enrich the culture in which he participated by promoting simplicity and home-grown quality
in his buildings. Seeing so many people living in poverty in the region and throughout India served also to
amplify his emphasis on cost-conscious construction, one that encouraged local participation in
development and craftsmanship - an ideal that the Mahatma expressed as the only means to revitalize and
liberate an impoverished India. This drive for simplicity also stemmed from his Quaker faith, one that saw
indulging in a deceitful facade as a way to fool the 'Creator' as quite pointless. Instead, Baker sought to
provide the 'right' space for his clients and to avoid anything pretentious.

Eventually, he was drawn back to work in India as more and more people began commissioning work from
him in the area. The first client being Welthy Honsinger Fisher, an elderly American woman concerned with
adult illiteracy throughout India, who sought to set up a 'Literacy Village' in which she intended to use
puppetry, music and art as teaching methods to help illiterate and newly-literate adults add to their skills. [7][8]
 An aging woman who risked her health to visit Laurie, refused to leave until she received plans for the
[9]

village. More and more hospital commissions were received as medical professionals realized that the
surroundings for their patients were as much a part of the healing process as any other form of treatment,
and that Baker seemed the only architect who cared enough to become familiarized with how to build what
made Indian patients comfortable with those surroundings. His presence would also soon be required on-
site at Ms. Fisher's "Village," and he became well known for his constant presence on the construction sites
of all his projects, often finalizing designs through hand-drawn instructions to masons and laborers on how
to achieve certain design solutions.

[edit]Architectural style

The Indian Coffee House in Thiruvananthapuram, which was designed by Laurie Baker

Throughout his practice, Baker became well known for designing and building low cost, high quality,
beautiful homes, with a great portion of his work suited to or built for lower-middle to lower class clients. His
buildings tend to emphasize prolific - at times virtuosic - masonry construction, instilling privacy and
evoking history with brick jali walls, a perforated brick screen which invites a natural air flow to cool the
buildings' interior, in addition to creating intricate patterns of light and shadow. Another significant Baker
feature is irregular, pyramid-like structures on roofs, with one side left open and tilting into the wind. Baker's
designs invariably have traditional Indian sloping roofs and terracotta Mangalore tile shingling
with gables and vents allowing rising hot air to escape. Curved walls enter Baker's architectural vocabulary
as a means to enclose more volume at lower material cost than straight walls, and for Laurie, "building
[became] more fun with the circle." A testament to his frugality, Baker was often seen rummaging through
salvage heaps looking for suitable building materials, door and window frames, sometimes hitting a stroke
of luck as evidenced by the intricately carved entry to the Chitralekha Film Studio(Aakulam, Trivandrum,
1974–76): a capricious architectural element found in a junk heap.
Baker's works, such as this house, blend seamlessly into the natural settings.

Baker's architectural method is one of improvisation, in which initial drawings have only an idealistic link to
the final construction, with most of the accommodations and design choices being made on-site by the
architect himself. Compartments for milk bottles near the doorstep, windowsills that double as bench
surfaces, and a heavy emphasis on taking cues from the natural condition of the site are just some
examples. His Quaker-instilled respect for nature lead him to let the idiosyncrasies of a site inform his
architectural improvisations, rarely is a topography line marred or a tree uprooted. This saves construction
cost as well, since working around difficult site conditions is much more cost-effective than clear-cutting. ("I
think it's a waste of money to level a well-moulded site") Resistant to "high-technology" that addresses
building environment issues by ignoring natural environment, at the Centre for Development
Studies (Trivandrum, 1971) Baker created a cooling system by placing a high, latticed, brick wall near a
pond that uses air pressure differences to draw cool air through the building. Various features of his work
such as using recycled material, natural environment control and frugality of design may be seen as
sustainable architecture or green building with its emphasis on sustainability. His responsiveness to never-
identical site conditions quite obviously allowed for the variegation that permeates his work.

[edit]Death
The Hamlet at Nalanchira nearThiruvananthapuram, which was home to Baker and his wife since 1970. The house,
which resides on a hill top, was constructed by Baker.

Laurie Baker died at 7:30 am on 1 April 2007, aged 90, survived by wife Elizabeth, son Tilak and daughters
Vidya and Heidi. Until the end he continued to work in and around his home inTrivandrum, though health
concerns had kept his famous on-site physical presence to a minimum. His designing and writing were
done mostly at his home. His approach to architecture steadily gained appreciation as architectural
sentiment creaks towards place-making over modernizing or stylizing. As a result of this more widespread
acceptance, however, the "Baker Style" home is gaining popularity, much to Baker's own chagrin, since he
felt that the 'style' being commoditised is merely the inevitable manifestation of the cultural and economic
imperatives of the region in which he worked, not a solution that could be applied whole-cloth to any
outside situation. Laurie Baker's architecture focused on retaining a site's natural character, and
economically minded indigenous construction, and the seamless integration of local culture that has been
very inspirational.

Many of Laurie Baker's writings were published and are available through COSTFORD (the Center Of
Science and Technology For Rural Development) the voluntary organisation which carried out many of his
later projects, at which he was the Master Architect. COSTFORD is carrying on working towards the ideals
that Laurie Baker espoused throughout his life.

[edit]Awards

 1981: D.Litt. conferred by the Royal University of Netherlands for

outstanding work in the developing countries.

 1983: Order of the British Empire, MBE

 1987: Received the first Indian National Habitat Award

 1988: Received Indian Citizenship

 1989: Indian Institute of Architects Outstanding Architect of the Year

 1990: Received the Padma Sri

 1990: Great Master Architect of the Year

 1992: UNO Habitat Award & UN Roll of Honour

 1993: International Union of Architects (IUA) Award

 1993: Sir Robert Matthew Prize for Improvement of Human Settlements

 1994: People of the Year Award

 1995: Awarded Doctorate from the University of Central England

 1998: Awarded Doctorate from Sri Venkateshwara University

 2001: Coinpar MR Kurup Endowment Award

 2003: Basheer Puraskaram

 2003: D.Litt. from the Kerala University

  2005: Kerala Government Certificate of Appreciation

 2006: L-Ramp Award of Excellence

 2006: Nominated for the Pritzker Prize (considered the Nobel Prize in

Architecture)

Paolo Soleri
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Paolo Soleri

Personal information

Nationality Italian

Born June 21, 1919 (age 91)[1]

Turin, Italy[1]

Work

Buildings Cosanti

Projects Arcosanti

Awards 2006 - Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for lifetime

achievement

2000 - Leone d'oro at the Mostra di Architettura di

Venezia (Venice Biennale of Architecture) for his lifelong

achievement

1984 - Silver Medal of the Academie d' Architecture in Paris

 1981 - Gold Medal from the World Biennieal of

Architecture in Sofia, Bulgaria

1963 - American Institute of Architects Gold Medal for

Craftmanship

Paolo Soleri (born June 21, 1919[1] ) is an Italian-American architect. He established Arcosanti and the

educational Cosanti Foundation. Soleri is a lecturer in the College of Architecture at Arizona State
University and a National Design Award recipient in 2006.

Contents
[hide]

1 Early life

2 Arcosanti

3 Other achievements

4 Awards

5 Writings

6 See also

7 References

[edit]Early life

Soleri was born in Turin, Italy. He was awarded his "laurea" (PhD degree with highest honors)
in architecture from the Politecnico di Torino in 1946. He visited the United States in 1947 and spent a year
and a half in fellowship with Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin West in Arizona, and at Taliesin in Spring
Green, Wisconsin. During this time, he gained international recognition for a bridge design displayed at
the Museum of Modern Art.

Soleri returned to Italy in 1950 where he was commissioned to build a large ceramics factory, "Ceramica
Artistica Solimene" in Vietri on the Amalfi coast. The ceramics industry processes he became familiar with
during its construction led to his award-winning designs and production of ceramic and
bronze windbells and siltcast architectural structures. For over 30 years, proceeds from sales of the
windbells have provided funds for construction to test his theoretical work.

In 1956 he settled in Scottsdale, Arizona, with his late wife, Colly, and their two daughters. Dr. and Mrs.
Soleri made a life-long commitment to research and experimentation in urban planning, establishing
the Cosanti Foundation, a non-profit educational foundation. Soleri's philosophy and works have been
strongly influenced by the Jesuit paleontologist and philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

[edit]Arcosanti
The Cosanti Foundation's major project is Arcosanti, a community planned for 5,000 people, designed by
Soleri; Arcosanti has been in construction since 1970. Located near Cordes Junction, about 70 miles north
of Phoenix and visible from Interstate I-17 in central Arizona, the project intends to provide a model
demonstrating Soleri's concept of "Arcology", architecture coherent with ecology. Arcology is envisioned by
Soleri as a hyperdense city, designed to maximize human interaction; it should maximize access to shared,
cost-effective infrastructural services, conserve water and reduce sewage; minimize the use of energy, raw
materials and land; reduce waste andenvironmental pollution; and allow interaction with the surrounding
natural environment. Arcosanti is a prototype of a desert arcology. Soleri's other arcology designs
envisioned sites such as the ocean (Nova Noah), et al (see: Arcology: City in the Image of Man).

Since 1970, well over 6000 people have participated in Arcosanti's construction. Their international
affiliation group is called the Arcosanti Alumni Network. As of 2010, construction is underway to complete
Arcosanti's Greenhouse Apron.

Arcologies were used in 1993's SimCity 2000. There were 4 of them: Plymouth Arco, Forest Arco with a
dome park on the top, one named Draco Arco (which looked like a black dragon), and one that was an
arcology that looked like Capitol Records Building. In SimCity 3 and 4, arcologies were not included.

[edit]Other achievements

The International Architecture Symposium "Mensch und Raum" (Man and Space) at the Vienna University
of Technology (Technische Universität Wien) in 1984 received international attention. Paolo Soleri
participated, among others: Justus Dahinden, Dennis Sharp, Bruno Zevi, Jorge Glusberg, Otto
Kapfinger, Frei Otto, Pierre Vago, Ernst Gisel, Ionel Schein.

Soleri is a distinguished lecturer in the College of Architecture at Arizona State University and a member of
the Lindisfarne Association.

A landmark exhibition, "The Architectural Visions of Paolo Soleri," organized in 1970 by the  Corcoran
Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, traveled extensively in the U.S. and Canada, breaking records for
attendance. "Two Suns Arcology, A Concept for Future Cities" opened in 1976 at the Xerox Square
Center in Rochester, New York. In 1989 "Paolo Soleri Habitats: Ecologic Minutiae," and exhibition of
arcologies, space habitats and bridges, was presented at the New York Academy of Sciences. More
recently, "Soleri's Cities, Architecture for the Planet Earth and Beyond" was featured at the Scottsdale
Center for the Arts in Scottsdale, AZ. A Soleri bell appears in the film What the Bleep Do We Know? His
work has been exhibited worldwide.

The Paolo Soleri Archives, the collection of all of Soleri's art and letters, is located at Arcosanti. The Soleri
Archives is managed by Sue Anaya under the direction of Cosanti Board Trustee Director of Special
Projects Tomiaki Tamura, who resides at Arcosanti. Advisors to the Soleri Archives represent the US
National Gallery, MOMA, CCA (Canadian Centre for Architecture), The Getty, Eastman House, Taliesin,
and The Smithsonian.
Soleri was interviewed in the 2007 environmental documentary "The 11th Hour (film)".

[edit]Awards

Soleri has received fellowships from the Graham Foundation and from the Guggenheim Foundation (1964,
Architecture, Planning, & Design[2]).
He has been awarded three honorary doctorates and several awards from design groups worldwide:

 2006 - Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for lifetime achievement

 2000 - Leone d'oro at the Mostra di Architettura di Venezia (Venice

Architecture Biennale) for his lifelong achievement

 1984 - Silver Medal of the Academie d' Architecture in Paris

 1981 - Gold Medal at the World Bienniale of Architecture held by

the International Academy of Architecture in Sofia, Bulgaria

 1963 - American Institute of Architects Gold Medal for Craftmanship

[edit]Writings

He has written six books and numerous essays and monographs. When he is not traveling on the
international lecture circuit, Soleri divides his time between Cosanti, the original site for his research
located in Scottsdale, and Arcosanti.

Hassan Fathy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hassan Fathy

Personal information

Nationality Egyptian

Born March 23, 1900

Alexandria, Egypt

Died November 30, 1989 (aged 89)

Cairo, Egypt

Work

Awards Aga Khan Award for Architecture Chairman's

Award (1980), Balzan Prize for Architecture and Urban

 Planning (1980), Right Livelihood Award (1980)

Hassan Fathy (1900 – 1989, Arabic: ‫ )حسن فتحي‬was a noted Egyptian architect who pioneered appropriate

technology for building in Egypt, especially by working to re-establish the use of mud brick (or adobe) and
traditional as opposed to western building designs and lay-outs.

Fathy trained as an architect in Egypt, graduating in 1926 from the King Fuad University (now Cairo
University). He designed his first mud brick buildings in the late 1930s. He held several government
positions and was appointed head of the Architectural Section of the Faculty of Fine Arts, Cairo, in 1954.

Fathy was recognized with the Aga Khan Award for Architecture Chairman's Award in 1980.

Fathy utilized ancient design methods and materials. He integrated a knowledge of the rural Egyptian
economic situation with a wide knowledge of ancient architectural and town design techniques. He trained
local inhabitants to make their own materials and build their own buildings.

Climatic conditions, public health considerations, and ancient craft skills also affected his design decisions.
Based on the structural massing of ancient buildings, Fathy incorporated dense brick walls and traditional
courtyard forms to provide passive cooling.[1]

Contents
[hide]

1 Life

2 See also

3 References

4 External links

[edit]Life

The mosque at New Gourna by Hassan Fathy

Roof and dome of the mosque at New Gourna, seen from the minaret

Hassan Fathy, who was born in Alexandria in 1900 and died in Cairo in 1989, is Egypt's best
known architect since Imhotep. In the course of a long career with a crescendo of acclaim sustaining his
later decades, the cosmopolitan trilingual professor-engineer-architect, amateur musician, dramatist, and
inventor, designed nearly 160 separate projects, from modest country retreats to fully planned communities
withpolice, fire, and medical services, with markets, schools and theatres, with places for worship and
others for recreation, including many, like laundry facilities, ovens, and wells that planners less attuned to
sociability might call workstations.

Although the importance of Fathy's contribution to world architecture became clear only as the twentieth
century waned, his contribution toEgypt was obvious decades before, at least to outside observers. As
early as halfway through his three building seasons at New Gourna (a town for the resettlement of Grave
robbery, designed for beauty and built with mud) the project was being admired abroad. In March 1947 it
was applauded in a popular British weekly, half a year later in a British professional journal, and praise from
Spanish professionals followed the next year. A year of silence (1949, when Fathy published a literary
fable) was followed by attention in one French[citation needed] and two Dutchperiodicals,[citation needed] one of which
made it the lead story.

Fathy's next major engagement, designing and supervising school construction for Egypt's  Ministry of
Education, further extended his leave from the College of Fine Arts, where he had begun teaching in 1930.
In 1953 he returned, heading the architecture section the next year. In 1957, frustrated
with bureaucracy and convinced that buildings would speak louder than words, he moved to Athens to
collaborate with international planners evolving the principles of ekistical design under the direction
of Constantinos Doxiadis. He served as the advocate of traditional natural-energy solutions in major
community projects for Iraq, and Pakistan and undertook, under related auspices, extended travel and
research for "Cities of the Future" program in Africa.[citation needed]

Returning to Cairo in 1963, he moved to Darb al-Labbana, near the Citadel, where he lived and worked for
the rest of his life in the intervals between speaking and consulting engagements. As a man with a riveting
message in an era searching for alternatives, in fuel, in personal interactions, in economic supports, he
moved from his first major international appearance at the American Association for the Advancement of
Science in Boston in 1969, to multiple trips per year as a leading critical member of the architectural
profession. His book on Gourna, published in a limited edition in 1969, became even more influential in
1973 with its new English title Architecture for the Poor. His professional mission increasingly took him
abroad. His participation in the U.N. Habitat conference in 1976 in Vancouver was followed shortly by two
events that significantly shaped the rest of his activities: he began to serve on the steering committee for
the nascent Aga Khan Award for Architecture, and he founded and set guiding principles for his Institute of
Appropriate Technology. In 1980, he was awarded the Balzan Prize for Architecture and Urban Planning
and the Right Livelihood Award.

Fathy married once, to Aziza Hassanein, sister of Ahmed Pasha Hassanein. He designed a villa for her
along the Nile in Maadi, which was destroyed to make way for the corniche. He also designed her brother's
maosoleum (1947), along Salah Salem, in neo_mameluke style.

the children of his five brothers and sisters, aware of the obligation to preserve the heritage of their uncle
tried to make sure that the materials transmitting his ideals and his art will remain available in Egypt, for the
future benefit that country.

Ralph Erskine (architect)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
see also Ralph Erskine for others with the same name

Ralph Erskine (right) photographed around 1965 with Swedish architects

Anders Tengbom and Léonie Geisendorf (ETG Group).

Ralph Erskine, CBRE, RFS, ARIBA (February 24, 1914 – March 16,
2005) was an architect and planner who lived and worked in Swedenfor
most of his life.

Contents
[hide]

1 Upbringing and influences

2 Education

3 Career

4 Death and legacy

5 Personal

6 External links

[edit]Upbringing and influences

Lådan (the Box) Erskines first home south of Stockholm, built 1941-42,

rebuilt 1989 on Ekerö

View of Myrstugeberget, Masmo, Huddinge, Sweden, designed by Ralph

Erskine.

Terrace houses at Gyttorp, Nora, Sweden. Photo: Bengt Oberger

Terrace houses at Gyttorp, Nora, Sweden. Photo: Bengt Oberger

The "Ortdrivaren" buildings in Kiruna.

Residential area Brittgården at Tibro. Photo: Bengt Oberger

 A portion of Newcastle's Byker Wall.

Erskine was born in 1914, in Monliaws, Northumberland, but spent his

childhood in Mill Hill in the London Borough of Barnet (North London).
His parents were socialists, adherents of the Fabian Society, which
promoted the idea of the evolution of Britain into a socialist state.

His Scottish father was a Presbyterian minister but his parents

nonetheless sent him to the Quaker school at Friends School Saffron
Walden (1925–1931), probably because of their socialist beliefs. There,
he became committed to the Quaker ideals, which laid the foundation for
his views on society, man's place in it, and on architecture.

[edit]Education

During the 1930s, Erskine studied architecture for five years at

the Regent Street Polytechnic, London under the direction of Thornton
White. At the time, White’s curriculum required the study of classical
architecture before students were free to follow their own ideas. One of
his fellow students was Gordon Cullen who would become a well-known
architectural illustrator, urban designer and theorist. Cullen advocated
the improvement of urban settlements through an understanding and
analysis of their picturesque qualities. This approach was profoundly
influential on Erskine, who insisted in his work that the context and
landscaping of his buildings be carefully integrated.
[edit]Career

After qualifying as an architect Erskine began work with the design team
for Welwyn Garden City under the leadership of Louis de Soissons. He
studied town planning and this interest broadened his approach to
architecture, in particular about how buildings related physically and
socially to their setting.

Before the outbreak of World War II, Erskine traveled to Sweden. He

was attracted there partly by his admiration for the work of
theFunctionalist Swedish architects Gunnar Asplund, Sven
Markelius and Sigurd Lewerentz and partly by the country's adoption of
the social welfare model. In Sweden the political will was reflected in the
national architecture and these two factors coincided with his own
humanist beliefs. He would go on to make an important contribution to
the architectural landscape of both his adopted country and to that of
England.

In Sweden, England and Canada, he was responsible for the design of

numerous innovative buildings reflecting his particular ideology. They
include:

 Gyttorp, Nora Municipality, Sweden, 1945 to 1955, housing project

for a factory town.

 The Brittgården residential area at Tibro, Sweden, 1956 to 1959

 Svappavaara, Kiruna Municipality, Sweden, 1962, housing project

for a copper mine above the Arctic Circle (this project influenced the
design of the northern town of Fermont, Quebec).

 Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, 1969.

 Resolute, Nunavut

 The Byker redevelopment, at Newcastle upon Tyne, from 1973 to

1978.

 The Nya Bruket area in Sandviken, Sweden, 1973 to 1978.

 The Stockholm University Library (opened in 1983), as well as

several other buildings on the university campus.

 Ekerö centrum (Tappström) in Ekerö Municipality outside Stockholm,

1983 to 1989.

 The Vasaterminalen bus terminal in Stockholm, together with Bengt

Ahlqvist and Anders Tengbom

 The London Ark, Hammersmith, London, 1990.

 Greenwich Millennium Village, London, from 2000 to 2005.

Erskine was best known in Great Britain for his Byker Wall housing

scheme in Newcastle upon Tyne and, The London Ark, a commercial
project in Hammersmith, London. However, it was his achievement in
designing the winning scheme in a 1997 competition to develop the
Millennium Community at Greenwich (Greenwich Millennium Village),
London that brought his work to widespread attention of his compatriot
Britons. This recognition came late in a productive, long and important
career.

[edit]Death and legacy

On his death in 2005, Councillor Peter Arnold, leader of Newcastle City

Council said of Erskine that he “was one of the twentieth century’s
greatest architects and in Newcastle's Byker estate he gave the city one
of Europe's finest post Second World War new housing communities. His
approach was so different from everything happening around that time
as he put the focus on social regeneration and the interests of local
people, rather than just bricks and mortar. He built Byker Wall Estate
around the community. Local people were fully involved in the design
and rather than clearing properties and moving people elsewhere, the
community was able to remain together.”

Ralph Erskine founded his own company in Sweden in 1939. In 2000 he

invited his long-time collaborator Johannes Tovatt into a partnership,
naming the company Erskine Tovatt Arkitekter AB. It was Erskine's will
that on his death his name be removed from the company. Therefore his
legacy lives on in the company called Tovatt Architects and Planners in
Drottningholm outside Stockholm.

In 1984, with his wife he established the Ruth and Ralph Erskine Nordic
Foundation, endowed by proceeds from the Wolf Prize in Arts, which he
was awarded that year. Beginning in 1988, the foundation has awarded
a bi-annual prize of US$10,000 and a medal designed by Ralph Erskine,
for any person, group or organization that “has contributed to the
construction of buildings or community structures of innovative social,
ecological and aesthetic character. The contribution must respect
functional and economical aspects, and be to the advantage of the less
privileged”.

In 1987 Erskine was awarded the RIBA Royal Gold Medal.

 [edit]Personal

He met his wife Ruth at the Quaker school in Saffron Walden in the early
1930s. They were married in Stockholm in 1939 and had four children.
Ruth died in 1988. He is survived by his children: Jane Kristina, Karin
Elizabeth, Patrick Jon and Suzanne.

Tadao Ando
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tadao Ando

Tadao Ando (2004)

Personal information

Nationality Japan

Born September 13, 1941 (age 69)

Osaka

Practice Tadao Ando Architects & Associates

Work

Buildings Row House, Sumiyoshi, 1979

Church of the Light, Osaka, 1989

Water Temple, Awaji, 1991

Projects Rokko Housing I, II, III, Kobe, 1983-1999

 Awards
Alvar Aalto Medal, 1985

Pritzker Prize, 1995

RIBA Royal Gold Medal, 1997

AIA Gold Medal, 2002

Tadao Ando ( 安 藤 忠 雄  Andō Tadao?, born September 13, 1941, in Osaka, Japan) is
a Japanese architect whose approach to architecturewas once categorized by Francesco Dal Co as critical
regionalism. Ando has led a storied life, working as a truck driver and boxer prior to settling on the
profession of architecture, despite never having taken formal training in the field.

He works primarily in exposed cast-in-place concrete and is renowned [by  for an exemplary
whom?]

craftsmanship which invokes a Japanese sense of materiality, junction and spatial narrative through the
pared aesthetics of international modernism. [citation needed]

In 1969, he established the firm Tadao Ando Architects & Associates. In 1995, Ando won the Pritzker
Architecture Prize, considered the highest distinction in the field of architecture. [1] He donated the $100,000
prize money to the orphans of the 1995 Kobe earthquake.[2]

Contents
[hide]

1 Buildings and works

o 1.1 Completed projects list

o 1.2 Completed projects gallery, selected

o 1.3 Projects in progress

2 Awards

3 References

4 Literature

5 External links

[ edit]Buildings and works

Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, Kobe

Tadao Ando's body of work is known for the creative use of natural light and for architectures that follow the
natural forms of the landscape (rather than disturbing the landscape by making it conform to the
constructed space of a building). The architect's buildings are often characterized by complex three-
dimensional circulation paths. These paths interweave between interior and exterior spaces formed both
inside large-scale geometric shapes and in the spaces between them.

His "Row House in Sumiyoshi" (Azuma House, 住 吉 の 長 屋 ), a small two-story, cast-in-

place concrete house completed in 1976, is an early Ando work which began to show elements of his
characteristic style. It consists of three equally sized rectangular volumes: two enclosed volumes of interior
spaces separated by an open courtyard. By nature of the courtyard's position between the two interior
volumes, it becomes an integral part of the house's circulation system.

Ando's housing complex at Rokko, just outside Kobe, is a complex warren of terraces and balconies and
atriums and shafts. The designs for Rokko Housing One (1983) and for Rokko Housing Two (1993)
illustrate a range of issues in the traditional architectural vocabulary—the interplay of solid and void, the
alternatives of open and closed, the contrasts of light and darkness. More significantly, Ando's noteworthy
achievement in these clustered buildings is site specific—the structures survived undamaged after
the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995.[3] New York Times architectural critic Paul Goldberger argues
convincingly that "Ando is right in the Japanese tradition: spareness has always been a part of Japanese
architecture, at least since the 16th century; [and] it is not without reason thatFrank Lloyd Wright more
freely admitted to the influences of Japanese architecture than of anything American." [3] Like, Wright's
Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, which did survive the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, site specific decision-
making, anticipates seismic activity in Ando's several Hyōgo-Awaji buildings.[4]

[edit]Completed projects list

Westin Awaji Island hotel

Building/Project Location Country Date
Tomishima House Osaka Japan 1973
Uchida House Japan 1974
Uno House Kyoto Japan 1974
Hiraoka House Hyōgo Prefecture Japan 1974
Shibata House Ashiya, Hyogo Prefecture Japan 1974
Tatsumi House Osaka Japan 1975
Soseikan-Yamaguchi House Hyōgo Prefecture Japan 1975
Takahashi House Ashiya, Hyōgo Prefecture Japan 1975
Matsumura House Kobe Japan 1975
Row House (Azuma House) Sumiyoshi, Osaka Japan 1976
Hirabayashi House Osaka Prefecture Japan 1976
Bansho House Aichi Prefecture Japan 1976
Tezukayama Tower Plaza Sumiyoshi, Osaka Japan 1976
Tezukayama House-Manabe House Osaka Japan 1977
Wall House (Matsumoto House) Ashiya, Hyōgo Prefecture Japan 1977
Glass Block House (Ishihara House) Osaka Japan 1978
Okusu House Setagaya, Tokyo Japan 1978
Glass Block Wall (Horiuchi House) Sumiyoshi, Osaka Japan 1979
Katayama Building Nishinomiya, Hyōgo Prefecture Japan 1979
Onishi House Sumiyoshi, Osaka Japan 1979
Matsutani House Kyoto Japan 1979
Ueda House Okayama Prefecture Japan 1979

Takamatsu, Kagawa
STEP Japan 1980
Prefecture
Wakayama, Wakayama
Matsumoto House Japan 1980
Prefecture
Fuku House Wakayama, Wakayama Prefecture Japan 1980
Bansho House Addition Aichi Prefecture Japan 1981
Koshino House Ashiya, Hyōgo Prefecture Japan 1981
Kojima Housing (Sato House) Okayama Prefecture Japan 1981
Atelier in Oyodo Osaka Japan 1981
Tea House for Soseikan-Yamaguchi House Hyōgo Prefecture Japan 1982
Ishii House Shizuoka Prefecture Japan 1982
Akabane House Setagaya, Tokyo Japan 1982
Kujo Townhouse (Izutsu House) Osaka Japan 1982

Rokko Housing One ( 34.725613°N Rokko, Hyōgo Prefecture Japan 1983 [5]

135.227564°E)
BIGI Atelier Shibuya, Tokyo Japan 1983
Umemiya House Kobe Japan 1983
Kaneko House Shibuya, Tokyo Japan 1983
Festival Naha, Okinawa prefecture Japan 1984
TIME'S Kyoto Japan 1984
Koshino House Addition Ashiya, Hyōgo Prefecture Japan 1984
MELROSE, Meguro Tokyo Japan 1984
Uejo House Osaka Prefecture Japan 1984
Ota House Okayama Prefecture Japan 1984
Moteki House Kobe Japan 1984
Shinsaibashi TO Building Osaka Prefecture Japan 1984 [6]
Iwasa House Ashiya, Hyōgo Prefecture Japan 1984
Hata House Nishinomiya, Hyōgo Prefecture Japan 1984
Atelier Yoshie Inaba Shibuya, Tokyo Japan 1985
JUN Port Island Building Kobe Japan 1985
Mon-petit-chou Kyoto Japan 1985
Guest House for Hattori House Osaka Japan 1985
Taiyō Cement Headquarters Building Osaka Japan 1986
TS Building Osaka Japan 1986
Chapel on Mount Rokko Kobe Japan 1986
OLD/NEW Rokkov Kobe Japan 1986
Kidosaki House Setagaya, Tokyo Japan 1986
Fukuhara Clinic Setagaya, Tokyo Japan 1986
Sasaki House Minato, Tokyo Japan 1986
Main Pavilion for Tennoji Fair Osaka Japan 1987
Karaza Theater 1987
Ueda House Addition Okayama Prefecture Japan 1987
Church on the Water Tomamu, Hokkaidō prefecture Japan 1988
GALLERIA akka Osaka Japan 1988
Children's Museum Himeji Hyōgo Prefecture Japan 1989

Church of the Light ( 34.818763°N Ibaraki Osaka Prefecture Japan 1989 [7][8][9]

135.37201°E)
COLLEZIONE Minato, Tokyo Japan 1989
Morozoff P&P Studio Kobe Japan 1989
RAIKA Headquarters Osaka Japan 1989
Natsukawa Memorial Hall Hikone, Shiga Prefecture Japan 1989

Yao Clinic, Neyagawa Osaka Prefecture Japan 1989

Matsutani House Addition Kyoto Japan 1990
Ito House, Setagaya Tokyo Japan 1990
Iwasa House Addition Ashiya, Hyōgo Prefecture Japan 1990
Garden of Fine Arts Osaka Japan 1990
S Building Osaka Japan 1990

Water Temple ( 34.546406°N Awaji Island, Hyōgo Prefecture Japan 1991[10][11]

134.98813°E)
Atelier in Oyodo II Osaka Japan 1991
TIME'S II Kyoto Japan 1991
Museum of Literature Himeji, Hyōgo Prefecture Japan 1991
Sayoh Housing Hyōgo Prefecture Japan 1991
Minolta Seminar House Kobe Japan 1991
Naoshima, Kagawa
Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum Japan 1995 [2][3]
prefecture
Japanese Pavilion for Expo 92 Seville Spain 1992
Otemae Art Center Nishinomiya, Hyōgo Prefecture Japan 1992
Forest of Tombs Museum Kumamoto Prefecture Japan 1992
Rokko Housing Two Rokko, Kobe Japan 1993
Vitra Seminar House Weil am Rhein Germany 1993
Gallery Noda Kobe Japan 1993
YKK Seminar House Chiba Prefecture Japan 1993
Suntory Museum Osaka Japan 1994
MAXRAY Headquarters Building Osaka Japan 1994
Chikatsu-Asuka Historical Museum Osaka Prefecture Japan 1994
Kiyo Bank, Sakai Building Sakai, Osaka Prefecture Japan 1994
Garden of Fine Art Kyoto Japan 1994
Museum of wood culture Kami, Hyōgo Prefecture Japan 1994
Inamori Auditorium Kagoshima Japan 1994
Nariwa Museum Okayama Prefecture Japan 1994
Atelier in Oyodo Annex Osaka Japan 1995
Nagaragawa Convention Center Gifu Japan 1995
Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum Annex Naoshima, Kagawa Prefecture Japan 1995
Meditation Space, UNESCO Paris France 1995
1995
Asahi Beer Oyamazaki Villa Museum of
Kyoto Prefecture Japan
Art [4]
Shanghai Pusan Ferry Terminal Osaka Japan 1996
Museum of Literature II, Himeji Hyōgo Prefecture Japan 1996
Gallery Chiisaime (Sawada House) Nishinomiya, Hyōgo Prefecture Japan 1996
Museum of Gojo Culture & Annex Gojo, Nara Prefecture Japan 1997
TOTO Seminar House Hyōgo Prefecture Japan 1997
Yokogurayama Natural Forest Museum Kochi Prefecture Japan 1997
Harima Kogen Higashi Primary School &
Hyōgo Prefecture Japan 1997
Junior High School
Koumi Kogen Museum Nagano Prefecture Japan 1997

United
Eychaner/Lee House Chicago, Illinois 1997
States
Daikoku Denki Headquarters Building Aichi Prefecture Japan 1998
Daylight Museum Shiga Prefecture Japan 1998
Junichi Watanabe Memorial Hall Sapporo Japan 1998
Asahi Shimbun Okayama Bureau Okayama Japan 1998
Siddhartha Children and Women Hospital Butwal Nepal 1998
Church of the Light Sunday School Ibaraki, Osaka Prefecture Japan 1999
Rokko Housing III Kobe Japan 1999
Shell Museum, Nishinomiya Hyōgo Prefecture Japan 1999
FABRICA (Benetton Communication
Research Center) Treviso Italy 2000

Awaji-Yumebutai ( 34.560983°N
Hyōgo Prefecture Japan 2000
135.008144°E[12])
Rockfield Shizuoka Factory Shizuoka Japan 2000
The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts St. Louis, Missouri United States 2001 [5]
Komyo-ji (shrine) Saijō, Ehime prefecture Japan 2001

Ryotaro Shiba Memorial Museum Higashiosaka, Osaka prefecture Japan 2001

Teatro Armani-Armani World Headquarters Milan Italy 2001
Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art Kobe, Hyōgo Prefecture Japan 2002 link
Modern Art Museum of Fort
Fort Worth, Texas United States 2002 link
Worth
United
Piccadilly Gardens Manchester Kingdom
2003

4x4 house Chiyoda, Tokyo Japan 2003

Invisible House Treviso Italy 2004

Naoshima, Kagawa
Chichu Art Museum Japan 2004 link
prefecture
Langen Foundation Neuss Germany 2004 link
Gunma Insect World Insect Observation Kiryū Japan 2005
Hall
Picture Book Museum, Iwaki City Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture Japan 2005 [13]
Sakanouenokumo Museum Matsuyama, Ehime Japan 2006
Morimoto (restaurant) Chelsea Market, Manhattan United States 2005[14]

Omotesando Hills, Jingumae 4-Chome Tokyo Japan 2006

House in Shiga Ōtsu, Shiga Japan 2006

Benesse House Naoshima, Kagawa Japan 2006

21 21 Design Sight Minato, Tokyo Japan 2007

Stone Hill Center, expansion for

Williamstown, Massachusetts United States 2008 link
the Clark Art Institute

[edit]Completed projects gallery, selected

 Honpuku Temple(Water Temple)

Azuma House

Times Gallery

Mount Rokko Chapel


 Galleria Akka

Kobe Waterfront Plaza built with the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art

The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts

Gallery Noda


 Langen Foundation

Rokko Housing I and II, Kobe

Asahi Beer Oyamazaki Villa Museum of Art, Kyoto

[edit]Projects in progress

Building/Project Location Country Date

House, stable, and mausoleum for fashion designer and film rancho near Santa Fe, New United
2009
director Tom Ford Mexico States

Rebuilding the Kobe Kaisei Hospital Nada Ward, Kobe Japan 2009

Tokyo Sky Tree Tokyo Japan 2009

Capella Niseko [6]

Gate of Creation, Universidad de Monterrey Monterrey México 2009

Interior design of Ybl villa Budapest Hungary n.a.

Kami-noge Station,Tokyu Corporation Tokyo Japan 2011

[ edit]Awards

Award Organization/Location Country Date

Architectural Institute of
Annual Prize (Row House, Sumiyoshi) Japan 1979
Japan

Cultural Design Prize (Rokko Housing One and Two) Tokyo Japan 1983

Finnish Association of
Alvar Aalto Medal Finland 1985
Architects

French Academy of
Gold Medal of Architecture France 1989
Architecture

Carlsberg Architectural Prize (International) Copenhagen Denmark 1992

Japan Art Academy Prize Tokyo Japan 1993

United
Pritzker Architecture Prize (International) Chicago
States
1995

Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres Paris France 1995

Praemium Imperiale First “FRATE SOLE” Award in

Japan Art Association Japan 1996
Architecture

Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres Paris France 1997

Great
Royal Gold Medal RIBA Britain
1997

American Institute of United

AIA Gold Medal 2002
Architects States
 International Union of
UIA Gold Medal[15] France 2005
Architects

[ edit]

Geoffrey Bawa
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Deshamanya Geoffrey Bawa, FRIBA (1919–2003) is the most renowned architect in Sri Lanka and was

among the most influential architects in southeast Asia in the last decades of the 20th century, he is the
principal force behind what is today known globally as ‘tropical modernism’.[1][2][3]

Contents
[hide]

1 Early life

2 Career in architecture

o 2.1 Notable Buildings

o 2.2 Private Homes

3 Awards and Fellowships

4 References

5 External links

[ edit]Early life
Geoffrey Bawa was born in 1919 to wealthy parents of mixed European and Ceylonese descent. He was
educated at the prestigious Royal College after which he studied English and Law at Cambridge gaining
a BA (English Literature Tripos) and went on to read law at Middle Temple, London becoming a Barrister in
1944. Returning to Ceylon after the war he started working for a Colombo Law firm. But soon he left to
travel for two years, almost settling in Italy. Only after this did he turned to architecture at the age of 38.

[ edit]Career in architecture
He became apprenticed to the architectural practice of Edwards Reid and Begg in Colombo after he
advanced his education in architecture by gaining a Diploma in Architecture from Architectural Association,
London in 1956 and in the following year he became an Associate of the Royal Institute of British
Architects whereupon he returned to Ceylon becoming a partner of Messrs. Edwards, Reid and Begg,
Colombo in 1958. Bawa became an Associate of the Sri Lanka Institute of Architects in 1960. An ensuing
close association with a coterie of like-minded artists and designers, including Ena de Silva, Barbara
Sansoni and Laki Senanayake, produced a new awareness of indigenous materials and crafts, leading to a
post colonial renaissance of culture.
[edit]Notable Buildings

Simamalaka shrine of theGangaramaya Temple

 Sri Lankan Parliament Building

 The Simamalaka Shrine of Gangaramaya Temple, Colombo

 University of Ruhuna

 Heritance Kandalama Hotel

 Hotel Lighthouse Galle

 Blue Waters Hotel Wadduwa

 Bentota Beach Hotel

 Hilton Colombo Hotel

 Hotel Serendib Bentota

 Heritance Ahungalla Hotel (built as Triton hotel)

 Kani Lanka Hotel Kalutara

[edit]Private Homes

 Flats in Maha Nuge Gardens

 Number 11 on 33rd Lane, Colombo SRI LANKA

[ edit]Awards and Fellowships

This section does not cite any references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may
be challenged and removed. (August 2009)

 Pan Pacific Citation, Hawaii Chapter of the American Institute of

Architects (1967)

 President, Sri Lanka Institute of Architects (1969)

 Inaugural Gold Medal at the Silver Jubilee Celebration of the Sri Lanka
Institute of Architects (1982)

 Heritage Award of Recognition, for “Outstanding Architectural Design in

the Tradition of Local Vernacular Architecture”, for the new Parliamentary
 Complex at Sri Jayawardenepura, Kotte from the Pacific Area Travel
Association. (1983)

 Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects

 Elected Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (1983)

 Conferred title of Vidya Jothi (Light of Science) in the Inaugural Honours

List of the President of Sri Lanka (1985)

 Teaching Fellowship at the Aga Khan Programme for Architecture, at MIT,

Boston , USA (1986)

 Conferred title Deshamanya (Pride of the Nation) in the Honours List of

the President Sri Lanka (1993)

 The Grate Master's Award 1996 incorporating South Asian Architecture

Award (1996)

 The Architect of the Year Award, India (1996)

 Asian Innovations Award, Bronze Award – Architecture, Far Eastern

Economic Review (1998)

 The Chairman's Award of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in

recognition of a lifetime's achievement in and contribution to the field of
architecture (2001)

 Awarded Doctor of Science (Honoris Causa), University of Ruhuna ( 14 th

September 2002 )
MODERN ARCHITECTURE IN INDIA
No doubt we have a great architectural heritage
of temples, mosques, palaces and forts. So much
so that whenever architecture is thought of in
conjunction with India, images of the Taj Mahal,
Fatehpur Sikri and South Indian temples are
conjured up in our minds.

The question that comes to our mind is:

Do we have anything today as representative of

Modern Architecture which could be compared
Chaitya Hall, Bhaja,
with our old buildings? Or in even simpler terms -
Maharashtra
'what represents Modern Architecture in India'?

The question which is difficult to answer -

demands more than skin deep analysis of modern
architecture in the context of India.

The answer to this question also depends on the

spirit behind it. If the curiosity behind the
question concerns the quantum of construction
done in post-independence years, the answer can
be one impressive list of statistical figures, a fine
achievement for building science and technology.

But, if on the other hand the questioning mind is

concerned about new architectural and planning
thought generated in the same post-
independence years, which have resulted in
buildings and cities suited to our socio-economic,
cultural and climatical circumstances, our
achievements are not very impressive so far. But
considering the fact that formation of thoughts
and ideas, in this relatively young field, has been
going for only the last quarter of century and
with the limited resources that we have, it is
evident that we are on the verge of making a
break-through.

It is not out of context here to go into details how

things have been happening in the field of
architecture in years preceeding the following
independence.


Architecture traditionally, i.e., before the arrival of
British on the Indian soil, was from the social point
of view, a creation of spectacular sculptural forms
hewn out of stone. Architectural material was
stone; tools, chisel and hammer, and the aim was
glorification. In contrast, the every-day needs of a
common man were ruthlessly neglected. Then the
British arrived on the scene, it was through them
that the first introduction to elementary modern
building construction and planning was introduced
North and South Block, Delhi into India. Their aim, however, was to house their
organisations, and their people and whatever was
necessary to control an empire as big as India.
Apart from self-serving military cantonments and
civil lines, they also left the basic problems well
alone. It was no intention of the British to educate
Indians in the art and science of architecture.
Consequently Indian minds, during the British
reign, were completely out of touch with the
progressive thinking taking place in the rest of the
world. The most significant architectural
phenomenon that took place during the first half
of this century in this country was building of
Imperial Delhi. This was an anachronism of the
highest order, because, while at that time
contemporary Europeans were engaged in most
progressive thinking in architecture, Sir Edward
Lutyen's was a masterpiece in high renaissance
architecture, the result of a way of thinking typical
of the early nineteenth century in Europe. It is
interesting to note that at the same time as the
construction of Delhi, Europe was having "Heroic
period of modern architecture" in such schools of
 thought as "Bauhaus".

Independence woke us to a changed situation.

"Time had moved on. In place of religion or royal
concern with architectural immortality, this
situation demanded attention to those problems
that had so far been ruthlessly neglected. The
ordinary man, his environment and needs became
the centre of attention. Demand for low cost
housing became urgent.

Industrialism that was to follow in India,
spawned its own problems of townships and civic
amenities for workers. Fresh migration from rural
areas to existing cities also strained already,
meagre housing capacities of existing cities. The
very scale of the problem was and still is
unnerving. 8,37,00,000 dwelling units needed
throughout the country and the demand rises
annually at the rate of 17,000 dwelling units, not
to mention rural housing. To face staggering
problems of such magnitude, twenty-five years Rashtrapati Bhawan, Delhi
ago, there were few Indian architects in the
country and practically no planners. There was
only one school of architecture in Bombay. But
there was the will to build, with the limited
resources and technological know-how at our
disposal.

We marched ahead and built an impressive

number of houses and other buildings of
utilisation nature. In the process we made
mistakes and learnt from them. Each fresh
attempt was a step closer to building of forms
more suitable for the Indian climate and socio-
economic conditions. In this process, architects
also became aware of the need for a certain
amount of research work in new ways of building
and planning if we were to face the problem
squarely as they say. Since government was the
agency with the largest resource, it had to carry
the heaviest responsibility for construction. Need
for various kinds of organisation on the national
and regional level was felt. Following is the list of
governmental bodies that we have today, which
in some way or the other are responsible for
building industry in India.

(1) CENTRAL PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT

(C.P.W.D.)

This is a national organisation with affiliated

bodies at state level called Public Works
Department (P.W.D.). It looks after all the
construction of government office buildings,
residential accommodation for government
employees, institutional buildings like the I.I.T.,
hospitals, public auditoriums, conference halls
like Vigyan Bhavan, and hotels such as "The
Janpath" and "The Ranjeet". etc. A number of
other buildings, like Libraries, research institutes,
airports, radio and T.V. Centres,
Telecommunication building, factories and
workshops are also looked after by the C.P.W.D.

Activities of the C.P.W.D. are not restricted to

building construction alone. The department also
looks after engineering, construction of
granaries, warehouses, bridges and canals that
have helped the country in its fight against food
shortage.

The Horticultural wing of the department has

involved itself with the creation of environmental
comforts, like Parks such as Buddha Jayanti Park
and Mughal Gardens.

Activities of the department at present have

extended beyond the borders of the country. The
Sonali-Pokhra road project in Nepal has been
completed and a hospital for children in Kabul
had just been completed and the department
had been appointed as consultant for work of the
Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Institute at Mauritius.


(2) TOWN COUNTRY PLANNING ORGANISATION

A planning organisation is responsible for physical

Counnaught Place, Delhi
and land-use planning on a national scale and
then detailed land-use planning on regional scale.
In other words this organisation is responsible for
earmarking National land for various uses, such
as Towns, cities, industry etc., considering factors
like economy, ecology, communication etc.
thereby ensuring balanced and planned physical
growth of the whole nation. Apart from this the
organisation is engaged in preparing
development plans for existing cities such as
Delhi to ensure controlled growth of these cities.

(3) HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT

CORPORATION :

HUDCO was set as a fInance operating body to

deal with a revolving fund of 200 crores. 
Its main objectives are :

(a) To finance Urban Housing.

(b) To undertake setting up of new or satellite
towns.

(4) CENTRAL BUILDING RESEARCH INSTITUTE

C.B.R.I. conducts research into various methods

of economical construction and various other
aspects of the building industry. It is a research
oriented organisation.

(5) NATIONAL BUILDING ORGANISATION :

N.B.O. is an organisation which acts as interface

between all incoming technological information
and practising architects and builders.

(6) HINDUSTAN HOUSING FACTORY :

H.H.F. concerns itself in encouraging the

technology of prefabrication throughout the
country.

(7) STATE HOUSING BOARDS TO DEVELOPMENT

AUTHORITIES :

Apart from all these, are state housing boards in

all the mentioned above bodies which are
responsible for implementation and designing of
the housing needs, and general controlled growth
of the existing cities according to drawn up
master-plans for development. For financial help
they depend on agencies like HUDCO.

Together with the help of all the organisation, by

no means an exhaustive list, government
performs various roles, from public works to
deployment of financial resources, from research
to distribution of fundings to building industry.
Much has been done, much remains to be done.

On the architectural horizon today find us with a

new generation of architects and planners. Today
we have nearby fifteen architectural schools
throughout the country and certain equipment
and knowhow of naturalized building science and
technology and a growing experience with new
material and methods and large scale planning.
All this had not been easy.

However, it was not huge, building institutions,

but individuals that have been responsible for
evolving a new aesthetics bridging the hiatus
between traditionalism and modernism.
Painstakingly these individuals have worked, over
 the years, learning both from abroad and our
experiences with traditional architecture, to bring
about various schools of thought responsible for
the spirit of modern Indian architecture. The
emphasis now lies not on awesome
monumentality, but factionalism with
accompanying virtues of economy, simplicity and
utility.

It is relevant here to go into the development of

these ideas. As a matter of fact some ideas of
modern architecture were not to come to us until
1950, when Le Corbusier at that time was a
leading figure in architectural circles created
Chandigarh, one of his most ambitious projects.

This had a tremendous impact on the mind of

Indian architects, who had so far only seen-either
glorious temples or forts of the past or the
Imperial British capital of New Delhi in the name
of modern architecture. Overwhelmed, they
found this expression of modern architecture
quite acceptable. It was grand and sensational
and at the same time was based on rational basis
of climatic analysis and planning freedom. In the
years to follow, buildings spring up all over India
which had similar expression and the same
materials. But ideas of Le Corbusier had to be
crystallized before they could be adopted in
India. Some realized that concrete and plastic
forms were after all not the solution for all Indian
architectural problems, howsoever sensational
they might be.


There was another parallel phenomenon going on at the
same time which was to influence the course of modern
architecture in India to come. Indian architects were going
to Europe and America to seek higher education and
cultural inspiration. The Indian architectural community
took its inspiration from ideas developed in the western
world. During the sixties these architects who received
their education in the western countries commanded high
positions as professionals as well as teachers. They taught,
practiced and experimented with what they had learnt in
the west against the harsh realities of India. The process of
fermentation of ideas was turned on. There were many Supreme Court, Delhi
realizations that were to form the rational basis for
architecture to come.

First of these realizations was that if we have to do

anything worthwhile in India for Indians under Indian
socio-economic and climatic conditions, the west was no
place to look for inspirations or solutions. We will have to
evolve our own patterns of development and physical
growth, our own methods and materials of construction
and our own expression of foregoing. This realisation
created a sense of vaccum and because of the poignancy of
the feeling of vaccum, the search began, and architects
started looking in different directions for various answers.
In each direction partial perception of truth was declared as
the total truth. The fact however, remains that in each
direction we have moved closer to rational basis of modern
architecture. One of the first places where Indian architects
looked for inspiration for expression of total architecture of
India, is our own village and folk architecture. Architects
studied with keen interest the way people solved problems
long before western influence was felt in India. From desert
settlements of Jaisalmer, to village developments of hills,
plains and sea-coasts, all became the focus of study.
Complex planning were analysed and looked into for
inspirations. There are some daring architects who have
gone as far as to study the human settlements in the
heavily populated areas of existing metropolitan cities, built
without the help of architects, looking for solutions of high
density, low rise economical housing; a challenging
problem for India. It is the contention of these farsighted
architects, with a hard nosed realism, that in such kinds of
dense developments, with simple methods of construction
and conventional low cost materials, when laid out in a
planned manner, that we will find the answer urban
housing for our really poor masses. While some of these
architects were busy looking for answers in what we
already have in our traditional settlements, others were
exploring how industry can be made use of in solving the
aspect of building problems. Prefabrication has potential in
large scale housing, large span structures and industrial
buildings on anywhere were repetitive units can be
employed. But so far in India, industrialization of the
building industry has not made great headway for lack of
technological infrastructures to support it, therefore its
influence is only limited to fascination of imagery.
However, one aspect of technology that can be successfully
applied in architecture is invention and manufacture of new
building materials from industrial waste to replace the
traditional building materials like steel and cement of which
there are tremendous shortages.

Further information: List of World Heritage Sites in

India and Category:Indian architecture

In recent times there has been a movement of population from rural

areas to urban centres of industry, leading to price rise in property in
various cities of India.[34] Urban housing in India balances space
constrictions and is aimed to serve the working class. [35] Indian
government has accepted World Trade Organisation’s General
Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), enabling foreign
architects to practice in India, and thereby adding to the plurality of
Indian building traditions.[34] Growing awareness of ecology has
influenced architecture in India during modern times.[36]

Indian buildings reflect India's culture and myths. [34] Jawahar Kala

Kendra at Jaipur, a Charles Correa design—for example—
represents the layout of a mandala.  Raj Jadhav (2007) notes the
[34]

position of traditional Vastu Shastra in modern Indian architecture:

[34]

The ancient Indian architectural text of Vastu Shastra is widely used in modern
Indian architecture for planning houses, residential complexes, office,
commercial, industrial and other building types. The principles of Vastu Shastra
regulate planning and design specifics from town planning to the furniture layout
of a room. The stipulations are said to be governed by ancient empirical
knowledge of the human body and its relation to the earth and the cosmos.
Following these stipulations, it is said, ensures overall human well-being. Hence,
a client with a belief in Vastu Shastra will choose a plot of land and locate the
functions and elements of a building using the guidelines of this text. Architects
and clients consult specialists in Vastu Shastra and then agree upon a design.
The belief in this ancient body of knowledge is experiencing a rapid revival.

Security is a main concern in government buildings. [37] The

architecture of these buildings lays emphasis on security
[37]
precautions.  One method of achieving that may be designing
separate entrances for separate user groups. [37] The VIP entrances
and exits can have required security arrangements for ensuring
safety.[37]

Concentricity has been employed in Indian architecture since

millennia.[38] The plan of early buildings aligned them to a spiritual
motif corresponding to cosmological imagination. [38] The concentric
feature of Indian architecture is common to buildings of various
regions and cultures within India—notable examples being various
Hindu temples, the Taj Mahal, and buildings constructed according
to Rajasthani architecture.[38] This plan is divided into various parts
by the designer who uses concentric placing of these parts in his
construction.[38] Modern Indian architects continue to use and
incorporate this feature in buildings—for example in the Indian
Parliament Library or the Vidhan Sabha (Bhopal).[38][39]

A significant feature of India's architecture is the courtyard. [40] Klaus-

Peter Gast (2007) elaborates on the significance of courtyards in
India:[40]

The courtyards also take up an old Indian architectural motif whereby the
courtyard provides light and air for the rooms directly in this hot climate, and
people are able to spend time outside or inside according to the time of day. The
courtyard is also the classical symbol of something shared, a place where people
meet, spend time with each other and live together. This aspect is emphasised in
the courtyard for the general public, which is placed immediately inside the
entrance and constructed in the form of a Kund, a large area of stone steps. Here
people spend their waiting time together almost as if in a state of communal
meditation. A waiting area that would be completely inconceivable in Western
culture functions as a “think tank” here, with the ambience of waiting
stimulating communal reflection.

Climate responsive architecture has long been a feature of India's

architecture but has been losing its significance as of late. [41] Indian
architecture reflects its various socio-cultural sensibilities which vary
from region to region.[41] Certain areas are traditionally held to be
belonging to women.[41] Villages in India have features such as
courtyards, loggias, terraces and balconies.[35] Calico, chintz,
and palampore—of Indian origin—highlight the assimilation of
Indian textiles in global interior design. [42] Roshandans, which are
skylights-cum-ventilators, are a common feature in Indian homes,
especially in North India.[43][44]

[edit]Gallery

The Sé Cathedral of Santa Catarina—located in Old Goa—is

a cathedraldedicated to Catherine of Alexandria.

The famous jaali from the 16th-century Sidi Saiyyed mosque built

by Ahmed Shah of Gujarat, inAhmedabad

The North Block in New Delhi houses key government offices, built along

with Lutyens' Delhi.

Chandigarh Secretariat designed by Le Corbusier.

Akshardham Temple in Delhi, completed in 2005 and one of the largest

Hindu temples in the world.

Chandigarh
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Chandigarh
ਚੰ ਡੀਗੜ੍ਹ
चण्डीगढ़

City Beautiful

—  Union territory  —
 Seal

Chandigarh

Location of Chandigarh
ਚੰ ਡੀਗੜ੍ਹ

चण्डीगढ़

30.75°N 76.78°ECoordinates:  30.75°N 76
Coordinates
.78°E

Country India

District(s) 1

Established 1953

Capital Chandigarh

Largest city Chandigarh

Mayor: Ravinder Pal Singh[1]

Population 1,054,686[2] (29)

• Density • 9,252 /km2 (23,963 /sq mi)

HDI

0.860 (very high)
 Literacy 81.9%

Official languages Punjabi, Hindi and English

Time zone IST (UTC+5:30)

Area 114 km2 (44 sq mi)

• Elevation • 350 metres (1,150 ft)

Codes[show]

ISO 3166-2 IN-CH

Footnotes[show]

Website chandigarh.nic.in/

Chandigarh (Punjabi: ਚੰ ਡੀਗੜ੍ਹ, Hindi: चण्डीगढ़) is a union

territory of India that serves as the capital of

two states, Punjab and Haryana. The name Chandigarh translates as
"The Fort of Chandi". The name was coined from an ancient temple
called Chandi Mandir, devoted to the Hindu Goddess Chandi, present
in the city's vicinity.[3] It is occasionally referred to as The City
Beautiful. Chandigarh Capital Region(CCR),
including Mohali, Panchkula, and Zirakpur, had a combined population
of 1,165,111 (1.16 million) as per the 2001 census. Earlier the
Chandigarh Capital region was also called 'Tricity' because
of Panchkula and Mohali as adjacent cities but with the mushrooming of
other towns like Zirakpur, Kharar etc. with considerable population it is
better called 'Chandigarh Capital Region'.

As the first planned city of India, Chandigarh is known internationally for

its architecture and urban planning. [4] Chandigarh is home to numerous
architectural projects of Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, Matthew
Nowicki, and Albert Mayer. The city tops the list of Indian States and
Union Territories with the highest per capita income in the country at
Rs.99,262 at current prices and Rs.70,361 at constant prices (2006–
2007).[5] As per a study conducted by Ministry of Urban Development,
Chandigarh has emerged as the cleanest city in India, [6]while also
topping the List of Indian states and territories by Human Development
Index.[7]

Contents
 [hide]

1 History

2 Geography and climate

o 2.1 Average temperature

3 Flora and fauna

4 Architecture and urban planning

5 Chandigarh administration

6 Demographics

7 Culture

8 Economy

9 Education

10 Transport

11 Sporting venues and gardens

12 Notable residents

13 See also

14 Academic works

15 References

16 External links

[edit]History

After the partition of British India into the two nations of India and

Pakistan in 1947, the region of Punjab was also split
between India andPakistan. The Indian state of Punjab required a new
capital city to replace Lahore, which became part of Pakistan during the
partition.[8]After several plans to make additions to existing cities were
found to be infeasible for various reasons, the decision to construct a
new and planned city was undertaken.The circle office at Chandigarh
started to function in the year 1985.At present the jurisdiction of this
circle for archeological work extends to the states of
Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh.There are 32 protected monuments
of National importance in Punjab and 89 in Haryana being maintained
by the circle.This is usually referred to as Chandigarh Circle.

Of all the new town schemes in independent India, the Chandigarh

project quickly assumed prime significance, because of the city's
strategic location as well as the personal interest of Jawaharlal Nehru,
the first Prime Minister of independent India. Commissioned byNehru to
reflect the new nation's modern, progressive outlook, Nehru famously
proclaimed Chandigarh to be "unfettered by the traditions of the past, a
symbol of the nation's faith in the future." Several buildings and layouts
in Chandigarh were designed by the French (bornSwiss) architect and
urban planner, Le Corbusier, in the 1950s. Le Corbusier was in fact the
second architect of the city, after the initial master plan was prepared
by the American architect-planner Albert Mayer who was working with
the Poland-born architect Matthew Nowicki. It was only after Nowicki's
death in 1950 that Le Corbusier was pulled into the project.

On 1 November 1966, the newly-formed Indian state of Haryana was

carved out of the eastern portion of the Punjab, in order to
createHaryana as a majority Hindi speaking state, while the western
portion of Punjab retained a mostly Punjabi language-speaking majority
and remained as the current day Punjab. However, the city of
Chandigarh was on the border, and was thus created into a union
territory to serve as capital of both these states. It was the capital
of Punjab alone from 1952 to 1966. [9] Chandigarh was due to be
transferred to Punjab in 1986, in accordance with an agreement signed
in August 1985 by Rajiv Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India,
with Harchand Singh Longowal of the Akali Dal. This was to be
accompanied by the creation of a new capital for Haryana, but the
transfer had been delayed. There is currently a discussion about which
villages in southern districts of Punjab should be transferred
to Haryana, and about which Punjabi-speaking villages should be
transferred to Punjab. But analysts believe that now it is not possible as
none of the State governments would like to give up their claim and
Chandigarh would remain to be the capital of both states and a union
territory.

On 15 July 2007, Chandigarh became the first Indian city to go smoke-

free. Smoking at public places was strictly prohibited and considered as
a punishable act by Chandigarh Administration. That was followed up
by a complete ban on polythene bags with effect from 2 October (the
birthday of Mahatma Gandhi) in the year 2008.[10][11]

[edit]Geography and climate

Sukhna Lake

Chandigarh is located near the foothills of the Shivalik range of

the Himalayas in Northwest India. It covers an area of approximately
44 sq mi or 114 km². and shares its borders with the states
of Haryana in the east and Punjab in the north, west and south. The
exact cartographic co-ordinates of Chandigarh are  30.74°N 76.79°E.
 It has an average elevation of 321 metres (1053 ft).
[12]

Chandigarh

Climate chart (explanation)

J F M A M J J A S O N D

33 39 30 9 28 145 280 308 133 22 9 22

20 23 28 35 38 39 34 33 33 32 27 22

6 8 13 19 23 25 24 23 22 17 11 7

Average max. and min. temperatures in °C

Precipitation totals in mm

Source: World Weather Information Service

[show]Imperial conversion

The surrounding districts are of Mohali, Patiala and Roopnagar in

Punjab and Panchkula and Ambala in Haryana. The boundary of the
state ofHimachal Pradesh is also minutes away from its north border.

Chandigarh has a humid subtropical climate characterized by a

seasonal rhythm: very hot summers, mild winters, unreliable rainfall and
great variation in temperature (-1 °C to 41.2 °C). In winter, pieces of
snow sometimes occurs during December and January. The average
annual rainfall is 1110.7 mm. The city also receives occasional winter
rains from the west.

[edit]Average temperature

 Spring: The climate remains quite

pleasant during the spring season
(from mid-February to mid-March and
then from mid-September to mid-
October). Temperatures vary between
(max) 16 °C to 25 °C and (min) 9 °C to
18 °C.

 Autumn: In autumn (from Mid-March

to April), the temperature may rise to a
maximum of 36 °C. Temperatures
usually remain between 16° to 27° in
autumn. The minimum temperature is
around 11 °C.

 Summer: The temperature in summer

(from Mid-May to Mid-June) may rise
to a maximum of 45 °C (rarely).
Temperatures generally remain
between 35 °C to 40 °C (94 - 101F).

 Monsoon: During monsoon(from mid-

June to mid-September), Chandigarh
receives moderate to heavy rainfall
and sometimes heavy to very heavy
rainfall (generally during the month of
August or September). Usually, the
rain bearing monsoon winds blow from
south-west/ south-east. Mostly, the city
receives heavy rain from south (which
is mainly a persistent rain) but it
generally receives most of its rain
during monsoon either from North-
west or North-east. Maximum amount
of rain received by the city of
 Chandigrah during monsoon season is
195.5 mm in a single day.

 Winter: Winters (November to Mid-

March) are mild but it can sometimes
get quite chilly in Chandigarh. Average
temperatures in the winter remain at
(max) 7 °C to 15 °C and (min) -3 °C to
5 °C. Rain usually comes from the
west during winters and it is usually a
persistent rain for 2–3 days with
sometimes hail-storms.
[edit]Flora and fauna

Sambar in a forest

Most of Chandigarh is covered by

dense Banyan and Eucalyptus plantations. Asoka, Cassia, Mulberry an
d other trees flourish in the forested ecosystem.The city has forests
surrounding it which sustain many animal and plant
species. Deers, Sambars, Barking
Deers, Parrots,Woodpeckers and Peacocks inhabit the protected
forests. Sukhna Lake hosts a variety of ducks and geese, and attracts
migratory birds from parts of Siberia and Japan in the winter season.

A parrot sanctuary located in the city is home to a variety of bird

species.

[edit]Architecture and urban planning

Chandigarh Secretariat Building

Taking over from Albert Mayer, Le Corbusier produced a plan for

Chandigarh that conformed to the modern city planning principles
of Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne CIAM, in terms of
division of urban functions, an anthropomorphic plan form, and a
hierarchy of road and pedestrian networks. This vision of Chandigarh,
contained in the innumerable conceptual maps on the drawing board
together with notes and sketches had to be translated into brick and
mortar. Le Corbusier retained many of the seminal ideas of Mayer and
Nowicki, like the basic framework of the master plan and its
components: The Capitol, City Center, besides the University, Industrial
area, and linear parkland. Even the neighborhood unit was retained as
the basic module of planning. However, the curving outline of Mayer
and Nowicki was reorganized into a mesh of rectangles, and the
buildings were characterized by an "honesty of materials". Exposed
brick and boulder stone masonry in its rough form produced unfinished
concrete surfaces, in geometrical structures. This became the
architectural form characteristic of Chandigarh, set amidst landscaped
gardens and parks.

The Open Hand Monument

The initial plan had two phases: the first for a population of 150,000 and
the second taking the total population to 500,000. Le Corbusier divided
the city into units called "sectors", each representing a theoretically self-
sufficient entity with space for living, working and leisure. The sectors
were linked to each other by a road and path network developed along
the line of the 7 Vs, or a hierarchy of seven types of circulation patterns.
At the highest point in this network was the V1, the highways
connecting the city to others, and at the lowest were the V7s, the
streets leading to individual houses. Later a V8 was added: cycle and
pedestrian paths. The Palace Assembly, designed by Le Corbusier The
city plan is laid down in a grid pattern. The whole city has been divided
into rectangular patterns, forming identical looking sectors, each sector
measures 800 m x 1200 m. The sectors were to act as self-sufficient
neighbourhoods, each with its own market, places of worship, schools
and colleges - all within 10 minutes walking distance from within the
sector. The original two phases of the plan delineated sectors from 1 to
47, with the exception of 13 (Number 13 is considered unlucky). The
Assembly, the secretariat and the high court, all located in Sector - 1
are the three monumental buildings designed by Le Corbusier in which
he showcased his architectural genius to the maximum. The city was to
be surrounded by a 16 kilometer wide greenbelt that was to ensure that
no development could take place in the immediate vicinity of the town,
thus checking suburbs and urban sprawl; hence is famous for its
greenness too.

While leaving the bulk of the city's architecture to other members of his
team, Le Corbusier took responsibility for the overall master plan of the
city, and the design of some of the major public buildings including the
High Court, Assembly, Secretariat, the Museum and Art Gallery, School
of Art and the Lake Club. Le Corbusier's most prominent building, the
Court House, consists of the High court, which is literally higher than
the other, eight lower courts. Most of the other housing was done by Le
Corbusier's cousin Pierre Jeanneret, the English husband and wife
team of Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew, along with a team of nine Indian
architects. The city in its final form, while not resembling his previous
city projects like the Ville Contemporaine or the Ville Radieuse, was an
important and iconic landmark in the history of town planning. It
continues to be an object of interest for architects, planners, historians
and social scientists. Chandigarh has two satellite
cities: Panchkulaand Mohali. Sometimes, the triangle of these three
cities is collectively called the Chandigarh Tricity.

[edit]Chandigarh administration
Punjab and Haryana High Court at Chandigarh

Chandigarh Administration is under the control of the Administrator who

is appointed under the provisions of Art 239 of the Constitution. The
administrative control of Chandigarh is under the Ministry of Home
Affairs. The Adviser to the Administrator, a very senior officer
equivalent to the Chief Secretary of a state, belonging to one of the All
India Services, is second in command after the Administrator. S/He
generally belongs to the AGMU cadre of the Indian Administrative
Service.

 The Deputy Commissioner, an officer

belonging to the Indian Administrative
Service, is the in-charge of the
General Administration in the
Chandigarh UT.

 The Senior Superintendent of Police,

an officer belonging to the Indian
Police Service, is responsible for
maintaining Law & Order and related
issues in the Chandigarh UT.

 The Deputy Conservator of Forests,

an officer belonging to the Indian
Forest Service, is responsible for the
management of the Forests,
Environment, Wild-Life and Pollution
Control in the Chandigarh UT.

The above three officers are generally from AGMU cadre and can also
be from Punjab or Haryana cadres of the All India Services.
[edit]Demographics

[show]Chandigarh Population

Religion in Chandigarh
Religion Percent
Hinduism   78.6%
Sikhism   16.1%
Islam   3.9%
Others   1.4%
Distribution of religions

As of 2001 India census,[14] Chandigarh had a population of 900,635,

making for a density of about 7900 persons per square kilometre.
Males constitute 56% of the population and females 44%. The sex ratio
is 777 females for every 1,000 males–which is the lowest in the
country. Chandigarh has an average literacy rate of 81.9%, higher than
the national average of 64.8%; with male literacy of 86.1% and female
literacy of 76.5%. About 12% of the population is under 6 years of age.
The main religions in Chandigarh are Hinduism: 78.6%, Sikhism:
16.1%, Islam: 3.9%, and Christianity: 0.8%.[15] Hindi and Punjabi and
are the main languages spoken in Chandigarh, although these
days English is quite popular. A significant percentage of the population
of Chandigarh consists of people who had moved here from the
neighboring states of Haryana and Punjab to fill up the large number of
vacancies in various government departments that were established in
Chandigarh.

[edit]Culture

The culture of Chandigarh is an amalgamation of the cultures of the

neighboring states with an urban tinge. The setting up of Rajiv Gandhi
Software Technology Park has also added to its semi -cosmopolitan
identity. Primarily, Chandigarh's culture is influenced
by Punjabi, Haryanavi, Himachali, UP and Bihar. North Indian food is
popular in the city.

[edit]Economy

Main article: Economy of Chandigarh Capital Region

A Shopping mall in the city.

The government is a major employer in Chandigarh with three

governments having their base here. A significant percentage of
Chandigarh’s population therefore consists of people who are either
working for one of these governments or have retired from government
service. For this reason, Chandigarh is often called a “Pensioner's
Paradise”. There are about 15 medium to large industrial including two
in the Public sector. In addition Chandigarh has over 2500 units are
registered under small scale sector. The important industries are paper
manufacturing, basic metals and alloys and machinery. Other industries
are relating to food products, sanitary ware, auto parts, machine tools,
pharmaceuticals and electrical appliances. Yet, with a Per capita
income (PCI) of   99,262, Chandigarh is the richest city in India.
 Chandigarh's gross state domestic product for 2004 is estimated at
[16]

$2.2 billion in current prices.

Chandigarh has a well-developed market and banking infrastructure.

Nearly all the major banks in the country have registered their presence
in Chandigarh. Most banks with a pan India presence have their
zonal/regional offices present in Chandigarh. The Bank Square
in Sector 17 in Chandigarh has a large presence of such offices all in
one section of the commercial sector.[citation needed]

Three major trade promotion organizations have their offices in

Chandigarh. These are: Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce
& Industry, (FICCI) the PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry
(PHDCCI) and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) which has its
regional headquarters at Sector 31, Chandigarh.

The defence forces have a significant presence in Chandigarh, apart

from the Indian Airforce base in Sector 31 and the nearby Cantonment
in Chandimandir, the city is the base for sourcing supplies for
the Leh - Laddakh and Siachen region of defence operations.[citation needed]

Chandigarh IT Park (also Chandigarh Technology Park) is the city's

attempt to break into the IT world. Chandigarh's infrastructure, proximity
to Delhi, Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, and the IT talent pool
attracts IT businesses looking for office space in the area. Major Indian
firms and multinational corporations to the like
of Quark, Infosys, Dell, IBM,TechMahindra have set up base in the city
and its suburbs. According to a recent Global Services Survey
conducted by Cyber Media, Chandigarh is ranked 9th in the top 50
cities identified globally as ‘emerging outsourcing and IT services
destinations.’[17]

[edit]Education

Main article: List of educational institutions in Chandigarh

Gandhi Bhavan built by Pierre Jeanneretfor Punjab University

Chandigarh is known for its quality school education. [citation  The

needed]

schools are affiliated to different types of school curricula. The

prominent colleges in Chandigarh include GGDSD College, Punjab
Engineering College, University Business School (UBS), Chandigarh
College Of Engineering & Technology (CCET), University Institute Of
Engineering & Technology (UIET), DAV College, MCM DAV College,
Government College for Girls and Boys and Government Teacher
Training College. One of the most popular university that is situated in
chandigarh is Panjab University Chandigarh. Other popular schools in
Chandigarh are Bhavan Vidyalaya Sector 27, Yadvindra Public School
(Y.P.S) Mohali ,St Xavier's School Sec-44 , St.Stephen's School Sec-
45, Shivalik Public School, Vivek High School, St. John's High School,
St. Kabir ,Carmel Convent Sec-9, St. Joseph's Sr. Sec. School Sec-44,
St. Anne's School Sec-32, Delhi Public School Sec 40, etc. There are
model schools set up by the government in various sectors, originally
aimed to cater the needs of each sector. It is a major study hub for
students all over Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, J&K, Punjab, Bihar,
Uttaranchal, and also for students from South-East Asia. Post Graduate
Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER)is a premier
medical research institute which works with the primary mandate of
medical research and Post-Graduate medical education. The institute
serves as prime tertiary level medical care facility for the region. The
institute was formed by the act of parliament and is centrally governed.

[edit]Transport

The new "Green Bus" introduced by the CTU runs throughout Chandigarh

Chandigarh has the largest number of vehicles per capita in India.

 Wide, well maintained roads and ample parking space all over the
[18]

city, make it convenient to use private vehicles for local transport.

Public buses run by the Chandigarh Transport Undertaking (CTU), an

undertaking of the Chandigarh Administration, provide local transport
as well as inter-state transport services.[19]

The Chandigarh Traffic Police oversees the implementation of the

traffic rules, and is widely credited for a fairly orderly traffic system. The
Traffic Park in Sector 23 introduces children, rickshaw-pullers and new
drivers to traffic safety.[20]

Rickshaws are common for traveling short distances, especially by

school-going children, housewives and the elderly. Auto-rickshaws are
limited, and most often ply to and from the ISBT. Most heavy traffic
roads now have rickshaw lanes, which the rickshaw-pullers must
adhere to compulsorily. The city also boasts of a well established
network of modern radio cabs .

Chandigarh is well connected by road. The two main National

Highways (NH) connecting Chandigarh with the rest of the country are:
NH 22 (Ambala - Kalka - Shimla - Kinnaur) and NH 21 (Chandigarh -
Leh). Chandigarh has two Inter-State Bus Terminus (ISBT), one for the
North, East and South located in Sector 17, which is the biggest depot
of Haryana Roadways and has regular bus services to most major cites
in Haryana,and the national capital Delhi, which is about 240 km away.
And a second in Sector 43 for the Western section, Punjab, Himachal
Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Jammu and Kashmir.

Chandigarh has a railway station located about 10 km. away from the
ISBT. Regular train connections are available to the national
capital New Delhi and to some other junctions
likeAmbala, Amritsar, Bhiwani, Jaipur, Chennai, Howrah, Kalka, Luckno
w, Mumbai, Patna, Sri Ganganagar and Trivandrum.

Chandigarh also has a domestic airport located nearly 12 kilometers

from the ISBT. Its name is Chandigarh Airport. Air India, Jet
Airways, JetLite and Kingfisher Airlines operate regular flights from
Chandigarh to New Delhi and Mumbai. The airport is under process of
becoming an international airport and is negotiating with several airlines
including Kingfisher and SilkAirfor international flights to Bangkok and
Singapore, among other South East Asian countries [21]

In the near future, the city will also see a Metro Rail,[22] and an
international airport. They are both approved by the governments, and
are now at the design step to finalize the project design.

[edit]Sporting venues and gardens

The popular Sector-42 Hockey Stadium

Chandigarh is home to numerous inter state sporting teams in

tournaments like PHL and IPL. The city has built upon this
achievements a network of sound infrastructure ranging from stadium
to training camps. This include the entire gamut from cricket stadiums,
swimming pools, shooting ranges to skating rinks and hockey stadiums.
Chandigarh also has gardens across the entire city. Chandigarh is
home to world famous Rock Garden, built from mostly from waste
material. Another well known garden is the Rose Garden. Other
gardens include Garden of Annuals, Fragrance Garden, Hibiscus
Garden, Chrysanthemum Garden, Botanical Garden and Shanti Kunj.

Waterfall at Rock Garden, Chandigarh

Achyut Kanvinde
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article needs
additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable
references. Unsourced material may
be challenged and removed. (January 2010)

PK Kelkar Library, IIT Kanpur, designed by Achyut Kanvinde

Padma Shri Achyut P. Kanvinde (1916–28 December 2002) is

considered as one of forefathers of modern Indian architecture.[1]

Contents
[hide]

1 Early life and education

2 Career

3 References

4 External links

[edit]Early life and education

He was born in Achara, in the Konkan region of Maharashtra, in 1916 in

a large family. His mother died when he was two and his father was an
arts teacher in Bombay. Kanvinde entered the Sir J.J. School of
Art (University of Mumbai) in 1935, to study architecture under Claude
Batley. He later studied design at Harvard in 1945 and was influenced
by the works of Walter Gropius.

[edit]Career

The University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore campus designed by

Kanvinde and Rai

Along with his partner S. Rai, he opened a firm Kanvinde, Rai and

Chowdhury in New Delhi (which is currently run by Mr. Sanjay
Kanvinde, Mrs. B.K. Tanuja and Mr. Murad Chaudhury). The firm has
been responsible for IIT Kanpur, National Science Centre, Delhi, NII
Pune, numerous dairy buildings under NDDB and many other great
buildings.[2]
Anant Raje
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Anant Damodar Raje

Personal information

Nationality Indian

Work

Anant Damodar Raje (September 26, 1929 - June 27, 2009) was an

Indian architect and intellectual

Contents
[hide]

1 Early life

2 Career

3 Death

4 References

[edit]Early life

Ananth Raje was born in Mumbai, India. He studied at the Sir J. J.

College of Architecture.

[edit]Career

He worked with Louis Kahn in Philadelphia, where he also taught at

the University of Pennsylvania. As Kahn's student, he devoted his life to
see the completion of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad,
which Kahn did not live to see completed.

For over thirty years he has taught at the Faculty of Architecture, CEPT

University, Ahmedabad. He also taught at the University of New
Mexico, in The United States of America, and was a visiting professor
at many universities in America and Europe.

His well known works include the Executive Management Centre at the
Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, India, the Forest
Management Institute in Bhopal, India and the Institute of Statistics
in New Delhi.
[edit]Death

Raje died on 27 June 2009.

B. V. Doshi
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

B. V. Doshi

Personal information

Nationality Indian

Born August 26, 1927

Work

Balkrishna Vithaldas Doshi (26 August 1927) is an Indian architect.

Contents
[hide]

1 Early life

2 Career

3 Related links

4 Further reading

[edit]Early life

B. V. Doshi was born in Pune, India. He studied at the J. J. School of

Architecture, Mumbai.

[edit]Career
from left, Muzharul Islam, B. V. Doshi and Shamsul Wares

B. V. Doshi worked in London then for four years with Le Corbusier. He

returned to Ahmedabad to supervise Le Corbusier's work. His studio,
Vastu-Shilpa (environmental design), was established in 1955. Doshi
worked closely withLouis Kahn and Anant Raje, when Kahn designed
the campus of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. In
1958 he was a fellow at the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies
in the Fine Arts. He then started the School of Architecture (S.A) in
1962.

Doshi is a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and has

been on the selection committee for the Pritzker Prize, the Indira
Gandhi National Centre for Arts, and the Aga Khan Award. He is also a
Fellow of the Indian Institute of Architects

After initial study at the J J School of Architecture, Bombay, he worked

for four years with Le Corbusier as Senior Designer (1951–54) in Paris
and four more years in India to supervise his projects in Ahmedabad.
His office Vastu-Shilpa (environmental design) was established in 1955.

Dr Doshi has been a member of the Jury for several international and
national competitions including the Indira Gandhi National Centre for
Arts and Aga Khan Award for Architecture.

Apart from his international fame as an architect, Dr. Doshi is equally

known as educator and institution builder. He has been the first founder
Director of School of Architecture, Ahmedabad (1962–72), first founder
Director of School of Planning (1972–79), first founder Dean of Centre
 for Environmental Planning and Technology (1972–81), founder
member of Visual Arts Centre, Ahmedabad and first founder Director of
Kanoria Centre for Arts, Ahmedabad. Dr. Doshi has been instrumental
in establishing the nationally and internationally known research
institute Vastu-Shilpa Foundation for Studies and Research in
Environmental Design. The institute has done pioneering work in low
cost housing and city planning.

As an academician, Dr. Doshi has been visiting the U.S.A. and Europe
since 1958 and has held important chairs in American Universities.

In recognition of his distinguished contribution as a professional and as

an academician, Dr. Doshi has received several international and
national awards and honours.

In 2008, 100hands director Prjmit Ramachandran released a

documentary interviewing Doshi.

Doshi was the teacher for contemporary designer and University of

Pennsylvania professor Anuradha Mathur.


There is the growing realization among architects that just to build visually beautiful buildings will be useless,

unless it is backed by infrastructure of services, such as water supply, electrical supply and communication

system of rapid mass transit, etc. In other words it is not an individual building but the total environment

that matters. All this calls for serious attention on patterns of physical growth that will take care of layouts

of all these services in an organised manner.

Charles Correa
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Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may
be challenged and removed. (May 2009)

Charles Correa

Personal information
 Nationality Indian

Born September 1, 1930 (age 80)

Work

Jawahar Kala Kendra, designed by Charles Correa, in Jaipur, Rajasthan.

Charles Correa (born September 1, 1930) is an Indian architect, planner and activist.[1]

Contents
 [hide]

1 Early life

2 Career

3 Current projects

4 Awards

5 Further reading

6 References

7 External links

[edit]Early life

Charles Correa was born in Hyderabad, India. He studied architecture at the University of Michigan and
at Massachusetts Institute of Technology after which he established a private practice in Bombay in 1958.

[edit]Career
His work in India is an adaptation of Modernism to a non-western culture. His early works attempt to
explore a local vernacular within a modern environment. His land-use planning and community projects
continually try to go beyond typical solutions to third world problems.

Mahatma Gandhi Memorial, at the Sabarmati Ashram, Ahmedabad

All of his work - from the planning of Navi Mumbai to the carefully detailed memorial to Mahatma Gandhi at
the Sabarmati Ashram inAhmedabad has placed special emphasis on prevailing resources, energy and
climate as major determinants in the ordering of space.

Over the last four decades, Correa has done pioneering work in urban issues and low cost shelter in
the Third World. From 1970-75, he was Chief Architect for New Bombay an urban growth center of 2 million
people, across the harbor from the existing city. In 1985, Prime MinisterRajiv Gandhi appointed him
Chairman of the National Commission on Urbanization.

In 1984, he founded the prestigious Urban Design Research Institute in Bombay which to this day is
dedicated to the protection of the built environment and improvement of urban communities. He also
designed the distinctive buildings of National Crafts Museum, New Delhi(1975–1990), Bharat
Bhavan Bhopal, British Council, Delhi. (1987–92).

In 2008 he resigned his commission as the head of Delhi Urban Arts Commission.

[edit]Current projects

LIC building, at Connaught Place, New Delhi, designed by Charles Correa, 1986

Charles Correa is currently working on several projects worthy of note. Of particular significance is the
new Ismaili Centre in Toronto,Canada that is to be located in the midst of formal gardens and surrounded
by a large park designed by landscape architect Vladimir Djurovic. It will share the site with the Fumihiko
Maki designed Aga Khan Museum.[2]

A project that has recently been completed is The Champalimaud Foundation Centre in Lisbon which was
inaugurated on October 5, 2010 by the Portuguese President, Cavaco
Silva. http://www.fchampalimaud.org/newsroom/detail/champalimaud-centre-for-the-unknown-opens-in-
lisbon/ http://www.e-architect.co.uk/portugal/champalimaud_foundation.htm

[edit]Awards

 RIBA Royal Gold Medal - 1984.

 His acclaimed design for McGovern Institute for Brain

Research at MIT was dedicated recently.

 Padma Vibhushan (2006) and Padma Shri (1972).

Nari Gandhi
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require cleanup. Please help improve it by rewriting it in anencyclopedic
style. (February 2010)
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point of view, or discuss changes on the talk page. (February 2010)

Nari (Nariman) Gandhi

Personal information

Nationality Indian

Born January 1, 1934

Surat, India

Died August 18, 1993

Khopoli near Mumbai, India

Work

Buildings Daya residence (Mumbai), Patel residence (Surat), Gateway

 to mosque (Kolgaon), Jain house (Lonavala)

Nari Gandhi (1934–1993) was an Indian architect known for his highly innovative works in organic
architecture.

Contents
 [hide]

1 Early life and education

2 Career

3 Personal life

4 At Taliesin

5 Architectural style

6 Selected works

7 References

8 External links

[edit]Early life and education

Nariman (Nari) Dossabhai Gandhi was born in 1934 in Surat to a Zoroastrian Parsi family from Bombay, he
was one of the six children with three brothers and two sisters.

Nari completed his schooling at St. Xavier's High School, Fort, Mumbai, and studied architecture at Sir J. J.
College of Architecture, Mumbai for five years in early 1950s. He traveled toUSA to apprentice with Frank
Lloyd Wright at the Taliesin and spent five years there. After Wright's death in 1959, Nari left Taliesin and
studied pottery at the Kent State University for two years.

[edit]Career

He also briefly worked for the American Architect Warren Weber. He was a good friend of Bruce Goff. Nari
returned to India in early 60s. He taught at the M.S. University, Baroda and at the Academy of
Architecture, Mumbai for a brief period. He passionately worked on as many as 30 projects over a period of
as many years. He died in a tragic accident in 1993 near Khopoli, while he was on the way to one of his
project sites at Kolgaon.

While working in India, Nari continued to work on Wright's ideology of organic architecture and further
developed his own unique style with a subtle influence of local climate and culture. He ceaselessly
continued to work on Wright's idea of 'flowing space'. Nari worked without an office and rarely made any
drawings for any of his projects. Nari spent a lot of time on his sites and worked closely with the craftsmen
and often participated in the construction process himself.
[edit]Personal life

Nari lead a very simple life. He never married and had no children. He was a very religious man and
believed in the Zoroastrian way of life. The simplicity of his life reflected in his work. The strong creative
force behind his work also shaped the way he looked at ordinary things in life. In the later years of his life,
Nari was greatly influenced by the ideas of the Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti. He used to say
that Silence and Void are synonyms of the word God.

Insensitivity towards (his) work would disturb him. He used to get very angry at times. He often had
disputes with his clients when they disregarded his ideas and works. He used to also get angry with the
workers on his sites at times. It is very unfortunate that this aspect of Nari's life has attained more
significance in people's minds rather than his creative genius.

His work reflected more intrinsic element of nature , which affected consciously

[edit]At Taliesin

During the five years that Nari spent at Taliesin, he would spend more time working with his hands on
stone and wood rather than on the drawing board. Nari left Taliesin with an ever-lasting mark, which is
known amongst fellow apprentices as Nari's rock. The rock remembered after him is actually a huge
boulder, which Nari had pulled down from a nearby hill and which, still stands today near the entrance to
the Taliesin.

[edit]Architectural style

Nari's ideologies and works were in sharp contrast to the mainstream architectural thinking. His works
display a distinctive organic character. They appear to have evolved as a response to the context,
remaining strongly rooted to the site and being very well connected to the surroundings. Nari's works
display highly skilled craftsmanship and structural ingenuity. He has stacked earthen pots to construct
arches out of them and built stairs out of brick arches. Throughout his works you see extraordinary use of
stone, brick, wood, glass and leather.

Nari rejected conventional ideas and paradigms and introduced his own through his work. Through his
work, he started 'rethinking' about standardised practices and set up his own. When you visit any one of his
houses, you will notice an evident 're-thinking' of the arrangement of various functions within the house.
Each building designed by Nari is as an example of unconventional thinking in architecture.

He created built spaces that remained forever connected to their un-built surroundings allowing sunlight
and wind to interact with the inside and animate the space with time. Each house is a series of dialogs
between the built and the unbuilt.

[edit]Selected works

 Mountain Lodge for Jal Gobhai at Lonavala

  Residence for Asha Parekh at Juhu, Mumbai

 Farm house for S H Daya at Alibag

 Residence for S H Daya at Versova, Mumbai

 Residence for S H Daya at Madh island, Mumbai

 Residence for Kishore Bajaj at Karjat

 Residence for Rustom Mehta at Korlai, Alibag

 Residence for Shreya and Kishor Dalal at Awas, Alibag

 Mausoleum at Kolgaon near Ahmednagar

 Gateway to mosque at Kolgaon

 Tejani house at Lonavala

 Patel residence at Surat

 Jain house at Lonavala

Raj Rewal
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Raj Rewal

Personal information

Nationality Indian

Work

Buildings Asiad Village, Parliament Library, New Delhi

Raj Rewal is a leading Indian architect.[1]

Contents
 [hide]

1 Early life

2 Career

3 Awards

4 References

5 External links
[edit]Early life

Raj Rewal was born in 1934 in Hoshiarpur, Punjab, India. He created a revolution in geometric design
systems. Creation of geometric systems and responding visual imageries are apparent in Raj Rewal’s
architectural works.

He even went to School of Art in Delhi for six months before joining the School of Architecture. He chiselled
his art in London's Architectural Association School[2]

[edit]Career

He lived in Delhi and Shimla for a couple of years in his childhood that is from 1939–1951. He attended
Harcourt Butler higher secondary school. In 1951-1954, he attended Delhi School of Architecture in New
Delhi.

He was very imaginative and a creative person. His imaginative perception helped him go a long way. He
believed in gaining knowledge and then applied his knowledge mingled with creativity in his projects.

After completing the post graduation in Architecture; in 1955-1961, he moved to London and attended the
architectural association of architecture for one year. He completed his formal professional training at the
Brixton school of building, London.

Raj Rewal took up his first job as an assistant stage manager for several avante grade theatre production
in London. He became an associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects, London.

Raj Rewal worked with Michel Ecochards’s office in Paris before starting his practice in New Delhi. He
designed the Asiad Village and the Parliament Library in New Delhi. He was assigned a Project of the
design of a Parliament Library which he designed beautifully with lot of grace and also adding majestic
qualities to the structure. He got married to a Lady named Helene from France in 1962.

He set up his own architectural practice in 1962 when he returned back to Delhi. In 1963-72, he taught at
the Delhi School of Architecture. He opened his second Architectural Office at Tehran, Iran in 1974. Ram
Sharma was his associate in the foundation of the Architectural Research Cell in 1985. In 1986, he became
the curator of the exhibition “Traditional Architecture in India” for the festival of India in Paris.

[edit]Awards

 Gold Medal from Indian Institute of Architects

 Robert Mathew Award from the Commonwealth Associations of

Architects.