The guy who does An Affordable Wardrobe is studying to be an architect. He's done two recent posts on his inspirations. Some good photos but none as good as those colour ones of Le Corbusier or of Philip Johnson. Good job HBH!
http://anaffordablewardrobe.blogspot.com/2009/01/back-to-school.html
http://anaffordablewardrobe.blogspot.com/2009/02/on-bow-ties-and-architecture.html
Last edited by Decline & Fall (2009-02-23 09:06:39)
Relevant blog entry today:
http://www.retrotogo.com/2009/02/le-corbusier-a-life-by-nicholas-fox-weber.html
Le Corbusier at the Barbican.
http://www.barbican.org.uk/lecorbusier
There is a really great pic of him in the gallery. It's another .gif though so I can't post it directly.
What do people think of the work of John Lautner?
More Lautner pics.
http://www.trianglemodernisthouses.com/lautner.htm
edit
Actually, this site has a lot of good stuff on it. Great pics of homes and architects and lots of info. There are even bios for Howard Roark Peter Keating, and Henry Cameron (winking smiley-face inserted here).
http://www.trianglemodernisthouses.com/
Last edited by Decline & Fall (2009-02-23 15:01:06)
Also, the films just got released.
http://www.amazon.com/Films-Charles-Ray-Eames/dp/B0009S2K92
Charles and Ray Eames, "Eames Lounge Chair Assembly Short Film"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SWL4gTQfTA
http://tsutpen.blogspot.com/2009/03/abandoned-places-1.html
Interesting article. Enjoy.
http://www.jetsetmodern.com/modatmovies.htm
Nice clothes (in some instances - nix the bow-tie), awful buildings - wrecks now, many of them. As Hughes expressed in 'The Shock of the New', the United States (and some other countries) went in for totalitarian-style architecture (yes, I know the Bauhaus was suppressed by the Nazis; that's another matter). I've often thought this devotion to Le Corbusier - vile experimentalist with concrete and the human soul - one of the odder aspects of the Simons worldview.
I normally respond with instinctive warmth to the posts of Chetmiles, feeling him a brother in our shared cause, and it saddens me to have to take issue with his very negative feelings about modern(ist) architecture and its principal theorist Le Corbusier. If John Simons is enthusiastic about modernist design and architecture it is because he feels, I think, that they share the same expression of forceful innovation and experimentalism that be-bop (and its later manifestations in the 50s and 60s) and the postwar very modern looking 'Ivy' wardrobe also exhibit. Robert Hughes book is an absolute celebration of the SHOCK of the new. Hughes is also a huge fan of the buildings of arch-modernist Mies van der Rohe. Their work may jarr and upset when it first appears but in time it becomes appreciated by a wider audience. They are innovators, they take risks. Le Corbusier was a visionary, an artist and a thinker. Everything he built is an expression of an amazing imagination. Even the lesser works never fail to fascinate. When I get the chance one day to go to Marseilles, as soon as I've had a bowl of bouillabaisse, a glass of rose and an espresso down by the quayside I'm setting straight off to track down his Unite d'Habitation, a building which I find fascinating. I guess that John, and me (as the mentor to many he introduced me to a lot of this stuff) feel that there is a belief in progress and sophisticated modern living for the masses, not just the few, which is expressed through the democratised good taste of both a good pair of loafers and an well-designed apartment built from contemporary materials in a contemporary style which most people could afford to live in. A look and a way of life which are true to the values of the age and that don't ape those of previous centuries. We are a long way from this ideal but this is the goal of the modernist I believe.