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Category: Architecture

Jonathan Meades: ‘I find everything fascinating and that is a gift’

English author, broadcaster and architecture critic Jonathan Meades, who apparently (and somewhat enviably!) lives in Le Corbusier’s Cité Radieuse in Marseille, interviewed by Rachel Cooke for The Observer:

“I love looking at buildings. I’ve never been able to get from A to B without diverting because I am extremely interested in architecture. But that came first of all from the need to alleviate boredom when I was out with my father as a boy [Meades’s father was a travelling biscuit salesman who used to leave his son to occupy himself in the towns in his “area”, while he went off to meet his grocer customers].  So much that I do is to alleviate boredom… Buildings are part of a much greater thing, that’s what fascinates me: the totality of things. I find everything fascinating and that is a gift. It’s that Flaubertian thing: everything looks fantastic if you look at it long enough. That chimes with me entirely.”

And if you haven’t read it previously, Owen Hatherley’s review in the London Review of Books of Museum Without Walls, Jonathan Meades most recent book, is well worth a visit:

Above all, Meades is a scourge of all forms of belief, faith and ideology, of everything that he regards as childish and credulous – yet the architecture that shakes him most is created by people crazed with dogmatism and righteous fervour. Whether or not he is aware of the contradiction, it charges his prose as he grapples with his own horror and fascination: at Victoriana, at the Arts and Crafts movement, at modernism, at Stalinist architecture – most of which he loves, and most of which are based on values, theories and opinions he finds either silly or repugnant.

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Toytown: Architecture on the Carpet

The Financial Times architecture correspondent Edwin Heath reviews Architecture on the Carpet: The Curious Tale of Construction Toys and the Genesis of Modern Buildings by Brenda and Robert Vale, which argues that construction toys such as Lego and Meccano not only reflect the architecture of the real world, but influence the way individual architects design:

Construction toys have always been about what adults would like to play with themselves. Or what they feel their children should be playing with. They are worthy. But somehow Lego has managed the difficult feat of appearing playful, of being versatile and not being overly didactic. If English construction toys reflect a residual, Pooterish suburbanism, Lego, whose first plastic bricks appeared in 1947, is liberated Danish pop art modernism, of the same world as Verner Panton’s fiercely colourful plastic chairs and Claes Oldenburg’s confusion of scales. It is the most urban of the toys, encouraging the building of whole cities.

The company recently brought out a series of kits to make modernist icons by Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and, of course, Frank Lloyd Wright. They are clearly aimed at adults, the kind of gift which confers on the giver culture and playfulness. In their specificity (designed for only one possible outcome), they are exactly what Fröbel and Rudolf Steiner were set against, the latter, one of the most influential of play theorists, being convinced that only the vaguest sense of reality should be designed into a toy so that as much room is left for the imagination as possible. These are toys emulating an already built reality.

It’s a fascinating idea, but I wonder if the younger generation of architects are more influenced by video games than toys?

(Financial Times)

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The Daily Planet and The Architecture of Superman

At the Smithsonian Design Decoded blog, Jimmy Stamp provides a brief history of The Daily Planet building in Superman comics:

Whenever disaster strikes Superman’s Metropolis, it seems that the first building damaged in the comic book city is the Daily Planet – home to mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent, his best buddy Jimmy Olsen, and his gal pal and sometimes rival Lois Lane. The enormous globe atop the Daily Planet building is unmistakable on the Metropolis skyline and might as well be a bulls-eye for super villains bent on destroying the city. But pedestrians know that when it falls–and inevitably, it falls–Superman will swoop in at the last minute and save them all (The globe, however, isn’t always so lucky. The sculpture budget for that building must be absolutely astronomical).

There is also a follow-up post on the history of The Daily Planet in film and television.

And if you can’t get enough of this kind of stuff, Stamp has previously written about the architecture of Batman and Gotham City.

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Design in a Nutshell



The Open University has created a fun series of short animated introductions to six of the most important movements in design history. Starting with the Gothic Revival, it looks at the Arts and Crafts movement, Bauhaus, Modernism, American Industrial Design, and  Postmodermism.

Here are the films on the Bauhaus and Modernism:

(via Coudal / Open Culture)

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The ABC of Architects

This is wonderful: an animated alphabetical list of the most important architects with their best known building:

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Jens Risom’s Block Island Retreat

In this beautiful short film directed by Gary Nadeau for Dwell magazine, Danish American furniture designer Jens Risom talks about the prefab vacation home he built for his family on Block Island in the 1965:

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Modern Tide: Midcentury Architecture on Long Island

Modern Tide: Midcentury Architecture on Long Island, directed by Jake Gorst and supported by Design Onscreen, explores the work of the region’s notable postwar architects and designers, including Albert Frey, Wallace Harrison, Herbert Beckhard, Frank Lloyd Wright, Horace Gifford, Edward Durrell Stone, Marcel Breuer, Andrew Geller, Philip Johnson, Charles Gwathmey, Barbara and Julian Neski, and others. The film features interviews with architects and historians, as well as friends, families and clients of these influential designers:

ArchDaily has more on the film and the modern architecture of Long Island.

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