1. 13 December 2007

    Architecture Without Architects

    Bernard Rudofsky

    299 days ago

    I’m on a bit of an architecture tear.

    A wonderful black and white photo filled book detailing that which really isn’t considered (but sure should be) in the modern world to be architecture at all: traditional, ‘old world’ buildings. Here I go quoting stuff.

    Vernacular architecture does not go through fashion cycles. It is nearly immutable, indeed, unimprovable, since it serves its purpose to perfection. As a rule, the origin of indigenous building forms and construction methods is lost in the distant past. 1

    The tendency to build on sites of difficult access can be traced no doubt to a desire for security, but perhaps even more so to the need of defining a community’s borders. In the old world, many towns are still solidly enclosed by moats, lagoons, glacis, or walls that have long lost their defensive value. Although the walls present no hurdles to invaders, they help to thwart undesirable expansion. The very word urbanity is linked to them, the Latin urbs meaning walled town. Hence, a town that aspires to being a work of art must be as finite as a painting, a book, or a piece of music. 4

    Above all, it is the humaneness of this architecture that ought to bring forth some response in us. For instance, it simply never occurs to us to make streets into oases rather than deserts. In countries where their function has not yet deteriorated into highways and parking lots, a number of arrangements make streets fit for humans: pergole and awnings (that is, awnings spread across a street, tentlike structures, or permanent roofs). 4

    People who have not yet been reduced to appendages to automobiles find in them Italian hill towns a fountain of youth. 37

    Niether the word arcade nor its many synonyms translate satisfactorily into the American language, perhaps because we have no arcades. Arcades are altruism turned architecture — private property given to an entire community. 67

    The disappearance of age-old pleasures and privileges is the first unmistakable sign of progress. Whereas less than a century ago every Spanish town and village boasted miles of covered ways along its streets, today they are disappearing fast. 71

    Pictures of a particular town in Pakistan show 2-walled towers popping out of every building with a diamond shaped ceiling at some angle greater than 45º – they’re all wind catchers, natural air conditioning, giant fans that funnel the air down a tunnel to the basement and then back up. 113

    “Give a mason bricks and mortar,” writes Jamshid Kooros, an MIT educated Persian architect, “and tell him to cover a space and let in light, and the results are astounding. The mason, within his limitations, finds unending possibilities, there is variety and harmony; while the modern architect with all the materials and structural systems available to him produces monotony and dissonance, and that in great abundance.” 151

  2. 20 November 2005

    1052 days ago

    Phenomonal Plyboo

    Plywood Bamboo – cheap, green, and nice looking.

    via Kjell Olsen1052 days ago

  3. 13 November 2005

    1059 days ago

    Inhabitat

    Planted roofs are so hot.

    via Kjell Olsen1059 days ago

  4. 10 May 2005

    1246 days ago

    Designing the Future

    Fabulous interview with William McDonough, co-author of Cradle to Cradle, which I just read about a month ago. Looks like hes starting to catch fire, getting his ideas out into the world in the form of really sweet buildings.

    The fabric produced in the Switzerland factory talked about in the book is starting to get used, chiefly now in the new Airbus 380:

    It was selected for upholstery on the new Airbus 380. It’s made of worsted wool to keep you at the right temperature—cool when it’s hot and warm when it’s cold—and [a plant fiber called] ramie to wick away moisture. It’s a high-performance-design product. Going ecological doesn’t mean downgrading performance criteria. 2

    The China Housing Industry Association has the responsibility for building housing for 400 million people in the next 12 years. We’re working with them to design seven new cities. 3

    (emphasis mine). Wow, wow, wow… Talk about a contract.

    I love nuclear energy. I just want to make sure it stays where God put it—93 million miles away, in the sun. 3

    I wish more people would riff Einstein these days, who could be a better technological or scientific role model?

    no problem can be solved by the same consciousness that created it. Our job is to dream—and to make those dreams happen. 3

    via Kjell Olsen1246 days ago

  5. 09 March 2005

    A Pattern Language

    Christopher Alexander

    1308 days ago

    A great book detailing some widely applicable ways to design building, and why. Taken from studies conducted by Alexander and his architectural students and colleagues from The Center for Environmental Studies at the University of California, Berkely.

  6. 08 January 2005

    The Timeless Way of Building

    1368 days ago

    The first book in a series of three, Timeless sets the framework to a pattern language, establishing first that the best possible way to go about building a building is the way that people have done it for ages, simply and naturally. The qualities of almost all buildings most appreciated today come from this timeless way.

  7. Also somewhat recently

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