Seen architecture

Florian Beigel + ARU and Seung H Sang

Pavillion indeed

Playful brutalism

Perhaps not conveyed in these photographs. The building appear surprisingly playful and gentle.

Steel and glass done right

1716

Visit St Mary Woolnoth on Google Earth.

1913-1937

A stunning interior

Modern Romanesque

Before seeing it in real life I thought it was a lifeless building. On the contrary it is probably Celsings best.

The Mosque Cathedral of Cordoba

A building of fantastic spatial and ornamental complexity.

Visit Mezquita on Google Earth.

1616 to 1635

That colonnade is pretty terrible. Not done by Inigo though.

Visit Queens House on Google Earth.

Some photos from Andalucia

Visit Granada Cathedral on Google Earth.

Bank of Granada

The monumental minimalism has a questionable impact on the public space but creates beautiful interiors.

Visit Caja Granada on Google Earth.

Architecture in Berlin

Visit Berlin Philharmonie on Google Earth.

Visit Neues Staatsgalerie on Google Earth.

Mild Mannered Swede

Despite the bright orange this building is mild if not cool.

Visit Stockholm Library on Google Earth.

Interior city room: 1938 Herman Herter

The tramshed sits in the center of Zürich between housing and sunken train tracks. The ashfalt of the street enters the building with the tram tracks that once inside the building disperse across the vast floor. It is an interior room at the scale of the city with the materiality and directness of the city. The space is beautifully lit by monitor rooflights and flourescent tubes. Inspite of its scale and direct design the large building sits quite comfortably on the residential street.

Visit Zürich Tram Depot on Google Earth.

Meggen, 1966

This Church performs a magic trick as you walk from the exterior to the interior. From the outside the material of the walls appear to be opaque white stone. Inside the stone reveals a golden brown translucency.

Big roof

This expensive looking building revealed to me how surreal most of Jean Nouvels designs are. Before visiting this building I saw him as a typical steel and glass modernist. The price tag is easily conveyed in photographs but the wierdness is tamed.

Big house with big joints

This school is part of a redevelopment of an industrial area in Oerlikon just outside Zürich. Märklis intention was to create a shool that is part of and a generator of public space. The repetitious precast facade aims towards the language of classical public buildings. The building faces in every direction and is “the same all over”. A reference to the Smithsonsand their concept of “a building of the conglomerate order”?

The interiors follow the logic of a “big house with big joints”. The materials are robust and the joints large. The internal elevations are highly elaborated and there seems to be no attemt at reduction. The problem of sprinklers, fire alarms, smoke detectors and lights was solved in a positive way. Rather than hiding them Märkli has collected them in flat white cages attached to the ceiling. The suspended ceilings form boxy space-making shapes. The design choice between less or a robust more always fall on the latter.

The palette of colours comes from a 1969 Alpha Romeo and is a muted green, grey, beige. A very successfull and unusual choice is the dark red colour used for sinks and flooring in wet areas. Märkli is was keen to point out that one should not use primary colours for children as in would contribute to an infantilizing of the young who are just as sensitive in these matters as adults.. Moreover the children, their art and their clothes will add colour to the school.

Sadly I lost the 'real' roll of film from this visit. These photograhs are only my casual digisnaps.

Visit Schule Am Birch on Google Earth.

Glass box with stair rooms

When the entry space to a school reminds you of a poor modern art gallery, you will be hard convinced about the the rest of the school. This building is a reasonably made glass and aluminium box with non horisontal columns. Despite the cliché minimalism the two staircase rooms save the building from total lack of interest. These two stairs form solid concrete rooms within the office like platform building. One of the stairs is a long, straight climbing room and the other a square room with cascading stairs. They are both diffusely lit from above and the installation like space does not prevent the kids from gathering there on breaks.

Slussen is a Train station, Tube station, Bus station, pedestrian bridge, square, party central, shopping center, lock, parking space and probably much more. It is a place of true programmatical overlap, and one of the few places in Stockholm that hasn't been tidied up. A wonderful relief from the stylist regime around it.

Unfortunately the concrete is falling apart and a new design has been selected. The new design is a shopping mall nightmare of polite scandinavian quasi modernism.

Visit Slussen on Google Earth.

By Georges Candilis, Alexis Josic, Shadrach Woods, Jean Prouvé

This building designed by Team X members is considered to be a prime example of a mat-building. The low, large footprint structure has no front elevation, it is the same all over but responds to site and programme within the constraints of the construction system. It has been successfully extended several times as the facade finish bear witness.

Students use the vast areas of wide, carpeted, corridor floor to sit down, study, and socialize. The footprint of the building creates a total interior The courtyards are unable to challange the carpeted interior world as they in courtyard manner look inwards.

The beautiful Jean Prouvé facade system in cor-ten steel is in a bad state and is to a large extent covered in gaffer tape and foil. The additions use other finishes with reasonable success but never with the beauty of the original rusting steel.

Visit Berlin Free University on Google Earth.

Le Corbusier's Unité Berlin

Not Corbs best work but it was still interesting to see. Especially the interior corridors and the scale of the building in the landscape.

Visit Unite de Habitation Berlin on Google Earth.

Woodland cemetary: Spaces

The cemetary is very large but ingenious manipulation of the ground, trees and bushes create many small places. Most of the landscaping is credited to Sigurd Lewerentzwhile Gunnar Asplundis responsible for all chapels but one.

Although the chapels are amazing buildings the cemetary itself stands out as the best design. It took advantage of preexisting, often problematic, features and integrated them into the design. Looseness and extreme control coexists (a Lewerentz signature).

Visit The Woodland Cemetary on Google Earth.

Dutch Embassy Berlin

The building does not appear quite as dramatic i real life. The slice of building forming the two thin sides of the parcel is the most flamboyant architectural decision, only parts of if can be used by people. The (exterior) finish and materiality appear sober and sophisticated. The glased double facade seem expedient and beautiful at the same time.

Visit The Duch Embassy on Google Earth.

Prolific modernist

The swedish architect who seem to have built everything.

Visit Riksbanken on Google Earth.

Visit Film Huset on Google Earth.

Brutalism

Built 1956-60, designed by Leonie Geisendorf.

Visit St Göran on Google Earth.

Church of St Mark

The visual and tactile strenght of the brick construction allows for a freedom in detail and form. What could have been an incoherent mess of to many ideas is tied together, by the brick, into a building that has both monumental strenght and liberating looseness.

Older photographs

Visit Church of St Mark on Google Earth.

Chapel of Resurrection

The impact of this building nears the narrative arts, it grabs your guts. The austerity of the exterior, the exaggerated proportions and long approach tries in vain to prepare you for the interior.

Visit Chapel of Resurrection on Google Earth.

Riksskatteverket

Even as a white modernistLewerentz designs were incredible strong and unlike his contemporaries. This building manages to be both classical and modernist without insecurity or blandness, Lewerentz design personality is stronger than the styles.

Visit Riksskatteverket on Google Earth.

Högalids kyrka by Ivar Temgbom

An overly national romantic church.

Eyesore with potential

Åsö gymnasium is pretty much a large dead area in Söder (area of Stockholm) but the complex has a stark beauty hidden in the ill maintained volumes.

Visit Åsö School on Google Earth.

Warehouse

In södra Hammarbyhamnen this warehouse is beeing deconstructed. Its a very nice setup with a ultra light building ontop of the concrete deck.

Chunky

Looking at a group of large industrial/commercial buildings around where I live. The repetitious facades wrap around the complicated volumes absorbing the forms and making a whole of the many parts. Visually they seem to be made by cutting away from a large piece. Revealing how the homogenous facade has become not only the shell but somehow the materialof the building.

The Laban Center

Herzog de Meurondoes surfaces in Deptford. The building is beautiful, but its´s immaterial, unreal qualities are in to stark contrast with its surrounding. The fence, beautiful as it is, and other strong terriorial markings couple with the immaterial facade to create a beautiful, not hostile, but indifferent alien.

Visit The Laban Centre on Google Earth.

Finlandia House by Alvar Aaltoin Helsinki

Unfortunately the building was closed so only exterior photographs. It is a striking building especially against the show, as the form and color brings images of snow and ice to mind.

Kiasma: Steven Hollin Helsinki

Not meaning to be overly critical but the building seems a bit dated, and tacky. There are some lovely interior details especially the sliding doors.

Visit Kiasma on Google Earth.

Visit finlandia on Google Earth.

University Workshop Building

The Smitsons

Economist Building: cluster

The Economist Building is a direct result of the Berlin competition where the Smithsons refined their ideas of cluster buildings. The complex shows a softer side of the Smithsons and their debt to Mies is at the most obvious. The Economist building must be their most sucessful building, the thresholds and the gradual spatial transitions are very sensitive.

The scale and positioning of the buildings show respect for the context whilst adding something distinctly new. The plaza is very well articulated and does form a nice shortcut in the city as envisaged by the architects.

Robin Hood Gardens

A very tough building located on a tough site. This building is an example of how the Smithsons were influenced by the heroic architecture they critisized.

Visit The Economist Building on Google Earth.

Visit Robin Hood Gardens on Google Earth.

New Walsall Gallery

The most memorable thing about this gallery was its presence in the city. From a distance it looked like a large but special factory situated in the industial city. Secondly the way it was used by teenagers, hangin' out and snogging in an art gallery, unusual.

Visit Walsall Art Gallery on Google Earth.

Borneo Development

omaKunsthal by OMA

Luxor Theatre by Bolles & Wilson

Hubertushuis by Aldo van Eyck

100 WoSoC'os by mvrdv

Visit The Whale on Google Earth.

Visit Rotterdam Kunsthal on Google Earth.