Tropical Architecture, South of Cancer in the Modern Diaspora

Abstract
Getting back to the point of “Tropical architecture,” architecture in the humid tropics is collaboration with nature to establish a new order in which human beings may live in harmony with their surroundings. As publications at the time concentrated on French and British colonies, to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the Modern Movement diaspora, it is essential to revisit, analyse, and document the important heritage built south of the Tropic of Cancer, where the debate took place and architectonic models were reproduced, and in many cases subjected to metamorphoses stemming from their antipodal geography. Notable for the modernity of its social, urban, and architectonic programs, and also its formally and technologically sustained research, the modern architecture of these latitudes below the tropics constitutes a distinctive heritage.

Keywords
Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Tropical architecture, Modern diaspora, Design with climate.

Issue 63
Year 2020
Pages 2-3
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.52200/63.A.9Y0PTL3F

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Health at the core of Modern Movement Architecture

Abstract
Investigation into healthcare facilities involves dealing with multiple spheres beyond the technological, physical and psychological. Nowadays, the growing emphasis on wellbeing goes beyond the seminal ideas that modern buildings were cleansing machines, or that modern architecture and urbanism were shaped by bacteria. Presenting some stimulating philosophically-orientated essays, this journal makes a link between the Modern Movement and what we have entitled the “Cure and Care” concept, connecting health and the environment, body and design. Considering healthcare buildings and their role in the welfare policy of societies, the discussion addresses future challenges, driven by developments in technology and medicine, envisaging a key role for healthcare facilities in ensuring a sustainable built environment.

Keywords
Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Healthcare architecture, Form and Function, Healing architecture.

Issue 62
Year 2020
Pages 2-3
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.52200/62.A.6QVKSDMB

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High Density and the Investigations in Collective Form

Abstract
The debates that followed the World Design Conference (WoDeCo, Tokyo, 1960) on the search for a “total Image for the 20th Century” pointed out among worldwide designers, architects and planners, viewpoints and intellectual ideas concerning the future of the city, particularly in the wake of technological and scientific advancement in industry. At the time of the WoDeCo, progressive architects formed the “Metabolism” group and proposed their concepts for dealing with the increasing complexity of the cities rising. Debating over the ideal city and promoting a kind of experimental architecture based on ideas of life styles and communities for a new era, its biological name suggests that buildings and cities should be designed in the same organic way that the material substance of a natural organism propagates adapting to its environment by changing its forms in rapid succession.

Keywords
Modern Movement, Modern architecture, High density architecture, Urban growth, Modern urban planning.

Issue 50
Year 2014
Pages 2-4
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.52200/50.A.ECSQ8MYJ

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The House, the Home and the Housing Question

Abstract
Housing is a central program in contemporary architectural production. Incorporating civilizing values of 19th century culture, the house arrives in the 20th century at the time notions of private space and domestic comfort come to the fore in Western Culture as values inseparable from the emergence of the family in domestic space: the home. In 1951 Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), in his Darmstader sprache, “Bauen, Wohnen, Denken”, relates the word building (bau) with the verb “to be” and the action of “being” (bin), to conclude that dwelling is the fundamental trait of being, the mortals’ living condition. Looking to reframe the sense of construction and to identify the meaning of “being”, Heidegger’s criticism is moved by the failure of the so-called rational materialistic solution, and opens the discussion up to the re-evaluation of the design action as a unique, magical and creative action.

Keywords
Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Living heritage, Modern housing, Housing preservation.

Issue 51
Year 2014
Pages 2-3
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.52200/51.A.0I8X2TB1

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Renovation and Restoration (the 3 R’s)

Abstract
The Modern Movement has demonstrated its long term legitimacy, as a concept endowed with an extraordinary and lasting longevity. Either way, it becomes increasingly important to acknowledge and value this heritage, in order to enable a skilled, informed and enlightened intervention. Such matters as materials and technology reuse, spatial and functional transformations as well as updating legislation, are part of the contemporary agenda. Knowing that many modern architects sought new heights of functionality and changeability, the challenge for today is how to deal with the heritage in relation to its continuously changing context, physical, economic and functional, as well as socio-cultural, political and scientific. I consider that the reuse project is starting to “make history” and I share the idea that heritage transforms itself with us. Therefore, modern architecture can be a resource that asks for our attention in terms of quality, economy and sustainability.

Keywords
Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Reuse, Renovation, Restoration.

Issue 52
Year 2015
Pages 2-3
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.52200/52.A.WAN6TO5L

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LC′s Poetic Endurance Time and Space — Light and Matter

Abstract
Le Corbusier (LC) prolific personality as theorist, painter, sculptor, architect, urban planner, researcher, disseminator, thinker, and provocative activist, helped to make him a universal author. His dual and inseparable theoretical and practical activities represented a source for LC’s balanced inspirational and systematic method. Envisaging “la planète comme chantier”, LC drove his obsessive constructive impulse around the whole world, to nations such as Japan, Russia, Argentina and India. Thinking deeply about the human condition in the contemporary age, he looked for solutions to solve social, technical and spatial problems, believing that architecture could have the power to improve the world. To the question “architecture or revolution?” he answered “revolution can be avoided” through modern architecture.

Keywords
Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Le Corbusier, Conservation of modern architecture, World Heritage.

Issue 53
Year 2015
Pages 2-3
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.52200/53.A.LRJ6TS0I

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The European Large Scale Heritage

Abstract
Post-War Housing Complexes in Europe are symbols of architectural, technological and social aspirations. These grands ensembles of Mass Housing have nowadays begun to be appreciated by users and authorities, as integral part of the current city. Whether discussing demolition (as faced by the Smithsons' Robin Hood Gardens and Toulouse's Le Mirail, and commonly seen as a focus for social marginalization), or the growing phenomenon of heritagization (as implicit in the type of person now using the Marseille Unité d’Habitation), the debate today has mainly become centered on the question of: how to keep these large structures alive, while meeting contemporary standards of comfort? Characterized by adventurous experiments in the use of new materials and techniques, space creation and gender transformations, the obsolescence of these big complexes is determined on two different levels: the technical one (regarding comfort, such as thermal or acoustic, and the need for mechanical and safety improvements, as infrastructures, systems, elevators), and the functional one (involving space dimensions, organisation, orientation, and the introduction of new uses); all while complying with current regulatory standards. In addition, these buildings have frequently been intensively used and modified.

Keywords
Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Modern housing, Mass housing, Post-war housing.

Issue 54
Year 2016
Pages 2-3
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.52200/54.A.90OFK4NM

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Lisbon, a Modern City

Abstract
In the words of José-Augusto França, Lisbon is the last of the old European cities and the first of the modern cities, as confirmed by the 1758 Baixa Pombalina plan undertaken for the reconstruction of the city destroyed by the 1755 earthquake, as a pioneering example of modern urban planning. Following the avant-garde plan, modern architecture in Portugal may be envisaged through three main moments according to specific policies undertaken during the long Estado Novo dictatorship (1926-1974).

Keywords
Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Lisbon modern architecture, Estado Novo, Modern urban planning.

Issue 55
Year 2016
Pages 2-3
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.52200/55.A.R7T86U5Q

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Parallel Modernities: Architectural Narratives on Southeast Asia

Abstract
Coming from a common goal of preserving and promoting a sustainable future, a platform has been created to discuss documentation, conservation and reuse of modern architecture based on three main concepts: regeneration, equality and openness. Regeneration by, through training and education, involving the younger generations in the process of recognition and conservation. Equality, based on the respect for difference with no imposition of ideas or methodologies. Openness by promoting exchange through thoughtful cooperation. Although ASEAN is coming to be united in terms of politics, economy and culture, the background of its member countries is varied, having experienced diverse European colonization. In an increasingly global world, these nations are facing changes in the significance of their colonial past in relation to the postcolonial present. Between identity and nationalist demand, local knowledge and universal education, modern materials and tropical climate, different architectural discourses have been produced showing that the most interesting way to approach the postcolonial issue is through the idea of exchange.

Keywords
Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Southeast Asian architecture, Modern urban planning, Tropical architecture.

Issue 57
Year 2017
Pages 2-3
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.52200/57.A.0I1W3J98

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Baukunst and Zeitwille between Europe and America

Abstract
Mies enjoyed great prominence in Europe and America. Starting in Europe, his first incursions resulted in the German Pavilion for the Barcelona International Exhibition (1929), the Tugendhat House (1930) and the Krefeld silk factory and houses. The Illinois Institute of Technology (1943-1957), the Lake Shore Drive (1951), the Farnsworth House (1951), the Seagram building (1958) and the Toronto-Dominion Centre (1969), bear witness to his work in North America. Back in Berlin, The Neue Nationalgalerie (1968) testifies to the sublime and perfect achievement of his path towards Baukunst and Zeitwille. These ideas, which one may translate, respectively, as the art of building and the will of the time, are anchored in the Mies’s belief that architecture should be metaphysically charged with creative life force. This led him to the modern achievement of developing a new kind of freedom of movement in space, following his sense of order and his very unique conception of urban space.

Keywords
Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Mies van der Rohe, International Style, Rehabilitation of modern architecture.

Issue 56
Year 2017
Pages 2-3
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.52200/56.A.CP0Q3ON9

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