Symposium: The Modern architecture and design lecture

The chair of Docomomo International, Professor Ana Tostões, participated as Keynote Speaker in the symposium “The Modern Architecture and Design Lecture”, that took place at the Wakita Museum of Art, in Karuizawa, this past October 20th. The symposium is the resulting project organized by Wakita Museum of Art, and cooperated by Karuizawa-town, Education Board Karuizawa, and Karuizawa-town Tourist Association, affiliated organization, and related members in Karuizawa. Previously Wakita Art Museum has hosted symposiums on Alvar Aalto / Preservation and activity about the buildings and houses in Finland (2016), and on Louis Kahn / Preservation and activity about the buildings and…

Publication: matières 14

“L’œuvre et le temps, le temps à l’œuvre” is the theme of the Dossier of the 14th issue of matières. Voluntarily vast, this theme naturally translates into multiple angles of approach. In this perspective, the extension of monuments, the paradoxical forms adopted by collective dwellings between 1968 and 1973, and the reproducibility of Le Corbusier´s model of the “Unité d’habitation” are all examined. Additionally to these variations of the link between time and work, the durability of stone – as a building material – as well as a reflection on the critical receptivity of a building are also topics approached….

Aesthetics and Technology in Building. The Twenty-First-Century Edition

Rome, Italy – The selection of Italian engineer and master builder Pier Luigi Nervi (1891-1979) to present the 1961 Charles Eliot Norton Lectures in Poetry at Harvard University was a breathtaking moment in the history of engineering and architecture. Often called a “poet in concrete” for his stunning, web-like roof structures and evocative, curving concrete structures, Nervi represented the growing optimism around technology and design in the postwar era. In four lectures, the designer and builder of internationally acclaimed arenas for the 1960 Rome Olympics covered the history of building, showing how art and science had found common ground in construction…

Call for Session and Roundtables: EAHN2020

The Call for Sessions and Roundtables for European Architectural History Network (EAHN 2020) is now open! EAHN2020 takes place in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, UK, from 10th to 13th June, 2020. The venue is the University of Edinburgh, and the conference takes full advantage of the university, and the city’s numerous architectural sites. In accordance with EAHN´s mission, the meeting aims to increase the visibility of the discipline of architectural history, to foster transnational, interdisciplinary and multicultural approaches to the study of the built environment, and to facilitate the exchange of research in the field. EAHN is a European…

Call for Papers: Educational Architecture – Education, Heritage, Challenges

We are pleased to invite you to participate in a three-day international conference Educational Architecture – Education, Heritage, Challenges that will be held in Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon, Portugal, on May 6-8, 2019. This international conference is organised by a group of researchers from the University of Lisbon and the University of Coimbra, Portugal, under the scope of the research project ´Atlas of School Architecture in Portugal – Education, Heritage and Challenges´, funded by FCT, the agency that supports research into science and technology in Portugal. Educational Architecture – Education, Heritage and Challenges is intended to be a forum for discussing the…

Congress: Affordable Housing. The 20th Century Legacy.

Learning from the past. What future? Challenges and opportunities. The Architecture Faculty of Porto University (FAUP) will host on May 6th, 7th and 8th, 2019, an International Congress that will mark the closing of the Research Project ´Mapping Public Housing Map – A critical review of the State-subsidized residential architecture in Portugal (1910-1974)´, financed by FCT, Rui Ramos is his researcher responsible. The program of this International Congress will include: . guided tours of four Porto neighborhoods (Rainha D. Leonor, Bairro de São João de Deus, Bairro Pio XII and Bairro do Lagarteiro); . the presentation of a documentary; . the…

Docomomo Suomi Finland – Kohdevalikoima Register Selection

The book highlights 87 masterpieces of Finnish Modernism by articles written by 30 Finnish specialists. The book is completely bilingual in English and Finnish. The sites in the new catalogue are categorised on a temporal and thematic basis. The order of entries progresses from the breakthrough of Functionalism to the post-war reconstruction era, the construction of the welfare state, and the stages of urbanisation culminating in the 1980s. After long deliberation, the selection was complemented with sites that tested the limits of strict Modernism – thus emulating the first selection which included organic, unorthodox and multi-formed buildings. To buy the…

Konrad Wachsmann and the Grapevine Structure

German modernist architect Konrad Wachsmann (1901–80) had a career-spanning interest in construction processes—in particular the prefabrication of building components and their assembly within modular systems. In this respect, Wachsmann was a pioneer whose ideas and work paved the way for today´s industrialized construction. Marianne Burkhalter and Christian Sumi synthesize years of careful research into a compelling look at this highly creative architect. At the core of the book is Wachsmann´s dynamic Grapevine Structure, a universal construction element developed with students during his tenure at the Chicago Institute of Design—part of what is today the Illinois Institute of Technology. The book…

Invisible Cities – Machinami – Japanese urban landscape

Pierre-Jean Giloux´s first monograph, the publication extends the eponymous video tetralogy inspired by the Japanese utopian architectural movement: Metabolism (1960-70). The films of the Invisible Cities cycle are portraits of Japanese cities, superimposing filmed and photographed images of everyday, social and urban reality, with virtual images. The book explores the links that connect four Japanese cities with a rich architectural past (Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, Kyoto). This journey through Japan´s Megapolis traces the history of Japan and ends with the reconstruction of pavilions for the Osaka 70 Universal Exhibition and a virtual proposal for a smart city on the waters of Lake Biwa….

Modernism at the Glasgow Doors Open Days

As part of the Glasgow Doors Open Days from 10 to 16 September 2018, the 1967 Anderston Kelvingrove Parish Church, designed by Honeyman Jack & Robertson and now Category B listed, became a Festival Pop-Up Hub, at which, over several days, a series of fantastic talks on 20th-century architecture and urbanism were held. It all started, on Monday, 10 September 2018, with Raw Concrete: Brutalism, Architecture and Energy and Glasgow Unbuilt ‘Cultural Centre’, two talks by the architectural historians Barnabas Calder and Alistair Fair respectively. On Tuesday, the architect Mark Baines discussed in his talk, titled In Search of Light: The Architecture of Gillespie, Kidd &…