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Past Readings, Present Findings: on Intervening Emilio Duhart’s PDVN House
Get PDFBetween 1963 and 1966 Emilio Duhart (1917-2006) worked on the design of this single-family house in what used to be the outskirts of Santiago. During this period, a series of younger collaborators worked on the project, transforming it continuously. Now, confronted with the task of refurbishing the house, we trace back and try to understand the project development by researching archival material. However, it is the process of physically dismantling damaged fabric – almost everything, besides the concrete structure – that really reveals the main principles behind the whole design process. A silent dialogue with architects already gone, which provides the guidelines to write just another chapter in the life of this structure
Makkasan Train Factory: an attempt to preserve Bangkok’s urban heritage
Get PDFThe Makkasan Train Factory, opened 110 years ago, is the first industrial estate in Thailand and used to be the biggest hub for train production in Southeast Asia. Nowadays, this huge land of 80 hectares, with direct access from the Savarnabhumi airport rail link, is considered a golden land right in the business center of Bangkok, that attracts real estate investors. A third of the land set aside at the end of last year for the development of a mixed use commercial project as a part of the High Speed Train project. As this land is the last big area of public land in the capital, civic groups for urban heritage conservation and the environment tried to point out its tangible and intangible heritage value hoping that there would be a proper master plan to preserve these values for future generations
Landscape architecture according to Olmsted: beyond purifying the air, pacifying the mind
Get PDFAlthough the works of Frederick Law Olmsted – such as Central Park, Prospect Park, Franklin Park, Riverside – are today widely recognized and appreciated, some of them having, in fact, been the object of important restoration work, the thinking which engendered them is much more unfamiliar, notably due to its complexity. The mission of landscape architecture, as it is defined by Olmsted, is above all social: to improve the living conditions of the population, beginning with the most unfavored. It is not just a matter of providing breathing spaces, but of allowing people to experience places capable of appeasing their minds
The Home at the core of Modernity, an optimistic architecture
Get PDFDevoted to the theme of single-family houses, given the key role they played in the ideal definition of the Modern Movement architecture, as a symbolic and functional affirmation of the utopian turning of dreams into reality, the aim of this issue is to consider the transformation of daily life, and to address the architectural challenges that arose from the joy contained in what we might call the “architecture of happiness.” As we continue to endure a pandemic that has now lasted for more than a year, docomomo wishes to declare that “till the moment, the best vaccine to prevent contagion was invented by architects: the house”. Thus, in response to the question “How should we live?”, it is intended to debate the house and the home agenda as an important topic at the core of Modern Movement architecture. Nowadays, the growing emphasis on wellbeing goes beyond the seminal ideas that modern houses were “machines à habiter” and is closer to an idealistic vision of a stimulating shell for humans, which is shaped by imagination, experimentation, efficiency, and knowledge
Houses beyond manifestos
Get PDFBrazilian historiography on modern architecture, replicated by international authors, confirms the importance and the pioneer stance of Gregori Ilitch Warchavchik (1896-1972)/Mina Klabin’s (1896-1969) 1927-1932 architecture in São Paulo, and the 1126 Bahia Street (Luiz da Silva Prado) house, 1930-1931, São Paulo, Brazil, is a remarkable example of their initial set of houses. Its design dialogues with other houses simultaneously designed by Adolf Loos (1870-1933), Le Corbusier (1887-1965), Juan O’Gorman (1905-1982), and the connections among all these modernist pieces and their authors suggest the informal existence of an interconnected network of creators, spread across continents. Likewise, they all put forward proselytizing strategies to amplify the repercussion of their works through exhibitions, publications, and debates. The generous internal spaces of this house on Bahia Street, the steady play of its geometrical composition, and its wise topographical and innovative landscape arrangements are well balanced, providing the authors’ aim of both making a manifesto and providing the site and the client’s necessities with an appropriate individual solution. The house has been used as a commercial space in recent decades, but it has been properly maintained and it is still in good shape
Leonardo Mosso: the poetry of structure
Get PDFLeonardo Mosso (1926-2020) was able to combine art and architecture. He was a collector and an interpreter of 20th century culture that he shared and passed on to succeeding generations of students and collaborators who attended the Alvar Aalto Institute. For many, he was an unsung Maestro, a generous polymath, who maintained an extraordinary curiosity and child-like enthusiasm throughout his long life
The Bacterial Clients of Modern Architecture
Get PDFThe human is an unstable idea; simultaneously an all-powerful creature – capable of transforming the whole ecology of the planet – yet extremely fragile, a murky ghost. Contemporary research into our microbiome portrays the human itself as a mobile ecology constructed by the endless flux of interactions between thousands of different species of bacteria – some of which are millions of years old and others joined us just a few months ago. This challenges conventional understandings of architecture. What does it mean to house the human when we no longer think that the human organism is securely contained within its skin? What is the role of architecture when the humans occupying it are understood to be suspended in clouds of bacteria shared, generated and mobilized by other macro-organisms (pets, plants, insects…) and the building itself; when the human is not a clearly defined organism or in any sense independent; when the architectural client is a massive set of ever-changing trans-species alliances that make the apparent complexity of even the largest of cities seem quaintly uncomplicated. What kind of care do architects offer if we think of ourselves as alliances between bacteria within the apparent limits of the body and throughout the spaces we occupy? What faces 21st century architects in comparison to 20th century architects
Seven notes on the program and design of healthcare buildings’ rehabilitation
Get PDFOne of the characteristics of the 20th century heritage hospital is the permanent remodeling of its spaces, a sign of the frequent changes in clinical practices which, in turn, bring about functional, construction and spatial changes. This characteristic, due to the functional prevalence of health facilities, generates forms of environmental and territorial consumerism. Contrary to any conservation or crystallizing idea of the heritage hospital, this present reflection seeks to find the aspects of this heritage that may be preserved in the remodeling processes, informed by the recent trends in the design of healthcare facilities, which ultimately constitute opportunities for their rehabilitation, reuse or restoration
Chochikukyo: cultural property representing “Japanese Timber Country Modernism”
Get PDF“Chochikukyo” (1928) is the fifth residence designed by and for the architect Koji Fujii (1888-1938). As a result of his research on environmental engineering at Kyoto University, “Chochikukyo” presents the ideal form of a universal “Japanese house” that suits the climate of Japan as well as the sensitivity and lifestyle of the Japanese people. In 1999, “Chochikukyo” was selected as one of the twenty best docomomo buildings to represent Japanese modernist architecture, and in 2017, it was designated as a National Important Cultural Property which was the first time for an architect’s own house built in the Showa period (1926-1989)
Modern Movement Houses in the Colonial Capital City of Nairobi
Get PDFArchitecturally, Nairobi was never a backwater. Modern architecture in Nairobi developed in the context of the tropical climate design vocabulary of Otto Königsberger (1908-1999), Maxwel Fry (1899-1987) and Jane Drew (1911-1996), within a racially segregated plan. Ideas and ideals of Modernism came with refugees, migrants and magazines from many cultures and places including South Africa, Europe, the Indian sub-continent and the Americas. Projects by internationally renowned architects and planners such as Herbert Baker (1862-1946), Ernst May (1886-1970) and Amyas Connell (1901-1980) set high standards of design. The Garden City Movement, International Congresses of Modern Architecture (CIAM), the Modern Architectural Research Group (MARS), and the work of many others was influential