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The Universidad Laboral de Cheste, a Modern Heritage Site Under Threat
Get PDFUniversidades laborales, or workers’ universities, were set up throughout Spain during the years of the dictatorship, and were aimed at professionally training the working classes. Their charitable–educational nature was established by law in 1955, although several date back to before that official date. The Universidad Laboral de Gijón (1946-1957) was the first to be built, as reflected in the traditional and academic architecture of Luis Moya. Fernando Moreno Barberá, one of the most important architects involved, was the author of four centres: those of Las Palmas, 1970-73, Toledo, 1970-78, Malaga 1972-78 and Cheste 1967–69, his work reflecting an undoubted assimilation of the Modern legacy
From Industrial Site to University Campus. Sümerbank Kayseri Textile Factory
Get PDFEven though Turkish Modernization in the 20th century was explained as a political revolution, it dealt much more with the transformation of space and social identity. As a result, the Turkish State built several industrial sites in Anatolian cities to strengthen their urban and social development
Ten Years After, the Continent of Hope and Modern Heritage
Get PDFSince the 1990s architectural historians discovered Modern architecture in Africa as part of a cultural production related to colonialism. With the introduction of postcolonial theory in the historiography of architecture, an exclusively ideological critical sense has been developed preventing disciplinary autonomy or practice of architecture and finally condemning any objective look. Recently, the development of concepts such as hybrid or the otherness has been promoting a nuanced historical analysis about architecture and politics in the 20th century in Africa. The recognition that a widespread awareness of Modern Movement architecture has always been serving colonization involves rethinking the basic principle of Modern welfare society and practiced architecture as a mission: how Modern principles have been exchanged, resulting from a Eurocentric culture with the cultures from the East and Africa. In addition, it must be said that the case of Sub–Saharan Lusophone Africa is now beginning to be studied in depth putting together peripheral universes
Other Modernisms: Recording Diversity and Communicating History in Urban West Africa
Get PDFSeminal publications on West African Architecture such as Kulterman’s New Architecture in Africa and the Architectural Review’s New Commonwealth Architecture came to define the African Modern Movement as it was understood internationally. This paper explores the specific context within which this new architecture developed and the actors that helped to shape it. Vaughan–Richards’ Ola–Oluwakitan House and Cubitt’s Elder Dempster Offices are analyzed in terms of their engagement with the socio-cultural context in which they were conceived, the site-specific Modernity of the former contrasting the corporate International Style response of the latter
Oscar Niemeyer, 1907-2012
Get PDFModern master Oscar Niemeyer (1907-2012) was the most important Brazilian architect. Graduated in the Escola Nacional de Belas–Artes in 1934, he soon became world–known for his role, together with Lúcio Costa (1902–1998), with the design of the Brazilian Ministry of Education (1937) in Rio de Janeiro; or for their Brazilian Pavillion in New York World Fair in 1939. His solo work in the Pampulha buildings was immediately published in the catalogue of the “Brazil Builds” exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1943
Roberto Segre, 1934-2013. A Life of Adventure that Ends with a Banal Tragedy
Get PDFBorn in 1934 in Milan, Roberto Segre migrated to Argentina with his family in 1939, fleeing the anti–Semitism of Benito Mussolini’s fascist government. He graduated as an architect at the University of Buenos Aires in 1960 and soon after, in 1963, settled in La Havana, Cuba, where he taught history of architecture for three decades. In 1994, he began his career as a Brazilian researcher and professor on graduate courses in urban planning at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), where he served until March 2013. During these decades of professional activity, he came to be respected as a critic and historian, publishing many books and articles of the utmost importance on Latin American architecture
For an Architect’s Training towards Responsibility
Get PDFThe variety of discussions on architects’ mission, on architectural discipline and the recall on some key figures explain the argument of this Journal entitled For an Architect’s Training. The title quotes Walter Gropius’ “Blueprint for an architect’s training” spread through the French magazine L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui in February 1950 (number 28), dedicated to “Walter Gropius, the spread of an idea” and realized by Paul Rudolph under the direction of Gropius himself who developed his ideas on design education between art and technique, creation, research and applied science
Unity of Architectural Organism and Urban Form. The Teachings of Muratori and Quaroni in the School of Rome
Get PDFThe 60s were inaugurated with the Olympic Games, presenting the world with a new image of Rome: a city that was more modern, more efficient and definitively freed of the fascist period. The decade appeared (and not only in the Italian capital city) as a time of great political and cultural turmoil – and it was precisely the Faculty of Architecture in Rome that set one of the main stages for this struggle. The student movement began a process of profound questioning and transformation of the educational system
The Teaching of Architecture and Urbanism in Brazil: 1930–1970
Get PDFThe objective of this article is to present the scene which gave rise to the consolidation of the teaching of Architecture and Urbanism in Brazil in accordance with the precepts of Modern Architecture. Between 1930 and 1970 professional training and practice were intimately related to Brazilian political, social and economic contexts. This fact has led to the structuring of this article into three periods. In the first (1930-1945) the debates concerning the strengthening of the profession that took place. In the second (1945-1960) the courses disassociated themselves from the teaching of the Academies of Fine Arts and the Engineering Schools. In the third (1960–1970), despite the economic growth of the previous decade, the recognition of a Brazilian architecture and the consolidation of the system of teaching based on the precepts of Modern Architecture, Brazilian society saw itself turn into a dictatorial political regime. The years 1930 to 1970 were critical in strengthening Brazilian Modern Architecture, as well as being the decades that saw the launching of the basis of a teaching that echoes to the current day
“Training the Architect”: Modern Architectural Education Experiences
Get PDFIn 1937, Walter Gropius wrote “Training the Architect” for his presentation as Chairman of the Department of Architecture of Harvard University. It reinvented his experience in the Bauhaus, between 1919 and 1928, and became the pedagogical program for the new Modern paradigm of an architectural education. At that moment, the Beaux–Arts system was being revaluated and the American schools of architecture intended to approach the university through a scientific and technological curriculum