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Cinémas Choisis
Get PDFhis essay analyzes the cinemas that were featured in L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui from 1930 until 1939. This being one of the most influential magazines for the spread of Modern Movement ideas, its editorial line focused on the adaptation of building to function and on the distinction between European and American cinemas. Theoretical texts separated classic live theatre from cinema design since programme and features were completely different. Far from American euphoria and classic theatre sobriety, how was architecture for cinema envisaged
The Ofir House – Casa Dr. Fernando Ribeiro da Silva Ofir, Esposende, 1956-1958, by Fernando Távora
Get PDFThe Ofir holiday house was the first work by Fernando Távora (1923–2005) published in the Arquitectura magazine (nº 59, July 1957). It was presented as a work that searched a personal language which reconciled the values of traditional Portuguese architecture and new technologic and material achievements
Visions on Furniture
Get PDFThe growing interest in Modern furniture, which by now can also be of a respectable age, has lent a new dimension to the profession of furniture conservation. New materials and techniques demand new conservation solutions
Investigation and Production of Furniture for Villa Tugendhat 2009–2012
Get PDFVilla Tugendhat is an expression of “gesamtkunstwerk”, where every detail is subordinated to the whole. Mies van der Rohe devoted the same amount of attention to the furnishings of the house as to its design. The furniture designed and placed according to his conception is such an important aspect of the house that without it the Villa is only half complete. The system governing the organization of all parts of the building – ratios, proportions, whole areas and details – is visible also in the precise placement of the house contents, which only allowed the owner limited variability in the use of space. The Villa became world famous not long after its completion, but Fritz and Grete Tugendhat were not destined to spend many happy years there. Even before the Munich Pact had been signed, signifying the de facto end of democratic Czechoslovakia, they left Brno forever. At the end of the summer of 1938 two removal vans came to take part of the furnishings to St. Gallen in Switzerland. Today the main body of the original equipment is, except for several pieces, still in the possession of the family. The Villa was, after two years of general reconstruction, reopened to the public in February this year. For the first time since 1938 it was equipped with all the furnishings Mies van der Rohe had designed for it. The most significant event was the return after seventy years of the original curved wall of the dining area to its original location. This famous Makassar wall had been considered lost for many decades
Factory Kitchen, Samara, 1931, by Ekaterina Maksimova
Get PDFThe Maslennikov factory canteen, also known as the Fabrika Kukhnya or Factory Kitchen, was a canteen producing meals on industrial scale, a vital typology for the early Soviet urbanism.
Factory Kitchen in Samara belonged to the Maslennikov Factory. The building is absolutely unique in its plan in the shape of a hummer-and cycle, symbol of the union of the working people. The "hummer" held the kitchen and storage, and the "cycle" was occupied by dinner-halls
Why Preserve Modern Now?
Get PDFComing to design in a natural development from architectural practice, Le Corbusier considered design not as a sum or addition to architecture. Its existence decisively constructed and modulated interior space, as light and shadows, materials or planes. From that belief, he quests the perfect and ideal form that asserts itself as a model of universal validity, arriving at three different furniture types: type–needs, type–furniture and human limb objects. Consequently, together with Charlotte Perriand and Pierre Jeanneret, in 1928 he drew the prototype of the Grand Confort armchair, presented the following year at the Salon d’Automne in Paris
Gaston Eysselinck and his Masterpiece. The Post Office Building in Ostend (1945-1953)
Get PDFThe city of Ostend became severely damaged during World War II. Practically all the main public buildings were destroyed: the City Hall, the Casino, the Horse Race–Track, the main Post Office building, etc. The city decided to rebuild a new Post Office on the location of the first construction. In 1945, architect Gaston Eysselinck (1907–1953) from Ghent was assigned to design the new main Post Office (PTT), including the telephone and telegraph offices (RTT) and the technical infrastructure. The project in Ostend was his first big assignment
Werner Max Moser’s New Altstetten Church 1936-1941
Get PDFFor George Everard Kidder Smith, the Protestant Church at Altstetten (a former Zurich suburb, integrated in 1934) was “unquestionably the finest Modern church in Switzerland, and possibly anywhere else”. In his famous anthology of Swiss architecture from 1950, he points out that it embodies on the one hand “almost all the church building philosophy which both the protestants and catholics have sought: one room of simplicity and dignity, binding the pulpit and the altar to the congregation in respectful unity”. On the other hand, he was interested in the fact that the church, built on the edge of a low hill, seeks a subtle relationship with an old village church that the congregation had outgrown. Instead of destroying it, Moser “carefully preserved and related it to the new by the angle and space relation between them and by the repetition of a mutual eave height.” With a few words, Kidder Smith succeeded in capturing the double interest that Moser’s building represents even today. As a matter of fact, the church center’s interiors are, as well as the exteriors, wonderfully calibrated, fragile compositions that fascinate us for their typically undogmatic combination of modern and conventional materials and (decorative) forms, but also for Moser’s informal but precise dealings with the architectural heritage. It is immediately understandable that renovating and extending this building complex was quite a challenge
Modern and Sustainable
Get PDFModern Movement Architecture is envisioned as a concept that deals with forms, spaces, techniques and social responsibility. In this docomomo Journal, the contributions on this discussion put together modernity and Modern heritage, economy and energy saving, the social mission and the responsibility of architects towards the future. Modern Movement is often mistakenly related to a style, perceived in a skin–deep point of view and superficially adopted as simple form, as a modern shape, when in fact Modern Movement has always shown great concern with such issues, seeking for eficiency and economy, i.e., an accurate use of materials, a design approach that incorporates intelligent saving resources in order to create a better world
Design with Climate in Africa. The World of Galleries, Brise–Soleil and Beta Windows
Get PDFIn the twenty–five years after World War II, Angola and Mozambique were fertile territories for the inception of new urban and architectural projects, in keeping with the principles of the Modern Movement. In the earliest works designed by the architects who moved there in the late 1940s, one can already witness a serious concern with the adjustment to the particularities of the hot and humid climate of the tropics. The Modern architectural idiom was particularly well suited to the local climate building requirements such as solar control and provision of adequate ventilation. Moreover, these architectural solutions were underpinned by sustainable procedures that ought to be re–established in the restoration of Modern buildings of the type presented here