DEC
Miguel Angel Aragonés, the architect for this house in Mexico City, appears to have an all consuming fascination with the sun. He sees it as revealing architecture, defining its edges and spaces. His approach to design is to capture the sun, manipulate it and finally “seduce” it
Let us see what he means by this with a look at La Palma. Read more
NOV
On a difficult plot in a well to do district of Zagreb, AVP Architects designed a Modernist house perched precariously on a steeply sloping site.
Although it appears like a single property, it is in fact two dwellings both enjoying the impressive views and yet their own privacy. Read more
JUN
Visiting Bexhill, a sleepy town on the south coast of England this weekend gone, I began to think the town might be dead. After wandering around for a couple of hours, desperation had set in when I came across a jam biscuit installation pressed on to the glass of a bus stop.
In Shoreditch, a fashionable and arty quarter of London where I work, such an installation would be buzzing with photographers the second it appeared, and there would be a good chance that it would be reported on the national news that evening as the work of an important street artist. Naturally, my chest swelled with pride that I might be able to bring it to the attention of the readers of this blog before anybody else.
I pondered the biscuit installation for sometime wondering who the artist might be, but I could not recognize a discernible style. Read more
JUN
Preston bus station, in the north of England, is thought to be the second largest in Europe. It was designed in the late 1960 by Building Design Partnership in heroic Brutalist style. In recent years, the authorities in Preston have proposed to demolish the building to make way for a new development. A public campaign to save the building was launched and a number of attempts to have the building heritage listed have failed. Campaigners claim the building is Preston’s most loved, whilst the council argues both the bus facilities and the the carpark are under used and have poor pedestrian links to the main shopping district of the town. The building remains at risk of demolition. Read more
JUN
Adolf Loos’ fluid staggering of his house plans, a feature that was known to him as the Raumplan was the inspiration for Natalie Dionne Architects when the practice designed the E3 house in Montreal, Canada. In this case a staggered section arranged as two mirrored letter ‘E’s gives the game and the name away. The connecting stair becomes a rather celebrated architectural feature that also serves as orientation for the rooms looking on to it.
