st. jean de montmartre, 19 rue des abbesses, paris, france 1894-1904.
architect: joseph-eugène anatole de baudot, 1834-1915.
structural engineer: paul cottancin, 1865-1920.
the entrance shows one of de baudot's peculiar design decisions in this early concrete building: the few areas of exposed concrete in the facade are almost entirely covered in delicate ceramic decorations by alexandre bigot.
de baudot was a radical, building in concrete before the perret brothers, achieving the most slender proportions, displaying an amazing economy of means. but here was his limit: the concrete could not be shown unembellished, naked.
it must be said in his favour that the decorations detract little from the structural clarity of the building, while adding much in terms of texture and colour.
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casa del mutilato, veterans' house, palermo, italy, 1935-1938.
architect: giuseppe spatrisano (1899-1985)
finding an angle from which this strangely haunting piece of fascist metafisica would have been portrayed in the 1930's and making a black and white of it simply proved too tempting.
I remember thinking that all I needed to complete the picture was the ubiquitous italian bombers of fascist photography, but no one ever really needed those - we mustn't forget how the italians bombed ethiopia with chemical weapons when ethiopian resistance to occupation turned out to be more than the italian army could handle. in fact, once you've read about it, you can't forget.
anyone who loves italy has a tendency to downplay the crimes of the 1930's and 40's - after all this was not germany - and the same tendency is true of a disheartening number of italians. for architects, the dilemma is not dissimilar. great architecture came out of fascist italy. great architects were given public commissions, a rare event even in the finest of democracies.
although much work has been put into developing the architecture of democratic institutions since the war, there is no real conflict between architecture and power, even absolute power - a fact which should make us wonder less at the spectacle of italian razionalismo and more at why german architecture of the nazi era was so bad in comparison.
the italians were the creative geniuses of fascist europe and their architects led the way. in doing so, they lent respectability to a criminal cause. they gave it dignity and beauty.
of course, not all of italy's fascist architecture is good. a whole line grew from art deco and american streamline and much of it reeks of petit bourgeois taste. and there is the heavy handed, gloomy neo-baroque of which palermo has plenty. it has such menacing presence and inhuman scale that you feel you can deduce every crime commited by its builders from the stones alone...
but the urbanism was conservative which can be a good starting point, the programmes for public building were impressive, and the classicism - the stripped down, abstract classicism - was often brilliant.
it also did what classicism does best: it made fine architects out of mediocre ones as I believe was the case with giuseppe spatrisano and his veterans' house. I have been able to find very little of his other work - none of it has the power and simplicity of this building which is also by nature a memorial.
spatrisano learnt about absence from de chirico and the school of pittura metafisica, and the oculus of his memorial courtyard must surely have been understood as a missing dome in earthquake-bound sicily. the roofless church is a great image of loss as tarkovsky would later remind us.
that the fascists should celebrate the victims of the great war which brought them to power is no surprise but all societies must remember. the particular sadness of the casa del mutilato remains that the italian state was making new mutilati by the hour and against all reason at the time of its construction.
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kolumba museum, köln, germany 1997-2007.
architect: peter zumthor, b.1943
chapel of st. kolumba "madonna in den trümmern", 1947-1949
architect: gottfried böhm, b.1920
the entrance to gottfried böhm's chapel as seen from the main space of zumthor's kolumba museum in which it is now entirely embedded.
the sculpture is böhm's own and if his early work lacks the dark wagnerian grandeur of what was to come - a relief to some, no doubt - it is exactly the fierce bear protecting the virgin mary which shows us the heightened emotion, he would later seek to express in his religious buildings.
significantly, it also shows us two very different modernists (and two recipients of the pritzker prize) at work: böhm the benign populist whose architecture is expressive and accessible, zumthor by contrast cerebral and elitist but with the refined culture to know exactly when to be still and let his buildings form a backdrop and nothing more - notice how zumthor's pale grey Danish brickwork from petersen tegl seems to enhance the contour of böhm's sculpture.
this photo was uploaded with a CC license and may be used free of charge and in any way you see fit.
if possible, please name photographer "SEIER+SEIER".
if not, don't.
more zumthor.
Tags: peter zumthor peter zumthor kolumba diocesan museum gottfried böhm boehm gottfried böhm church kirche eglise chiesa köln cologne architecture architektur arkitektur modernism modern modernist brick petersen tegl facade window seier+seier CC creative commons
link to full size image for texture and details.
august '07: christiania, copenhagen's autonomous favela, has just been given a new lease of life by the Danish government. no buildings will be torn down in the next year while negotiations on future developments continue. the fine examples of a modern "architecture without architects" like this glass house are safe for now.
but christiania's troubles are many and cannot be reduced to the hostile attitude held by our right wing government. what was initially a squatters' community has become a permanent settlement. it has been called a flawed experiment but the truth of the matter is that the experiment is over and has been for many years.
the rich cultural life that sent out subversive theatre groups into the 'real' world is long gone. the brilliant santa army happening of 1974 when large numbers of fake santas doled out goods from the shelves to christmas shoppers in copenhagen department stores would make little sense today: christiania is every bit as comfortably materialistic as the rest of denmark...the inhabitants' parked cars line the borders of this self-proclamed pedestrian community and hypocracy is rife. any criticism today would need to be self-criticism, never a real strength of the activist left.
to many, the final straw has been the ruthless exploitation of christiania's naively liberal marijuana politics by drug dealers. threats and violence form the worst chapter in this, the decline and fall of copenhagen's hippies, and a poignant reminder as to why the rest of the world chooses the rule of law above utopian anarchy.
but if the loss of ideals is felt so keenly here, it is only because those ideals had promise and beauty in the first place. in the words of architectural sage steen eiler rasmussen, in his 1976 defense of christiania:
"understood correctly, christiania may become an important corrective to a consolidated consumer society run amok. if it didn't exist, we would have to invent it".
as a corrective, the place doesn't exist anymore and we may need to reinvent it.
till then, we have the houses.
le corbusier famously claimed that all architecture could communicate was ideas. and the original ideas of christiania are well put by the best buildings out there: an open community of equals; a deep distrust, no, dismissal of authorities - including architects; a deep trust in the creative potential of ordinary people when left to govern their own lives. modesty. individualism. sustainability.
today, there is a strong political will to tear the houses down. they are illegal, follow no building code, have no permits. the old copenhagen defense line on which they are situated must be cleared to protect the city's cultural heritage.
but these buildings are cultural heritage too. and while the 20th century has left us all with a distrust of utopian and idealist thinking, tearing them down will be acting in a dangerous denial of history.
all my photos of the glass house.
more words, yada, yada, yada.
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vor frue kirke, copenhagen cathedral, 1811-1829.
architect: c.f.hansen, 1756-1845.
looking down the nave towards the entrance from the apse.
layered space, filtered light tempered by skylights - c.f.hansen's monumental interiors...
Tags: c.f.hansen hansen architecture arkitektur vor frue kirke church katedral cathedral white interior columns classicism classicist neoclassicism neoclassicist copenhagen københavn denmark danmark nordic scandinavian scandinavia architektur bygning Arquitectura arquitetura Architectuur Architettura danish dansk arkitekt barrel vault coffered ceiling seier+seier creative commons CC