Architectuul. the blog

Back in 1944 Anne Tyng who died recently aged 91 was one of the first female architects to graduate from Harvard University. She was fascinated all her life by the Platonic solids, three-dimensional shapes with equal sides and equal angles (cube, dodecahedron, etc.) that the Greeks discovered, da Vinci drew, and Kepler wrongly but beautifully theorized formed the layers of the solar system. These five shapes are the driving forms behind Tyng’s architecture and form the spaces inside which she envisioned life being lived.

As a young architect Ms Tyng became romantically liaised with the legendary Louis Kahn. They had a daughter together, but as Kahn was still married to his first wife - to tone down the scandal - Tyng left the United States to settle in Rome. They regularly wrote to eachother. And although Kahn destroyed her letters, he kept his. They were later published giving testament to their deeply romantic, but tumultuous relationship. In "Louis Kahn to Anne Tyng: The Rome Letters 1953-1954" she says:

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And the winner is: The most viewed building on Architectuul in 2011 was the very special Austrian Cultural Forum in New York by the late Raimund Abraham.

Abraham's work is followed by the Communal House of the Textile Institute, a masterpiece of Constructivism built by Ivan Nikolaev in Moscow in the 1920s and the Loos House in Vienna, one of the first examples of modern architecture in Europe. Here is also longer list of the most viewed buildings. Thank you so much for all your fantastic contributions. Please keep up the good work!

For the end of the year, here is a collection of houses which architects built for themselves. These eclectic series of houses were selected and uploaded by our contributors over the past two years.

Today Oscar Niemeyer turns 104. The seminal architect was born on December 15th, 1907. Tonight he will appear at this studio facing the Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro to launch a new special issue of his magazine "Nosso Caminho" which he founded at the age of 98. In this 11th issue of the magazine he will be celebrating the life of his close friend and inventor of the Bossa Nova Vincius de Moraes.

Niemeyer still works at the drawing board and welcomes young architects from all over the world. Although one of his latest creations, the Cultural Centre of Aviles in Spain, was closed this week only one year after its inauguration due to quarrels between the centre's administrators and local government, his architectual vision and elegant curved buildings still mark our conception of architecture.

In his own words: "It is not the right angle that attracts me, nor the straight line, hard and inflexible, created by man. What attracts me is the free and sensual curve — the curve that I find in the mountains of my country, in the sinuous course of its rivers, in the body of the beloved woman."

A number of architects, notably Norman Foster, Francois Roche, Vladimir Plotkin, and others, were invited to create structures based on the theme of a house built on water at the Festival of Landscape Objects held in Russia in July, 2008.

When Tadao Ando was given the brief to reconstruct the 250 year old  Komyo-ji Temple in a town near the mighty Mount Ishizuchi in a region in Western Japan known for its mild climate and natural springs, he was surprised that the priest had no requirements regarding the architecture. "It should be a place where people come together", he said.

Tadao Ando built a wooden structure which floats on the water of a spring-fed pond recalling the vital elements of the local landscape: wood and water. He aimed at expressing he idea of people gathering in the framwork of the main building. In this article of the magazine Plan, he describes his task. Drawings for the design of the temple as well as books and further sketches by Ando are currently exposed (until February 2012) at the Designmuseum Danmark

Featured this week are works by the French architecture studio Lacaton & Vassal. (Thanks Maria!). Here are some photo excerpts.

This week we would like to draw attention to some unusual bridges or - in the case of the Münster Bridge Park - designs related to unusual bridges. Take a look at our features.

Except in architecture circles, the architect and musician Yannis Xenakis is still mainly known as a composer. Sometimes his architectural work is reduced to the trivial fact that he worked for Le Corbusier for a while when he was young. But in case you are in Berlin this November, you have the opportunity to visit a small exhibition about the Greek musician and architect Yannis Xenakis which eloquently shows how the architect Yannis Xenakis formed the musician.

Drawing of Xenakis' glass panes at Sainte-Marie de la Tourette

In 1954, Xenakis was Le Corbusier's project architect for the construction of the Dominican convent Sainte-Marie de la Tourette near Lyon in France. He was responsible for the interiors and designed the cloister, the study hall, the library and the church. Best known however is the double frieze of windows he realised on the west facade of the convent. Xenakis used irregular intervals between the bars of the window crosses which can give the impression that the glass panes actually move. The ratios were chosen according to the Modulor, a scale developed by Le Corbusier on the basis of the of the measurements of the human body, of the Golden Mean and the Fibonacci Numbers. Le Corbusier called the windows "Xenakis' musical glass panes."

Roughly at the same time, Xenakis worked on his first major orchestral piece, Metastaseis which debuted in 1955 and brought about his break-through as a composer. Metastaseis was based on Xenakis' experiments with hyperbolic paraboloids forms which he managed to translate into a musical score. As a result the mathematical structure of the compostion did not only break with traditional harmonies but also with then dominant serial music.

Hyperbolic paraboloids also were at the core of the design of the Philips Pavilion  which he realised in 1958 for Le Corbusier. The Pavilion conceived as a "gesamtkunstwerk" with light installations and music written by Edgar Varese was one of the attractions of the 1958 World Expo in Brussels and led to further light and sound installations which Xenakis collectively named the "Polytopes".

Xenakis also went on to experiment with musical compositions based on mathematical and statistical theories. At the end of his life he turned towards architecture again. Some of his designs like a house he conceived for his daughter on the Greek island Amorgos were realised, others remained unbuilt.

The exhibition "Control and Randomness (Zufall und Kontrolle) - Yannis Xenakis, Architect, Visionary, Composer" can be seen until November 27th 2011 at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin.

When Apple announced its plans to build a new headquarters, the plans of the structure which Norman Foster had designed, raised eyebrows. "It's a little like a spaceship landed.", Steve Jobs said, but why is it round?  The proposed design allows Apple to maximize the green space while not compromising the office and parking surfaces which Apple requires.

Steve Jobs admitted that there are cheaper ways to build office space than a curved glass building. However, a perfect circle is a perfect image for a company which arguably sells the best designed computer hardware products in the world.

The circular design also hints at other features of Apple's corporate culture. To illustrate this, it may be interesting to make a very large detour to take a look at the round communal living structures built by the Hakka people in Fujian, China. While the round closed surface creates a tight large community existing of many families, it also turns their lives to the inside and serves protective purposes. How open Apple is as a company has always been a subject for debate. Architecture often is a telling experience.