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10 great and iconic buildings, no. 1

This list is invented to make some quick and easy blogs for this month filled with festivities. I chose the buildings because i think they belong to the most important from all buildings realized in the last 100 years.

So here is no. 1. Falling Water house, by Frank Lloyd Wright

We have never visited this one, but hope that at some time we will. Whenever there is a chance to visit and enter a great building we do not hesitate and enter…. In the past there were the Empire state, Eifel tower, Musee Louis Vuitton, Atomium, the Glasshouse in Retiro Park Madrid and so many more, but this one is probably the highest on the wish list. Together with the Rothko chapel it would be the ultimate US destination for us.

Waterfall house by FLW

The house is build over the waterfall and combines the best in japanese landscape architecture together with the modernism of FLW. Build as a vacation home for the Kaufmann family, the building quality was far less than perfect. It was necessary to restore it in order to preserve it. But restoration has completed some decades ago and now the house is a museum and can be visited .

www.ftn-books.com has some nice Frank Lloyd Wright publications available.

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10 great and iconic buildings , no. 2

This list is invented to make some quick and easy blogs for this month filled with festivities. I chose the buildings because i think they belong to the most important from all buildings realized in the last 100 years.

So here is no. 2. the Rietveld – Schröder house, by Gerrit Rietveld

Rietveld Schroder huis

In 1924, Truus Schröder asked well-known Utrecht furniture designer Gerrit Rietveld to design a new house for her. A recently widowed mother of three, she wanted a dwelling completely attuned to her – and to her unconventional ideas about what a home should be. Having worked with Rietveld in the past, she knew his disdain for tradition. It was a match made in heaven.

Schröder played an important role in the design process. She knew exactly what she wanted: simplicity and a space that freed rather than constrained her…. and the result one of the most iconic houses which is still inspiring for many young architects.

www.ftn-books.com has some nice Rietveld publications available

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10 great and Iconic buildings, no. 7

This list is invented to make some quick and easy blogs for this month filled with festivities. I chose the buildings because i think they belong to the most important from all buildings realized in the last 100 years.

So here is no.7. the ISOKON building

Isokon Flats, also known as Lawn Road Flats and the Isokon building, on Lawn Road in the Belsize Park district of the London Borough of Camden, is a reinforced concrete block of 36 flats (originally 32), designed by Canadian engineer Wells Coates for Molly and Jack Pritchard

Just look at the picture and try to realize that these apartments were designed over 80 years ago….. a true classic

www.ftn-books.com has many titles availabel on classic and modern architecture

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“de Pot” is the new DEPOT of the Boymans van Beuningen Museum

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Another few weeks and the new depot for the Boymans van Beuningen collection will be open for the public. Now are the weeks of moving and placing the many objects from the collection of the Boymans van Beuningen museum and an openingof the new building is foreseen on the 25th of September next. This building promisses to be something very special and i predict it will have the same appeal as the Guggernheim Museum in Bilbao. Inside , outside and the direct surroundings are all functional for visitors and citizens of Rotterdam alike. It will be an iconic building for Rotterrdam and the Netherlands and i can not wait to visist the building and see its collections by myself. To follow the progress of the opening of the building follow this site; https://www.boijmans.nl/depot

and for all historical publications visit my site at http://www.ftn-books.com

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Will Alsop (1947-2018)

 

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Here is the text that can be found on the pages of the agency of the late  Will Alsop. It is one of the architects from outside the Netherlands who designed several projects over the decades in the Netherlands. This is how i learned to appreciate the projects by Alsop.

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The late Prof. Will Alsop OBE RA was a prominent architect, artist and educator who established aLL Design in 2011. He was awarded the RIBA Stirling Prize for Peckham Library, London and the first RIBA Worldwide Award for The Sharp Centre for Design (OCADU), Toronto, amongst numerous other prestigious accolades for a multitude of projects. His work encompassed all sectors of architecture including urban and landscape design and planning. His studio practice incorporated fine art painting, writing and modelmaking.

Will’s core values were innovation, expression and originality with an emphasis on enjoyment. He worked on a vast array of projects and in all scales; from a bandstand in London to the French Government HQ in Marseille ‘Le Grand Bleu’ via masterplanning, urban design, landscape architecture, interior and product design. He hosted numerous international workshops and lectures.

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His interaction with and involvement of people both within and outside the arts led to design that challenges architectural norms. His practice, aLL Design, was founded principally to ‘make life better’ – the philosophy extends from the design of individual buildings to embrace broader principles of urbanism and city development and uses painting, writing, consultation and workshops to further understanding of design.

Will sat on the architectural advisory boards for Wandsworth and Kensington & Chelsea Councils. He was Professor of TU Vienna and Professor of Architecture at Canterbury School of Architecture, UCA.

His involvement with the Royal Academy of Arts included inclusive education programmes and his model of ‘Heliport Heights’ won the Turkish Ceramics Grand Award for Architecture in the RA Summer Exhibition, 2016 for the ‘most outstanding work of architecture.’ The judges were Ece Ceylan Baba; Kate Goodwin; Vicky Richardson and Ian Ritchie.

Will specialised in large-scale masterplans and regeneration projects for boroughs and districts in Almere, Rotterdam, Groningen, Berlin, Manchester, London, Middlesbrough, and Barnsley, for which he won the 2003 Architects’ Journal Award for Architecture. Latterly he designed part of the regeneration of Kew Gate district for the London Borough of Hounslow; developing schemes for Vauxhall’s regeneration and worked internationally in China, Canada and Europe.

Prior to his death in May 2018, Will was also designing a bandstand for a London Park and working with a Gloucestershire farmer to create an urban farm in South East London. Many of Alsop’s designs, such as the Glenwood Power Plant in Yonkers, New York; OCADU, Toronto, Gao Yang International Cruise Terminal, Shanghai and the HQ of the French government in Marseilles have become icons for their cities, encouraging and increasing tourism and establishing Will as a visionary in the field of architecture.

www.ftn-books.com has some publications on Alsop available at this moment

alsop

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Mirjam Hagoort (1961)

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I have in my FTN-books collection an CBK Rotterdam catalogue on Mirjam Hagoort, published in the early Nineties it shows the works by Hagoort as a young artist . Big almost geometrical paintings with words and sayings, a bit like Ed Ruscha, but while preparing this blog on Hagoort i noticed a change in her work. Nowadays her drawings are much like Marcel van Eeden his daily drawings. They have the same look and feel.

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The paintings however are different. Here she shines with a kind of abstraction that make her early paintings from the Nineties such appealing works of art. With the recent paintings she combines abstraction and architecture into great works of art.

hagoort a

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Władysław Strzemiński (1893-1952)

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I had almost forgotten this great artist until recently I discovered a great monograph on him at the local bookmarket (sold). Just quickly leafing through it i noticed the resemblance with some of the greatest Piet Zwart designs and even, after searching on the internet  I discovered his influence in some recent Japanese designs. His art is truly avant-garde. When you look at Minimal Art from the Sixties and Seventies and the hard edge paintings from the Sixties you can only draw one conclusion. All the great artists from these decades must have known, Władysław Strzemiński and drawn inspiration from his art.

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An excellent biography on the artist can be found here:

https://culture.pl/en/artist/wladyslaw-strzeminski

Władysław Strzemiński (Belarusian: Уладыслаў Страмінскі; 21 November 1893, Minsk – 26 December 1952, Łódź) was a Polish avant-garde painter of international renown.

In 1920 he married Katarzyna Kobro.

In 1922 he moved to Wilno (now Vilnius), and in the following year supported Vytautas Kairiūkštis in creating the first avant-garde art exhibition in what is now the territory of Lithuania (then under Polish rule).

In November 1923 he moved to Warsaw, where with Henryk Berlewi he founded the constructivist group Blok.

During the 1920s he formulated his theory of Unism (Unizm in Polish). His Unistic paintings inspired the unistic musical compositions of the Polish composer Zygmunt Krauze. He is an author of a revolutionary book titled “The theory of vision.” He was co creator of unique avant-garde art collection in Łódź gathered thanks to the enthusiasm of members of the “a.r.” group as Katarzyna Kobro, Henryk Stażewski (the artists) and Julian Przyboś and Jan Brzękowski (the poets).

In postwar Łódź he was an instructor at the Higher School of Plastic Arts and Design .Neoplastic Room in Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź. where one of his students was Halina Ołomucki, survivor of the Nazi concentration camps. His Neoplastic Room was installed in the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź in 1948 but was removed in 1950 as it failed to fit in with the socialist realism aesthetic imposed by Włodzimierz Sokorski, the minister of culture of the Polish United Workers’ Party.

His works have been exhibited in such museums around the world as Centre Pompidou, Museo Reina Sofia Moderna Museet Malmö and Whitechapel Gallery

The following Strzeminski publications are available at http://www.ftn-books.com

 

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Architecture and photography

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One of the greatest books on the subject of architecture and photography i recently added to my inventory. It is the 2001 publication by the Museum Folkwang /Steidl.

The Steidl publishing company stand for the best photography books in the world and this is no exception. The book  is a beautiful printed documentary on the best architectural photographs in the world and all come from the Folkwang collection. Over 168 you will find the best. Friedlander, Becher, Aiget, Hausser, Sander and Callahan ao.

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This is such a feast for the eye that i immediately bought the other copy at my local secondhand bookstore> Now i own two copies of which one is available at www.ftn-books.com

wenn berlin

 

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Piet Dirkx weekly

Piet Dirkx was invited on many occasions to shine his artistic light on color and architectural solutions. On this occasion he was invited to make an “in situ” work at the police station in Raamsdonkveer

dirkx rijksgebouwen

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William Katavolos (1928)

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Known for his furniture and his presence in the collection of Moma and his architectural tutorials it is almost forgotten that he made some very nicely designed books of which the one he made for the Kwadraat series in 1961 is one of the nicest ones. The cover is spectacular with a cut out pattern and behind it a pale yellow/gold colored title page. These books are wel worth collecting and can still be picked up at reasonable prices. but my guess is they will not be much longer available since the edition size was small and word spreads that these are the ones to focus on within the Kwadraat series.