March 9

Welcome to Saint Mesmes: The new book about LAN architecture

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[Read the Italian version of this post]

(By Angelica Di Virgilio)

© Lucboegly.com – droits réservés

Image by www.lan-paris.com ©Undo-redo.com

ONE, THREE, A HUNDRED THOUSANDS

Welcome to Saint Mesmes is an architecture book. But not just that.
It’s the analysis of LAN’s design strategy, which accoring to Manuel Oranzi’s text is built on the “experience/reflection” dichotomy. But it’s not just that either.
It’s the poetic description of the new Marchesini building in France, imposing itself with strenght and arrogance in Saint Mesmes’ rural landscape. It’s the vision photographers Jean-Marie Monthiers and Luc Boegly have of this architecture. It’s the dialogue between a landscape that transforms with seasons and a black object, hard to nail down with a definition (“Is it a box or a chipped stone?”, Carine Merlino is wondering).
It’s a tale of a building process. It’s the face and name of the workers who built it.
It’s a flip book. But not just that. Because “Welcome to Saint Mesmes” is ONE. It’s THREE. It’s a HUNDRED THOUSANDS. Read more

February 3

Last Action Hero: Coast to Coast, Real to Unreal

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(By Nicola Bozzi)

After last week’s post about Demolition Man (1993) and the city of Los Angeles, today I’m writing about another action flick dealing with urban imagery, also come out the same year: Last Action Hero. Both movies are cop-tales, reterritorializing a way of dealing with crime and justice from one world to another. In Stallone’s sci-fi exploit the change happens in time, while in the more sophisticated – and also more tongue-in-cheek – film starring future governor Arnold Schwarzenegger the jump is twofold: from reality to fiction and, quite significantly, from New York to Los Angeles. Before we go further about the retorritorialization I mentioned before, a short introduction to the movie’s plot is necessary.

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February 2

Urban Flux issue 2009-4 review

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(Text by Gaia Bianchini, all images of Gantenbein Vineyard Façade courtesy of Gramazio & Kohler, Zurich, photos © Ralph Feiner)

Conceived as a bimonthly issue, the Chinese magazine published by the Academy of Architectural Design & City Planning of Tianjin University and by Tianjin School of Architecture is dripping architecture from every edge of its rectangular, compact volume. Starting from the cover graphics, the “UrbanFlux” on the top left, challenging the border, to the minimal, rationally composed interior pages, the architectural structure of the magazine is above all reflected in the articles treated.

With a schematic index, thought like an underground map, the 2009/4 issue is mainly focused on Switzerland and ARCH/SCAPES, the Swiss exhibit contribution to the 7th International Architecture Biennal in São Paulo, 2007, whose theme was “Architecture – the Public and the Private”.

Urban Flux’s aim is to clearly present national urban strategies and architectural experiences to make them short-circuit in a common global debate on the thematic pair landscape/urbanization. The Swiss well-known, but compromised, relationship between architecture and landscape is here analysed with didactic approach. Besides country and canton maps, a selection of recent projects featured at ARCH/SCAPES are shown to follow and combine 5 different strategies of possible intervention: disruption, accentuation, dimensional dialogue, confirmation, injection. Which is the best approach – if there is one – I can’t tell for sure. Meanwhile, though, the several expert essays give the reader important clues and the projects shown definetely catch your eye. Read more

January 29

Blueprint, issue 286 review

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(Text by Gaia Bianchini)


Blueprint has traditionally made its readers well accustomed to sound explanations on design mechanisms and processes, what’s exactly up with design today. And, of course, by “today” we mean “now”. And, possibly, tomorrow.

Thinking of some attribute to generally define the thin, large format magazine, I can’t avoid stressing its most peculiar features: young and independent.

Under the wise guidance of Vicky Richardson (who’s recently been appointed as director Architecture, Design and Fashion at the British Council) and Tim Abrahams, Blueprint goes on giving its lucid, 360°- oriented glance on our world through specific sections dedicated to people/objects/exhibitions/installations/processes and meanings.

This month’s issue gives a challenging assessment on the 25 people among designers, architects and campaigners who will change architecture, design, graphics and communication in 2010. Of course – since the borders of the architect and designer profession are more and more blurring into somewhere else – the list includes personalities from researchers to graffiti artists; from economists to sculptors. Just keep an eye on architectural firms like  Toh Shimazaki Architecture, or sculptor Richard Wilson; or even the think tank Tomorrow’s Thoughts Today, which is “exploring the consequences of fantastic, perverse and underrated urbanisms”, to see what’s in store in Innovationland for 2010. Read more

September 28

Vivaio Riva
Exhibition review by Luca Molinari

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[Read the Italian version of this post]

(All photos © Marta Dore)

cover photo

ciondoli

Pendants

Last weekend’s I.D. Vegetation, signed by YellowOffice and taking place at Vivaio Riva, has been a real experiment, a potential workshop for the Milan which should be looking out on the 2015 Expo. Read more

September 23

ANGELO MANGIAROTTI. Sculpting/Building
Review by Luca Molinari

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[Read the Italian version of this post]

RITRATTO_MAN 8-2

September 12- november 8, 2009
Casa del Mantegna
Via Acerbi, 47
Mantova

When you deal with Angelo Mangiarotti’s work, now shown at Casa del Mantegna in Mantua until november 8, you’re forced to stare at a paralyzing Medusa that reminds us the most recent golden age of the Italian architectural culture. I’m usually not inclined to gloomily praise the good old days, but the so many good project possibilities along Mangiarotti’s career, his willingness to face them on different scales and his relationships with clients, apparently ready to invest and take risks, make us draw a discouraging veil over the current situation. Read more

August 26

L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui is coming back next month

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“The birth of AA goes back to the Thirties, and curiously enough arose from the invention of synthetic rubber, so-called industrial or artificial, which had interested a young engineer just out of the Ecole Centrale after one year of studies. A rare phenomenon, which would have enabled this young prodigy named André Bloc, born in Oran, I think, to become a student of the Ecole Polytechnique, or the National School of Mining Engineering, if the crisis had not convinced him to put an end to his studies and find work (which was hard) at a time when young engineers were accepting cleaning positions. André Bloc was lucky. His boss, an amateur publisher, entrusted him with a review on rubber, and in view of the young engineer’s interest in modern industry, offered him the editorship of a small review on architecture.”

Such, according to Claude Parent, were the origins of L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui. The “small review” would later become an historical cult reference for the whole architectural scene, with more than 20,000 readers (mostly subscribers), before mysteriously disappearing (as we reported back in this old post).

But then something happened (involving Jean Nouvel) and here it is again, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, coming back next september with a sparkling new website (apparently still in the making?). Read more

June 2

Architecture Plus, issue 21. Time for Change

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(text by Angelica Di Virgilio)

architecture_plus_cover_21

It’s time for change. That’s Rashid Taqui’s title to his spring editorial for the issue 21 now on sale. This issue features a selection of projects in response to the global economical crises whose influence, despite initial predictions, has stricken United Arab Emiratea and other GCC countries. The magazine looks at the rest of the world, its choices mostly regard projects with a radical new approach to the territory and propose recent examples overcoming the “copy and paste” logic which often imports shapes and patterns opposed to local culture and – too often – comes from profit maximization. On the contrary Architecture Plus focuses on projects which have shown clear attention to the community,  respect for local resources, techniques and identities and a strong will to improve or watch over the natural and human environment. Read more

February 24

Plataforma Networks

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Every now and then we like to signal good web projects to you guys. This time we’d like you to check out Plataforma Networks, a Chile-based, architecture-themed network featuring various websites, the most interesting and complete of which are maybe Plataforma Arquitectura (for Spanish-reading users) and ArchDaily (for English readers).

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