Monthly Archive for October, 2010

It Started With the Booth House

Published on October 30, 2010 in News. 1 Comment

boothhouse2By Ivy Harrison, in Metropolis Magazine

The Glass House’s forgotten older brother re-enters the architecture world thanks to a real estate advertisement. The Booth House, Phillip Johnson’s first commissioned home, was recently put on the market by Sirkka Damora, an architect who lived there for fifty five years with her husband Robert, also an architect. So thank you William Raveis Real Estate for reminding the world of its impact.

In 1946, when the house was built, the Damoras cared not for Johnson’s name, (he wasn’t famous yet), but rather for his enthusiasm of using new materials and technologies like concrete blocks, steel beams and plate glass to promote affordability and modern living. As architects they were excited to see how such functionalist Bauhausian ideas could be implanted into American architecture to create a new aesthetic.

To read more…

The Indicator: Wind Swept Dune

Published on October 29, 2010 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

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From ArchDaily…

Architect Hagy Belzberg recently showed me around his latest creation, the new Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust. He had kindly agreed to give me a personal tour since I was preparing to write up a review.

While I had fully intended to focus on the architecture, the site, the ideas behind the design, I was caught off-guard by something unexpected: people.

Prior to my visit I had been looking at some new photographs of the building taken by Iwan Baan. Architecture photographed for reviews is usually uncluttered by the messiness of life. The buildings are often empty vessels waiting to be activated. People appear as mere apparitions, like objects, often blurred. Thus, there is little evidence of other responses or adaptations to the architecture. If we overlook the gaze of the photographer, there is then only one gaze present: that of the singular “I”. And this “I” had expected an encounter with a building. More…