smow Blog Design Calendar: June 21st 1891 – Happy Birthday Pier Luigi Nervi!
“Reinforced concrete is the best constructional material yet devised by mankind”, enthused the Italian civil engineer Pier Luigi Nervi in 1956.1
A position Nervi spent a circa sixty year career arguing for, both in innumerable texts and through a canon of varied, and varyingly challenging, constructions throughout Italy, and much further afield. And in doing so Pier Luigi Nervi not only helped advance a popular acceptance of reinforced concrete as a construction material, but also helped develop an argument that in context of our built environment how we construct is, in many regards, more important than what we construct. An argument that has lost none of its contemporaneous since Pier Luigi Nervi first advanced it…….
Design. Colour. Theory.: Amédée Ozenfant – Colour
“We must endeavour to introduce a little order into this business, or at least sense into a great deal of it. But what is sense without order? We must try to find some method of arriving at some sort of order – one that will at least enable us to escape from this vagueness in the design of colour”, opined Amédée Ozenfant in 1937.1
And had an idea or two as to the how…….
Tour de l’architecture de Düsseldorf
With their eyes fixed firmly on the road ahead, the riders in the 2017 Tour de France prologue time trial through the streets of Düsseldorf on July 1st will have no thoughts for the buildings they pass.
Which is a shame, because as a city Düsseldorf has more than its fair share of buildings which are not only architecturally interesting and important, but whose stories are often interesting and important in wider cultural contexts.
Interesting and important architecture and stories the Tour de France competitors could become acquainted with. If they just slowed down.
smow blog Design Calendar: July 13th 1841 – Happy Birthday Otto Wagner!
If the (hi)story of 20th century architecture and design is unimaginable without the contribution made by Austria/Hungary/Austria-Hungary; then the contribution
Berenice Abbott – Photographs @ the Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin
“Photography is the medium par excellence of our time. As a visual means of communication, it has no equal.”1 So
(smow) blog compact: Constructing Worlds – Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age at the Barbican Art Gallery, London
As many of you will be aware, among the myriad of things that regularly get our goat, architecture photography is
(smow) blog compact: Berlinische Galerie present Küchenmonument by raumlabor Berlin
Am Anfang war der Pneu – first there was air – so hypothesised the German architect and master of lightweight
(smow) blog compact: Young Architects from Germany at the Museum of African Design Johannesburg, South Africa
Parallel to the exhibition “Aus allen Richtungen” at the AIT ArchitekturSalon in Cologne and its exploration of 30 young German
(smow) blog compact: Aufbruch! Architektur der 1950er Jahre. Photographic exhibition in Stiftung Stadtgedächtnis Cologne
Popular opinion is that old buildings deserve be preserved, restored, used and loved. Popular opinion however has a very singular
Talking Stuttgart Creativity: Reichel Schlaier Architekten
“Potentially it is the simplest assignments, unencumbered by the complex mix of functional, technical or economic conditions, that allow an
Haus am Waldsee, Berlin: Ola Kolehmainen – Geometric Light
“When I walk into a building I see space, light and colour”, so explains the Finnish photographer Ola Kolehmainen his
Aus allen Richtungen. Positionen junger Architekten im BDA @ Wechselraum Stuttgart
Until August 16th the architecture gallery Wechselraum in Stuttgart is presenting the exhibition “Aus allen Richtungen. Positionen junger Architekten im