The business of architecture
What is it? The 12th Italian Film Festival that screened in Palace Cinemas across Australia over the past 2 weeks. We saw four films - Habemus Papam (We Have A Pope) by Nanni Moretti, Manuale D'Amore 3 (The Ages Of Love) by Giovanni Veronesi, Sei Venezia (Six Venice) by Carlo Mazzacurati and Benvenuti Al Sud... Continue Reading →
2010621.1742 Patchwork Piemonte, northern Italy. On the outskirts of a small village called Mombaruzzo, the land is naturally undulating and heavily cultivated. Even the hills of Tuscany cannot compete with the particular-ness of this vista.
(View House, Rosario, Argentina) What is it? The title of a lecture given yesterday evening at the Faculty of Art and Design at Monash University by Mark Lee of American architecture practice, Johnston Marklee. Lee presented a number of the practice's projects to the predominantly student audience, both complete and current, spanning countries as amazingly diverse... Continue Reading →
What is it? The bell tower of the small Italian city, Pisa. The footings for the tower were originally only 3m deep and the soil upon which they were founded was very weak, dropping under one side of the tower and causing its globally famous lean. Construction of the tower took place across 177 years and... Continue Reading →
Who is he? Santiago Calatrava is a spanish engineer-turned-architect famous for his expressive, dramatically curving structural compositions. He has completed projects all over the world - our recent travels have brought us to some of those across Spain, Portugal, France and Italy. The projects shown here via photograph include the Oriente Train Station in Lisbon,... Continue Reading →
What is it? Frank Gehry's first building in Australia, the Dr Chau Chak Wing building at the University of Technology Sydney, revealed last week and discussed in an IndesignLive post viewable here. IndesignLive makes some peculiar comments about the design ideas behind the building: "The east-facing façade will be made of a buff-coloured brick reminiscent... Continue Reading →
What do we think? Having now spent a considerable time living in and travelling around Italy, we have been able to observe an unsettling pattern amongst Italian cities. Their centres are, without doubt, amongst the most beautiful and humane in the world. Even Milan, normally understood to be the ugly cousin of knockout cities like... Continue Reading →