#Polytechnic of Central London

[mybeingthere]

Beautiful paintings by British artist Edward Burra.

Edward Burra was born in London in 1905. He briefly attended boarding school but when he caught pneumonia in 1917 he was sent home to Rye and his formal education came to an end. Burra's education continued at home where he was surrounded by books. The Burra household was highly cultivated and arty and Burra was encouraged to read and draw. Between 1921 and 1923 Burra attended the Chelsea Polytechnic where he studied life-drawing, illustration and architectural drawing. It was here that Burra developed an interest in jazz and the cinema and made friends that he would keep for the rest of his life. This was followed by two years at the Royal College of Art between 1923-1925.

Burra travelled extensively during his lifetime spending time in Italy, France, Spain, Morocco, North and Central America and Ireland. In 1925 Burra met Paul Nash, who encouraged him to exhibit his work and taught him wood engraving and collage making. Paul Nash exposed Burra to Surrealism which captivated him. While he did dabble in the movement and was briefly a member of Unit One, Burra was never whole-heartedly part of any artistic group. Burra also designed costumes and sets for theatre and opera productions, particularly during the War years when travel was more difficult.

Burra suffered from poor health throughout his life. As he grew older it became more difficult for him to travel as far or as extensively. In his later years, his sister Anne drove him around Britain and he produced many landscape paintings at this time. Burra died in Hastings in 1976, at the age of 71.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 4.29

801 – An earthquake in the Central Apennines hits Rome and Spoleto, damaging the basilica of San Paolo Fuori le Mura. 1091 – Battle of Levounion: The Pechenegs are defeated by Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos. 1386 – Battle of the Vikhra River: The Principality of Smolensk is defeated by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and becomes its vassal. 1429 – Joan of Arc arrives to relieve the Siege of Orléans. 1483 – Gran Canaria, the main island of the Canary Islands, is conquered by the Kingdom of Castile. 1521 – Swedish War of Liberation: Swedish troops defeat a Danish force in the Battle of Västerås. 1760 – French forces commence the siege of Quebec which is held by the British. 1770 – James Cook arrives in Australia at Botany Bay, which he names. 1781 – American Revolutionary War: British and French ships clash in the Battle of Fort Royal off the coast of Martinique. 1826 – The galaxy Centaurus A or NGC 5128 is discovered by James Dunlop. 1861 – Maryland in the American Civil War: Maryland's House of Delegates votes not to secede from the Union. 1862 – American Civil War: The Capture of New Orleans by Union forces under David Farragut. 1864 – Theta Xi fraternity is founded at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the only fraternity to be founded during the American Civil War. 1903 – A landslide kills 70 people in Frank, in the District of Alberta, Canada. 1910 – The Parliament of the United Kingdom passes the People's Budget, the first budget in British history with the expressed intent of redistributing wealth among the British public. 1911 – Tsinghua University, one of mainland China's leading universities, is founded. 1916 – World War I: The UK's 6th Indian Division surrenders to Ottoman Forces at the Siege of Kut in one of the largest surrenders of British forces up to that point. 1916 – Easter Rising: After six days of fighting, Irish rebel leaders surrender to British forces in Dublin, bringing the Easter Rising to an end. 1944 – World War II: New Zealand-born SOE agent Nancy Wake, a leading figure in the French Resistance and the Gestapo's most wanted person, parachutes back into France to be a liaison between London and the local maquis group. 1945 – World War II: The Surrender of Caserta is signed by the commander of German forces in Italy. 1945 – World War II: Airdrops of food begin over German-occupied regions of the Netherlands. 1945 – World War II: HMS Goodall (K479) is torpedoed by U-286 outside the Kola Inlet, becoming the last Royal Navy ship to be sunk in the European theatre of World War II. 1945 – World War II: Adolf Hitler marries his longtime partner Eva Braun in a Berlin bunker and designates Admiral Karl Dönitz as his successor. 1945 – Dachau concentration camp is liberated by United States troops. 1945 – The Italian commune of Fornovo di Taro is liberated from German forces by Brazilian forces. 1946 – The International Military Tribunal for the Far East convenes and indicts former Prime Minister of Japan Hideki Tojo and 28 former Japanese leaders for war crimes. 1951 – Tibetan delegates arrive in Beijing and sign a Seventeen Point Agreement for Chinese sovereignty and Tibetan autonomy. 1952 – Pan Am Flight 202 crashes into the Amazon basin near Carolina, Maranhão, Brazil, killing 50 people. 1953 – The first U.S. experimental 3D television broadcast shows an episode of Space Patrol on Los Angeles ABC affiliate KECA-TV. 1965 – Pakistan's Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO) successfully launches its seventh rocket in its Rehber series. 1967 – After refusing induction into the United States Army the previous day, Muhammad Ali is stripped of his boxing title. 1968 – The controversial musical Hair, a product of the hippie counter-culture and sexual revolution of the 1960s, opens at the Biltmore Theatre on Broadway, with some of its songs becoming anthems of the anti-Vietnam War movement. 1970 – Vietnam War: United States and South Vietnamese forces invade Cambodia to hunt Viet Cong. 1974 – Watergate scandal: United States President Richard Nixon announces the release of edited transcripts of White House tape recordings relating to the scandal. 1975 – Vietnam War: Operation Frequent Wind: The U.S. begins to evacuate U.S. citizens from Saigon before an expected North Vietnamese takeover. U.S. involvement in the war comes to an end. 1975 – Vietnam War: The North Vietnamese army completes its capture of all parts of South Vietnam-held Trường Sa Islands. 1986 – A fire at the Central library of the Los Angeles Public Library damages or destroys 400,000 books and other items. 1986 – The United States Navy aircraft carrier USS Enterprise becomes the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to transit the Suez Canal, navigating from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea to relieve the USS Coral Sea. 1986 – Chernobyl disaster: American and European spy satellites capture the ruins of the No. 4 reactor at the Chernobyl Power Plant. 1991 – A cyclone strikes the Chittagong district of southeastern Bangladesh with winds of around 155 miles per hour (249 km/h), killing at least 138,000 people and leaving as many as ten million homeless. 1991 – The 7.0 Mw  Racha earthquake affects Georgia with a maximum MSK intensity of IX (Destructive), killing 270 people. 1992 – Riots in Los Angeles, following the acquittal of police officers charged with excessive force in the beating of Rodney King. Over the next three days 63 people are killed and hundreds of buildings are destroyed. 1997 – The Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993 enters into force, outlawing the production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons by its signatories. 2004 – The final Oldsmobile is built in Lansing, Michigan, ending 107 years of vehicle production. 2011 – The Wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton takes place at Westminster Abbey in London. 2013 – A powerful explosion occurs in an office building in Prague, believed to have been caused by natural gas, and injures 43 people. 2013 – National Airlines Flight 102, a Boeing 747-400 freighter aircraft, crashes during takeoff from Bagram Airfield in Parwan Province, Afghanistan, killing seven people. 2015 – A baseball game between the Baltimore Orioles and the Chicago White Sox sets the all-time low attendance mark for Major League Baseball. Zero fans were in attendance for the game, as the stadium was officially closed to the public due to the 2015 Baltimore protests.

[grantgoddard]

Around the British Rail network in eight hundred minutes : 1976 : Durham University challenge

 “Which bus goes to the University, please?” I asked. The man replied helpfully, but I could not understand a word he had said. He spoke English, though not an English I had heard before. I was confused by all the bus stops, having just exited Lancaster railway station. At which one did I need to wait? There was no bus map. There were no obvious students to ask. I had never been north of Luton until then. I had never watched ‘Coronation Street’. I was a southerner who barely understood a word that was being said to me there, hundreds of miles from home.

I had left the house that morning at the crack of dawn to make a day trip to check out Lancaster University. It was one of five universities I had selected on my UCCA form, all of which had offered me a place, conditional upon A-level results, without requesting an interview. However, if I was going to spend three years far away from home, I wanted to go see each one to help me choose. I had never visited a university before. Aside from my teachers, I had never met anyone who had attended university. That year, I hoped to be one of the 6% of school leavers who would go on to university, a proportion that had multiplied from 2% the year I had been born.

My state school had provided no useful advice how to choose a university or course. Our designated ‘careers counsellor’ was actually a moonlighting English teacher who would merely direct us to a row of dogeared university prospectuses on his office shelf. Some were out-of-date, many were missing. We were offered no ‘careers’ seminars. Surrey County Council had compelled each sixth-former to complete a multiple-choice questionnaire and then informed us for which career we were supposedly suited. Further studies were never suggested. You were on your own when it came to an academic future.

I understood that my choice of university could be a life-changing decision, one that required me to review the maximum amount of available information. If neither my family nor my school could provide useful advice, I would research all the options myself. I wrote a letter to every UK university outside London (where I realised accommodation was unaffordable), requesting their current prospectus and details of their economics courses. I chose that subject simply because it had provided my best academic results at school. I had known for a decade that I desired a career in ‘radio’, though university courses in media or broadcasting did not exist. If I had known then that Britain’s first ‘media studies’ degree had been launched at the Polytechnic of Central London (later renamed the University of Westminster) in 1975, I might have rethought my plans.

Seven years earlier, at my council estate junior school, I had been one of three children out of my class of thirty (10%) to have passed the ’11-Plus’ examination, necessary to progress to ‘grammar school’. However, at that time, around 20% of UK pupils attended these ‘selective’ secondary schools, the difference attributable to the substantial numbers of privately educated children who were crammed intensively at fee-paying ‘preparatory schools’ to pass the exam and who then dominated grammar schools’ intakes. From my ‘year’ of sixty students at Strode’s School, only around ten of us progressed to university, an indication that the ’11-Plus’ was less a successful method of identifying Britain’s brightest children, and more a route for middle-class parents to secure their offsprings an elitist secondary education paid for by the state. Has this situation since improved? In 2008, the Sutton Trust reported that grammar schools were enrolling “…half as many academically able children from disadvantaged backgrounds as they could do”.

I was fortunate that Surrey County Council would pay my train fares for visits to five universities, whether an interview was required or not. I had to determine when each institution offered ‘open days’, book my place, arrange train tickets and inform the school of my impending absence. It required considerable organisation, particularly as these visits necessitated train connections in London. These were days when I would not return home until almost midnight and would have to go to school the following day. I had never travelled so many miles on public transport or seen so much of England from a train window.

I must have been the only student at my school to own a copy at home of almost every UK university’s current prospectus. My request for economics course information proved less successful. Many sent me nothing, the remainder provided a single sheet outlining a course that merely encompassed all aspects of the subject. I read absolutely everything I was sent and concluded that every university claimed to be absolutely perfect and their courses the best. I had merely filled my bedroom bookshelf with marketing propaganda. Instead, I decided to select four universities that already operated student radio stations as this was my long-term career objective … plus Durham.

Although Durham University had no radio station, I learned it was apparently thought of highly. If I were rejected by Cambridge, I considered it might be a reputational substitute. Due to the 300-mile distance, my trip to Durham required an overnight stay in Collingwood College which was offered free to those attending ‘open days’. After a long train journey followed by an uphill walk, I was given an undergraduate bedroom within the college and met several other visitors who were there for the same reason. We took the university’s guided tours together the next day and ate as a group in the college’s dining room, offering us a first taste of undergraduate life.

The following morning, we packed our bags and met together for the thirty-minute walk to Durham railway station on the opposite side of town to catch our trains back to ‘the south’. However, we found the platforms deserted and, eventually locating a member of staff, we were told that a strike had started that morning and there were no trains departing in any direction. Returning to the college with our tails between our legs, we explained our problem and it kindly offered to extend its hospitality until we could depart. Each of us changed our banknotes into piles of ten-pence coins and queued at the college’s one public phone in the basement to contact our parents and schools to explain that we did not yet know when we could return. A quick visit had unexpectedly transformed into something longer.

I took the opportunity to wander around Durham’s compact town centre and explore more places, particularly the ‘Musicore’ record shop. The university library and the cathedral were both impressive, as was the brutalist concrete student union building ‘Dunelm House’ and adjoining ‘Kingsgate Bridge’ constructed by architect Ove Arup in 1963. The other universities I had visited were campus-based, requiring a bus journey to the nearest town. I quite liked Durham’s integration into the city and the ability to walk from one end to the other without need of transport.

The next morning, before breakfast in the college dining room, I phoned Durham railway station, to be informed that no trains would be running for the second consecutive day. This was the only method to obtain information in those days. I met the others and we phoned our families with our disappointing update. We spent most of that day sat together in the Junior Common Room chatting, sharing our university visit experiences and our hopes for the future. For me, it was particularly interesting to meet young people for the first time who shared my situation.

I made another call to the railway station the next morning, anticipating more bad news, but was told a single train was expected that day. It would be heading north, the opposite direction to what we required. I asked if there was any alternative route to London and it was explained that, although the east coast route was still on strike, we could try travelling via the west coast on the opposite side of the country. When was this one train expected? In an hour, I was told. Action stations!

I located my fellow visitors and, without taking breakfast, we all signed out of college and rushed off to the station. There was no information available there about the time of the train, on which platform it would arrive or where it would be heading. While we waited, we examined a British Rail route map in the ticket office which showed a cross-country route from east to west coast that started in Newcastle, the next major stop north of Durham. We were the only people awaiting a train and did wonder whether we had been sent on a wild goose chase, only to have to return to the college for yet another night.

Then the day’s promised one train appeared and pulled into the station. Unsurprisingly, it was almost empty. Who would have known it would be running in the midst of a crippling strike? We boarded and waved farewell to Durham, not knowing if any of us would ever return. Within a quarter-hour, we alighted in Newcastle. It was the first of many times that day that we were required to explain to confused railway staff that, although our tickets to London were dated days earlier, the unanticipated strike had forced us to take the only train available … in the opposite direction.

Next, to cross England to the west coast, we discovered we had to take a less regular, slower train that would depart in an hour. The wait gave us an opportunity to walk out of Newcastle railway station, buy some breakfast and wander around the city. Compared to Durham, it appeared a huge, busy scruffy city centre with huge Victorian stores and old-fashioned shopping arcades. Even the clothes people wore seemed dated and dowdy, particularly seeing many men wearing flat caps. It was an industrial city where time seemed to have stood still fifty years earlier.

Our ninety-minute journey in a local train from Newcastle to Carlisle took us across the bleak terrain of the North Pennine hills, stopping only at tiny towns with strange, unfamiliar names like Prudhoe, Corbridge, Hexham and Haltwhistle. Once again, we were required to explain to the train’s on-board ticket inspector why we were travelling in the wrong direction with out-of-date tickets. He knew about the strike and laughed heartily at our story, wishing us well on our journey home. It began to feel like a kind of ‘expedition’ where, at every step, it proved necessary to explain why our little group of seventeen-year-olds were taking a route no sane person would choose to follow.

The train terminated at Carlisle, a two-thousand-year-old city on the border between England and Scotland, fifty-five miles west and north of Durham. It was midday by now and, from there, we could now take a west coast 'Intercity' train southbound. We did not venture outside the station as this would have entailed having to explain our tickets once more and we feared not being allowed entry back into the station. This region was unaffected by the strike and trains seemed thankfully to be running as scheduled.

Our four-hour journey to London was comfortable until a ticket inspector arrived. We explained our story but he seemed unaware of the rail strike on the east coast and disbelieved our narrative. Initially, he demanded we pay for new tickets. We refused because we each held a valid, paid-for British Rail ticket that we had been prevented from using by the strike. The argument continued and he demanded we write down our names and addresses in order that the police could be contacted so that we would be fined for travelling without valid tickets. He was a ridiculous ‘jobsworthy’ who showed no sympathy for our plight. His attitude ruined the longest, most gruelling part of that day’s journey.

Reaching London’s Euston station, our small group split up to head different directions home. It was a sad parting of ways as we had no idea if we would ever see each other again or even which university each of us might attend (no social media or mobile phones then!). The last few days had required us to bond in the face of adversity, forcing us to make a round-Britain trip we had never imagined. It would be quite a story to tell our classmates.

I crossed London by Tube, caught a train from Waterloo station to Camberley and then a bus, reaching home more than twelve hours after having left Collingwood College in Durham. My school might not have been happy about my extended absence but, later that year, those awaydays would play a major role in my decision to study in Durham. I felt as if I was already sufficiently familiar with the college and the town as a result of that elongated visit. I imagined that my fellow Durham students would be similar to those with whom I had travelled the length and breadth of England.

Did I receive correspondence from British Rail or the police as a result of the unfriendly ticket inspector we had encountered? Thankfully, no. Did I ever see my newfound friends again? Sadly, no.

[spyskrapbook]

“309 Regent Street”, Polytechnic of Central London, London [1980] _ Architects: Lyons Israel Ellis Gray.

Forsyth, A.,Gray, D. (eds.) (1988) Lyons Israel Ellis Gray: Buildings and Projects 1932-1983, London: Architectural Association Publications, pp. 210-213.

[bluecote]

polytechnic of central london hubert bennett AJ 2.6.71

[diceriadelluntore]

Storia Di Musica #208 - The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Are You Experienced?, 1967

Il primo ottobre del 1966 sul palco del Central London Polytechnic di Regent Street stavano suonando i Cream di Eric Clapton, del bassista Jack Bruce e del batterista Ginger Baker, all’epoca la band clou del rock blues inglese. Quella sera Chas Chandler, ex bassista degli Animals che voleva diventare un manager di successo, presentò al gruppo un giovane chitarrista mancino di Seattle, che aveva visto suonare con il suo gruppo al Cafè Wha? al Greenwich Village di New York qualche mese prima. Chandler rimane folgorato e chiese a quel giovane chitarrista di andare con lui in Inghilterra. Il chitarrista acconsentì ad una condizione: voglio conoscere Eric Clapton. Clapton acconsentì al ragazzo di salire sul palco, e quando quest’ultimo iniziò a suonare Killing Floor di Howlin’ Wolf, Clapton fu travolto da un’abilità, una sensibilità straordinaria, tanto che leggenda vuole che allontanandosi dalla scena tutta dominata da quel tizio di Seattle disse a Chandler: “Cazzo, non mi avevi detto la verità, che fosse fottutamente straordinario”. Quello fu il biglietto da visita di Jimi Hendrix, e tra l’altro Hendrix e Clapton divennero sinceri e grandi amici. Proprio sul modello power trio dei Cream Hendrix e Chandler si ispirarono per il nuovo gruppo d Jimi, la Experience: Noel Redding era un buon chitarrista, ma vedendo come suonava Hendrix decise di passare al basso;  Mitch Mitchell aveva suonato con un gruppo blues, Georgie Fame And The Blue Flames, e fu reclutato come batterista. Dopo un rifiuto della Decca, firmarono un primo contratto con la Track, una nuova a intraprendente casa discografica fondata dai manager dei The Who,  Kit Lambert e Chris Stamp. Registrato tra l’ottobre del 1966 e la primavera del 1967, Chandler decise che le sessioni di registrazione venissero intervallate da piccoli concerti in tour per l’Europa, e fu uno dei primi a intuire la forza delle esibizioni televisive, allora semi pioneristiche per la musica rock dal vivo. Con l’aiuto di alcuni tra i più bravi ingegneri del suono, tra cui Ed Kramer che diventerà una sorta di braccio destro musicale di Jimi, quando esce nel maggio del 1967, Are You Experienced? è subito considerato un disco che segna la storia, uno dei più influenti di tutta la storia rock. Hendrix non diventerà solo l’icona della chitarra rock ma renderà del tutto innovativo l’approccio allo strumento: Jimi non ha bisogno della chitarra ritmica, copre tutte le parti con la sua chitarra che diventa un uccello musicale mutevole, che fa parlare, urlare, sognare in una versione del delta blues trasferito su Marte, in una pregnante definizione dell’epoca. Del disco uscirono due versioni, differenti, per il mercato europeo e americano, con due copertine differenti: quella che ho scelto io è quella europea, che non piacque tanto a Jimi, che la voleva più accesa e folgorante, e fu accontentato per la versione americana (che potete vedere qui). Tra l’altro le due versioni differivano anche per la scaletta, dato che in quella americana furono inseriti i leggendari e seminali capolavori usciti come singoli. In tutte le versioni moderne, da quella in cd del 1997 in poi, sono inseriti tutti i brani delle due versioni più sei tracce bonus, per un totale di 17 canzoni. Quello che conta è che bastano i primi, leggendari e marziali secondi di Purple Haze ad annunciare che è arrivato un uragano: il leggendario riff e quella sensazione che Hendrix sia capace di dare una nuova scossa al blues è evidente, il brano con non sottili riferimenti agli stupefacenti probabilmente si rifà ad un sogno che Hendrix ebbe mentre stava leggendo Notte di Luce di Philip José Farmer. Jimi arricchisce il blues di movimento, di sensualità ma anche di drammaticità, come nelle classiche Hey Joe e in uno dei suoi pochissimi slow blues classici (almeno nella struttura). la magnifica Red House. La sua musica ti porta nel ritmo di Manic Depression, negli ammiccamenti di Foxey Lady, sa essere romantica in May This Be Love o nella struggente The Wind Cries Mary, uno degli apici della sua collezione. Già dimostra che ha urgenza di provare ogni cosa, con i suoni molto alla moda di Love Or Confusion, alla potenza di Fire, a quella Stone Free che è il seme da cui nascerà l’hard rock. Non ha paura di sondare lo spazio nella visionaria Third Stone From The Sun, manifesto della psichedelia hendrixiana; la sua chitarra è un susseguirsi di effetti, anche grazie al fido Kramer, con cui hanno un’idea geniale per Are You Experienced?: la parte di chitarra e di batteria, che si dice abbia suonato Hendrix con Mitchell (pochi lo sanno, ma  Hendrix era un grande bassista, suonava degnamente il pianoforte e aveva una cultura musicale enorme), fu registrata al contrario per dare quell’effetto distorto e lievemente inquietante, prima di uno dei suoi leggendari assoli. A tal proposito, fermo restando che alcuni degli assolo di Hendrix sono unanimemente considerati fondamentali nella storia del rock, non è la velocità o la tecnica di esecuzione che contano, ma è il concetto stesso di uso dello strumento che magicamente cambia prospettiva: è lui che darà impulso agli effetti elettronici, è lui che designerà per lo strumento prospettive mai utilizzate, nessuno come lui lo userà come fosse un’orchestra, non un semplice strumento. Il disco già all’epoca arrivò altissimo in classifica, e sarà il lancio di questa meteora indimenticabile, che durerà appena 3 anni. E c’è un ultimo aneddoto da raccontare: nella sua biografia, Clapton racconta che il 17 settembre 1970 nel West End a Londra, vide in un negozio di strumenti musicali una splendida Fender Stratocaster bianca per mancini, divenuta tra l’altro “la chitarra” dopo le leggendarie esibizioni di Hendrix in giro per il modo. La comprò con l'intento di regalarla la sera stessa, in occasione del concerto degli Sly & the Family Stone al Lyceum di Londra: poche ore dopo nella stessa città Hendrix muore, consegnando alla leggenda quel suo modo inimitabile di avere a che fare con una chitarra.

[suzylwade]

Ossip Zadkine Ossip Zadkine (1888 - 1967) was a relentless, unclassifiable and prolific artist. Zadkine produced more than 612 sculptures and a large number of works on paper, 765 gouaches and drawings as well as 200 lithographs and etchings. Zadkine was born in Smolensk, Russia in 1890. He came from a professional background which meant his parents could afford to send him to the ‘Regent Street Polytechnic’ in London at the age of 16. In London he took classes in drawing at night and earned money by making ornamental wood-carving. In 1908 he continued studies at the ‘Central School of Arts and Crafts’, where he concentrated his efforts on techniques in wood. He would go through periods in his life working with different materials including wood, stone, marble, terracotta and bronze. His woodworks included materials such as walnut, cedar, elm, acacia, pear and ebony. While in London Zadkine became friendly with the English painter David Bomberg (1890–1957), whose complex series of geometric compositions combining the influences of ‘Cubism’ and ‘Futurism’ (preceding World War I) are considered visionary. During the First World War Zadkine enlisted voluntarily and was posted to the Russian ambulance corps in Champagne in 1916 and during the Second World War he fled to New York (October 1941 - September 1945). https://www.instagram.com/p/CZgvdWaszaA/?utm_medium=tumblr

[architectnews]

European Prize for Urban Public Space 2022

2022 European Prize for Urban Public Space, Jury, Advisors, Architect, Winners, Prize News

European Prize for Urban Public Space 2022 News

9 February 2022

CALL FOR THE EUROPEAN PRIZE FOR URBAN PUBLIC SPACE 2022

The CCCB is announcing the call for the European Prize for Urban Public Space, a prime observatory of European cities that recognizes the best works to create, recover, transform and improve public spaces in Europe.

Agricultural engineer, landscape designer and lecturer at the ETH Zurich, Teresa Galí-Izard, will be the President of the Prize’s international jury.

Organised by the CCCB, the Prize involves the cooperation of a network of 10 architecture and urban planning institutions and over 50 experts from across the continent.

European Prize for Urban Public Space 2018 winner – Skanderbeg Square, Tirana, Albania: photo © Filip Dujardin

The Prize, the only one of its kind in Europe, has been renewed to promote debate about the future of European cities in the post-pandemic context.

Registration is open for submissions from 20 April to 17 May 2022. The conditions of entry and everything you need to know to take part in the Prize are available at www.publicspace.org

The Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) announces the eleventh European Prize for Urban Public Space. This biennial honorary contest, since 2000 acknowledging the best interventions to create, transform and recover public spaces in European cities, will recognise works carried out between 2018 and 2021.

In a context like today’s, where climate emergency and the crisis generated by the COVID-19 pandemic show that cities around the world are facing new climatic, technological and social challenges, the value of public space is greater than ever.

The Prize, which is the only one in Europe dedicated to public space and is awarded both to the authors of the project and its developers, aims to reflex the centrality of these issues and become an observatory of good practices that serves to come up with possible solutions to a future in which cities will have a primary role in defining society’s evolution.

photo © Filip Dujardin

International jury

The international jury of this eleventh edition is made up of renowned professionals from all over Europe.

President and representative of the CCCB Teresa Galí-Izard, agricultural engineer and landscape designer, currently lectures in Landscape Architecture and is director of the Master of Sciences in Landscape Architecture at ETH Zurich, Switzerland.

Jury members

Hans Ibelings, Dutch architecture critic and historian, editor of The Architecture Observer. Eleni Myrivili, Doctor of Anthropology, and Resilience and Sustainability advisor to Athens City Council. Andreas Ruby, Director of the Swiss Architecture Museum in Basel and co-founder of Ruby Press. Paloma Strelitz, British architect, creative director of Patch and founder of Assemble, London. Špela Videčnik, architect, founder member of OFIS architects, Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Secretary

Lluís Ortega, Doctor of Architecture (Polytechnic University of Catalonia-UPC), Philosophy graduate (University of Barcelona) and Master of Science-AAD (Columbia University).

photo © Filip Dujardin

Advisory Committee

The European Prize for Urban Public Space is an initiative of the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB), with the collaboration of the following European institutions:

Arc en Rêve, Bordeaux, France Architekturzentrum Wien – AzW, Vienna, Austria ArkDes, Stockholm, Sweden La Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine, Paris, France CIVA, Brussels, Belgium Deutsches Architekturmuseum – DAM, Frankfurt, Germany Eesti Arhitektuurimuuseum, Tallin, Estonia Kortárs Építészeti Központ – Kék, Budapest, Hungary Muzej za Arhitekturo in Oblikovanje – MAO, Ljubljana, Slovenia The Architecture Foundation – AF, London, United Kingdom

photo © Filip Dujardin

The track record of an Award with a European and social vocation

The European Prize for Urban Public Space finds its natural space in the European city, which, despite its diversity, shares some common historical elements, such as human scale, compact design and the mixed nature of its uses. In this idea of European city, public space plays a key role in collective encounters, packed with social, economic and political values that cannot be taken apart from a physical design that accommodates them and makes them possible.

In the course of its 22 years of history and 10 editions, the Prize has had 2,206 entries and awarded 19 accolades and 35 special mentions.

The award-winning projects include such varied and relevant interventions as Barking Town Square (2008 Prize), a civic space for a suburban district in East London, which, after years of marginality, was crying out for the recovery of its lost identity and the creation of a meeting space for the new community. The open-air library in the German city of Magdeburg (2010 Prize), where, by means of a participatory process, the residents of a socially deprived neighbourhood managed to build a library with the prefabricated parts of a demolished building. The development of the old port of Marseille, France (2014 Prize), an intervention to free the docks of obstacles and vehicles, making the presence of leisure boats compatible with access for all citizens. The recovery of the irrigation channels in the thermal allotments in Caldes de Montbui, Spain (2016 Prize), giving a new lease of life to agricultural activity and creating a network of footpaths. And the renovation of Skanderbeg Square in Tirana (2018 Prize), a nerve centre in the Albanian capital and a symbolic place for the whole country that was reformed to promote and highlight its diversity, and which, with the planting of a green strip, could be a starting point for more greening in the city centre.

The Archive of the European Prize for Urban Public Space, an online consultable resource, brings together the best works submitted to the competition. With over 300 experiences in some 200 towns and cities, it is a permanent witness to and observatory of the construction and evolution of public spaces throughout Europe.

photo © Filip Dujardin

Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB)

The CCCB is a multidisciplinary centre devoted to exploring the big questions of contemporary society, using different languages and formats, with an extensive program of large thematic exhibitions, cycles of lectures and literary meetings, audiovisual projections and festivals. Since it was set up, the CCCB has promoted reflection on contemporary cities, understanding them as the prime space for the transformations and challenges of the world today.

All photos courtesy of CCB

Location: Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain, Europe

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[mishinashen]

Boléro violet by Henri Matisse, 1937

Suffused with the brilliant light of the South of France, Boléro violet is an exquisite portrait from one of the most important and creative periods of Matisse’s art. The arrangement of the exotically dressed girl, with her upper body posed diagonally across the painting, is invitingly intimate, with the sweeping arm of her chair creating a subtle distinction between the position of the model and the picture's surface. The emphasis Matisse placed on decorative patterns is particularly apparent in Boléro violet. The buttercup gold and orange striped wallpaper, vivid purple coat and strikingly stylised features of the model - her dark hair and red lips being especially pronounced - combine to create a beguiling vision of the artist’s opulent domain.

The model in the painting is Princess Hélène Galitzine, daughter of Russian aristocrat Prince Serge Galitzine and Helene Ghijitzky. Not yet eighteen years-old when Matisse created Boléro violet, her strikingly dark hair provided a perfect foil to Lydia Delectorskaya’s fair colouration. Throughout 1937 Hélène was one of Matisse’s principal models and posed for a number of important works, often alongside her cousin Delectorskaya. The pair continued to model together for the next couple of years, and posed for the monumental La musique in 1939 (fig. 1). In the same year he completed La musique, Matisse made a statement recognising the importance of his models: ‘The emotional interest aroused in me by them does not appear particularly in the representation of their bodies, but often rather in the lines or the special values distributed over the whole canvas or paper, which form its complete orchestration, its architecture… It is perhaps sublimated sensual pleasure’ (H. Matisse, quoted in Henri Matisse. Figure Color Space (exhibition catalogue), Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, 2005, p. 40).

Throughout his life, Matisse approached clothing and textiles with the keen eye of a collector. Costumes of all descriptions could be found in numerous chests about his house and studio. From Romanian peasant clothing to Parisian ball gowns, Matisse’s appetite for clothing was enormous. He commissioned the celebrated designer Paul Poiret’s sister to make dresses for his wife and daughter, and on one occasion in 1938, he spent a day in the area around the rue de la Boëtie in Paris buying several items of haute couture at the spring sales. By the time he moved to his new apartment in the old Excelsior-Regina Palace Hotel in Cimiez in 1939, his collection of costumes required a whole room to store them. As Hilary Spurling has noted: ‘Moroccan jackets, robes, blouses, boleros, caps and scarves, from which his models could be kitted out in outfits distantly descended - like Bakst's ballet, and a whole series of films using Nice locations in the 1920s as a substitute for the mysterious East - from the French painterly tradition of orientalisation’ (H. Spurling, Matisse: His Art and his Textiles (exhibition catalogue), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2005, p. 29).

According to Lydia Delectorskaya in 1937 Matisse had become particularly fascinated with a set of Romanian blouses which he rediscovered amongst his studio props. These blouses had been a gift from the Romanian painter Theodor Pallady, who regularly corresponded with Matisse, discussing their art and in particular the important role of its more decorative aspects. Hélène Galitzine was photographed by the artist wearing one of these blouses (fig. 2), and he subsequently painted a number of works - using other models - that used the geometric oak-leaf embroidery as the central decorative motif. Similarly, Matisse produced several improvisations on the decorative qualities of a richly hued jacket decorated with elaborate gold embroidery (fig. 3). Matisse had used this coat in an earlier oil (fig. 4), and echoes of its orientalist charm are reawakened in his paintings in the late 1930s.

In a discussion concerning his working methods with the poet Tériade, which was later published in 1937, Matisse wrote: ‘In my latest paintings, I united the acquisitions of the last twenty years to my essential core, to my very essence. […] The reaction of each stage is as important as the subject. For this reaction comes from me and not from the subject. It is from the basis of my interpretation that I continually react until my work comes into harmony with me... At each stage, I reach a balance, a conclusion. At the next sitting, if I find there is a weakness in the whole, I make my way back into the picture by means of the weakness - I re-enter through the breach-end, I reconceive the whole. Thus everything becomes fluid again and as each element is only one of the component forces (as in an orchestration), the whole can be changed in appearance but the feeling sought still remains the same. A black could very well replace a blue, since basically the expression derives from the relationships. One is not bound to a blue, to a green or to a red, whose timbres can be introverted or replaced if the feeling so dictates… At the final stage the painter finds himself freed and his emotion exists complete in his work' (quoted in Jack Flam (ed.), Matisse on Art, Berkeley, 1995, p. 123).

Discussing Matisse’s portraits of the mid-1930s, John Elderfield wrote: ‘his model is shown in decorative costumes – a striped Persian coat [fig. 5], a Rumanian blouse – and the decorativeness and the very construction of a costume and of a painting are offered as analogous. What developed were groups of paintings showing his model in similar or different poses, costumes, and settings: a sequence of themes and variations that gained in mystery and intensity as it unfolded’ (J. Elderfield in Henri Matisse, A Retrospective (exhibition catalogue), The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1992, p. 357). Boléro violet is an extraordinary example of Matisse’s constantly evolving perception of form and colour. The paintings of the late 1930s are the supreme outcome of decades of improvisation on these decorative elements, wherein contrasting patterns and colours of the present work harmonise, and the features of the young Hélène are transfigured into the epitome of timeless elegance. The first owner of the present work was Aldus Chapin Higgins of Worcester, Massachusetts. Higgins acquired Boléro violet from Paul Rosenberg’s Paris exhibition of Matisse’s recent works in 1937 which subsequently travelled to London. The previous year Rosenberg persuaded Matisse to sign a three year contract, thus becoming his principal dealer. These exhibitions in Paris and London, held for the next few years, helped the artist to sell directly to a large number of collectors from America and Europe. Aldus C. Higgins was a businessman who spent his entire career with his family’s firm, the Norton Emery Wheel Company. He also invented a water-cooled electric furnace which won the John Scott medal for exceptional achievement in mechanical arts in 1914. Higgins also commissioned the architect Grosvenor Atterbury to build him a house modelled on Compton Wyngates, the Elizabethan seat of the Marquesses of Northampton. The house was completed in 1923, and Higgins and his wife, Mary, lived there until their deaths when it was given to the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, of which his family had been tremendously supportive. Aldus and Mary Higgins were avid collectors of art, and during trips to Europe purchased many wonderful paintings including the magnificent Fauve canvas, L’Oliviers by Georges Braque and Georges Rouault’s Coucher du soleil which were both eventually bequeathed to the Worcester Art Museum. Boléro violet remained in Higgins' family possession until 1990, when it was acquired by the present owner.

[mybeingthere]

Vanessa Gardiner was born in 1960 in Oxford where her father was a tutor of philosophy at Magdalen College. She did her Foundation year at Oxford Polytechnic going on to study Fine Art at the Central School of Art and Design in London.  At first she had to work in offices to earn her living and paint in every spare moment but in 1991 she had her first solo show with Duncan Campbell Gallery in London and has been able to concentrate on her painting full time ever since.  In 2001 she joined the Hart Gallery and has had six major solo shows there.  In 2008 she had her first solo show at Sladers Yard which very nearly sold out.

https://sladersyard.wordpress.com/vanessa-gardiner-2/

http://www.vanessagardiner.co.uk/

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 6.21 (after 1940)

1940 – World War II: Italy begins an unsuccessful invasion of France. 1942 – World War II: Tobruk falls to Italian and German forces; 33,000 Allied troops are taken prisoner. 1942 – World War II: A Japanese submarine surfaces near the Columbia River in Oregon, firing 17 shells at Fort Stevens in one of only a handful of attacks by Japan against the United States mainland. 1945 – World War II: The Battle of Okinawa ends when the organized resistance of Imperial Japanese Army forces collapses in the Mabuni area on the southern tip of the main island. 1952 – The Philippine School of Commerce, through a republic act, is converted to Philippine College of Commerce, later to be the Polytechnic University of the Philippines. 1957 – Ellen Fairclough is sworn in as Canada's first female Cabinet Minister. 1963 – Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini is elected as Pope Paul VI. 1964 – Three civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner, are murdered in Neshoba County, Mississippi, United States, by members of the Ku Klux Klan. 1970 – Penn Central declares Section 77 bankruptcy in what was the largest U.S. corporate bankruptcy to date. 1973 – In its decision in Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, the Supreme Court of the United States establishes the Miller test for determining whether something is obscene and not protected speech under the U.S. constitution. 1978 – The original production of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical, Evita, based on the life of Eva Perón, opens at the Prince Edward Theatre, London. 1982 – John Hinckley is found not guilty by reason of insanity for the attempted assassination of U.S. President Ronald Reagan. 1985 – Braathens SAFE Flight 139 is hijacked on approach to Oslo Airport, Fornebu. Special forces arrest the hijacker and there are no fatalities. 1989 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397, that American flag-burning is a form of political protest protected by the First Amendment. 1993 – Space Shuttle Endeavour is launched on STS-57 to retrieve the European Retrievable Carrier (EURECA) satellite. It is also the first shuttle mission to carry the Spacehab module. 2000 – Section 28 (of the Local Government Act 1988), outlawing the 'promotion' of homosexuality in the United Kingdom, is repealed in Scotland with a 99 to 17 vote. 2001 – A federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, indicts 13 Saudis and a Lebanese in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 American servicemen. 2004 – SpaceShipOne becomes the first privately funded spaceplane to achieve spaceflight. 2005 – Edgar Ray Killen, who had previously been unsuccessfully tried for the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Mickey Schwerner, is convicted of manslaughter 41 years afterwards (the case had been reopened in 2004). 2006 – Pluto's newly discovered moons are officially named Nix and Hydra. 2006 – A Yeti Airlines de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter crashes at Jumla Airport in Nepal, killing nine people. 2009 – Greenland assumes self-rule. 2012 – A boat carrying more than 200 migrants capsizes in the Indian Ocean between the Indonesian island of Java and Christmas Island, killing 17 people and leaving 70 others missing. 2012 – An Indonesian Air Force Fokker F27 Friendship crashes near Halim Perdanakusuma International Airport, killing 11.

[delhi-architect2]

Journal - Niemeyer and Beyond: A Guide to Modernist Brazilian Architecture

Architects, interior designers, rendering artists, landscape architects, engineers, photographers and real estate developers are invited to submit their firm for the inaugural A+Firm Awards, celebrating the talented teams behind the world’s best architecture. Register today.

An end of an era came in December 2012 when Oscar Niemeyer passed away. For many, Niemeyer’s name was synonymous with modernism in Brazil, or even in Latin America. In his 104 years he managed completed dozens of iconic projects, gaining global recognition.

However, Niemeyer was not the only modernist architect working in Brazil, which is full of elegant, imaginative buildings from other home-grown masters. Following our recent dig into Mexican modernism, we now turn to look at Niemeyer’s work, as well as some of Brazil’s lesser-known modernists.

Oscar Niemeyer – a name that is synonymous with Brazilian modernism. Top: Church of Saint Francis of Assisi in Pampulha, Belo Horizonte. Bottom: Mac de Niteroi Museum in Rio de Janeiro. Photos: Via + Wikimedia

Oscar Niemeyer

Niemeyer was born and raised in Rio de Janeiro along with his five siblings. His father was a graphic designers who recognized his son’s visual talent early on. The young Oscar was sent to study at the National School of Fine Arts, where he was trained as an architect. Fortunately for him, the school’s dean, architect Lucio Costa, noticed him. Costa “adopted” Niemeyer and included him in a team of designers who worked on the Ministry of Education and Health in Rio (a project for which Le Corbusier was a consultant). Funnily enough, the building today is associated with Niemeyer more than with any other architect.

Though the two collaborated again later, Neimeyer soon outgrew his mentor. Through the 1940s and 50s, he shaped his free-form modernist language, a language so strong and communicative it soon became synonymous with Brazil’s modernity and Latin America’s advancement.

Niemeyer belonged to the far-left parties in Brazil and for most of his adult life was associated with Brazilian communism. His most well-known project is in Brasilia, where in 1956 he designed a series of governmental buildings. Niemeyer was active in other parts of the world, too; he participated in the planning of the UN Headquarters in New York, planned a desert-city and a university tower in Israel, and much more. Like Le Corbusier, he was one of the first “global” architects. In 1988, he was awarded the Pritzker Prize. Later in 2003, he designed the summer pavilion for London’s Serpentine Gallery. His buildings are instantly recognizable: They exhibit an outstanding continuity of design in colors, daring geometry, and extravagant simplicity.

Niemeyer’s designs in Brasilia, 1956: an architectural project of international importance. Lucio Costa was in charge of the project’s master plan, yet his name is hardly as commonly associated with it as is Niemeyer’s. Photo via

Niemeyer’s pavilion for the Serpentine Gallery in London, 2003. Continuity in design. Photo via

A view of the UN Headquarters on the East River bank in Manhattan—a project designed by Niemeyer with Le Corbusier, Harrison and Abramovitz and others in 1952. Photo via

Lucio Costa

Architect and urban planner Lucio Costa was director of Niemeyer’s university, the National School of Fine Arts in Rio De Janeiro, from 1930 on. This was the beginning of a complex, lengthy professional relationship between the two. After hiring Niemeyer for the planning of the Ministry of Education and Health, a massive modernist project in the heart of Rio, Costa and Niemeyer collaborated again on the project of Brasilia, for which Costa was the master-planner and Niemeyer a central designer.

Another mutual project was their Brazil Pavilion at the New York City World’s Fair, 1939. With his political connections, Costa pushed for the modernization of Brazilian architecture his whole life, and is responsible for the approval and execution of many of the country’s modern assets.

Interior lobby, ground-floor colonnade, and garden-terrace of Rio’s Ministry of Education and Health, designed by Lucio Costa and his (then) ambitious intern Oscar Niemeyer. The garden terrace was designed in collaboration with landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx (see below). Photos via and via flickr

Brazil’s Pavilion at the World’s Fair in New York City, 1939, by Costa and Niemeyer. Already a distinct modernist language. Photo via

Costa’s plan for Brasilia: A modern utopia. Image via

Joao Batista Vilanova Artigas

Artigas was a prominent figure as a practicing architect and educator in Brazil. Born in Curitiba, he studied at the Polytechnic School of the Sao Paulo University, where he later taught. In the 1940s, he was among a group of professors that pushed to establish the university’s architecture faculty. The faculty’s building was designed by him with Carlos Cascaldi in 1960. Other notable projects of his include his own home in Sao Paulo, the Itanhaém School, the Guarulhos Building-blocks, and the Santapaula Marina.

Top: Edificio FAU-USP (Architecture Faculty at the University of Sao Paulo) by Artigas and Carlos Cascaldi. Photo via. Bottom: Artigas’s own residence in Sao Paulo. Photo via

Paulo Mendes Da Rocha

Though not nearly as famous as Niemeyer, Paulo Mendes Da Rocha (born 1928) is one of Brazil’s better-known architects, receiving the Mies Van Der Rohe Prize in 2000 and the Pritzker Prize in 2006. Mendes Da Rocha practiced “Brazilian Brutalism” — a method of concrete usage to produce casts inexpensively and quickly. His most striking projects include Cais das Artes in Vitoria and the Gerassi House, the Saint Peter Chapel, and the Pinacotheca, all in Sao Paulo.

The “Cais Des Artes” by Mendes Da Rocha and architecture office METRO. Photo via

A brutalist detail of one of Mendes Da Rocha’s early works, the Gymnasium in the Paulistano Athletics Club of Sao Paulo. Photo via

Chapel of Saint Peter, Campos de Jordão, São Paulo, Brazil, 1987 by Mendes Da Rocha. Photo via

The Brazilian Museum of Sculpture, São Paulo, Brazil, 1988. Photo via

José Augusto Belluci

A distant relative of Felix Candela in style, Jose Augusto Belluci is a Brazilian modernist with few still-existing works. His cathedral of Maringa, however, is one of the country’s mid-century icons.

The Cathedral of Maringa by Belluci (1959-1972). A strange, but loved, piece of mid-century modernism. Photo via

Roberto Burle Marx

Burle Marx, born 1909, was perhaps Brazil’s most notable landscape architect and artist in the 20th century. His vision was clear: He took Brazil’s tropical fauna and gave it grammar and discipline. Burle Marx collaborated with Niemeyer and Costa on Rio’s Ministry of Education and Health, designing the building’s gardens.

His additions to the project were so noticeable, so modern and striking, that his name became as known as those of the architects. Burle Marx was also a painting and a jewelry designer. An exhibition marking his 100th birthday was exhibited in Rio De Janeiro and Sao Paulo in 2009.

House: Niemeyer. Landscape: Burle Marx. A private residence in Petropolis, Brazil.

Another collaboration with Niemeyer, this time in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Brasilia.

The Copacabana boardwalk by Burle Marx, later copied in different places around the world. All photos via

Museum visitors viewing paintings by the multitalented Burle Marx. Photos via

Affonso Eduardo Reidy

Though his career was brief, Affonso Eduardo Reidy was a strong force within Brazil’s push for modernism. As a teacher in the National School of Fine Arts, he worked alongside Lucio Costa to develop a distinct architectural school of Rio De Janeiro. His boldest project was the Museum of Modern Art of Rio, a rib-shape building made of exposed concrete.

A sensual housing block (“Conjunto Residencial Prefeito Mendes de Moraes”) in Rio, designed by Reidy in 1947. Photo via

The Museum of Modern Art in Rio (facade and staircase detail). Photos via flickr and via

Rino Levi

Born in Sao Paulo, Rino Levi was a Brazilian of Italian descent. In 1926, he graduated from the Superior School of Architecture in Rome, where he studied after a brief period in the architecture department of the Brera Academy in Milan. Once returning to Brazil, Levi started working in different firms and later established his own practice. Influenced by Italian modernism, Levi’s designs are colorful and simple, less extravagant than his contemporaries.

One of Levi’s iconic designs is this residence, designed for Olivo Gomes. Photos via

Intricate facade compositions in Rino Levi’s skyscraper – Banco Sudamericano de Brasil – in Sao Paulo. Photo via

Lina Bo Bardi

Lina Bo Bardi, born in Italy, was one of Brazil’s most prolific modernist architects. Before moving to Brazil, she was active as an architect, writer, and illustrator, and even ran Domus magazine in Milan for a few years. After her arrival in Rio De Janeiro, 1946, Bo Bardi established her own practice.

She developed a large body of work and a distinct language, using exposed concrete in sculptural ways and contrasting it with bright, warm colors. Bo Bardi’s work was shown at the Venice Architecture Biennale and the British Council in London; she was also was the focus of an exhibition curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist (in two buildings she herself designed).

Lina Bo Bardi’s masterpiece, the SESC Pompéia Building, photographed by Pedro Kok. Photo via

The Museum of Art of Sao Paulo, designed as a lifted rectangular mass with a red constructive frame. Photo via

Bo Bardi’s Glass House (her own residence) in Mata Atlantica (near Sao Paulo). Photo via

Sergio Bernardes

Originally a pilot, Sergio Wladimir Bernardes graduated from the faculty of architecture at the National University of Brazil in 1948. Even as a student, Bernardes caught the attention of the public when a theoretical project of his was published in the French magazine L’Architecture D’Ajourdhui.

Later, as a young architect in Rio, he worked with Niemeyer and Costa and by 1951 had already built his first commission, a private home. Of his most eccentric designs are the utopian Hotel Tropical Tambau, as well as a stadium, an airport and some case-study-style houses.

Hotel Tropical Tambau by Sergio Bernardes. A utopian design of socialism and leisure. Photo via

Drawings and a facade of the Lota de Macedo Soares house, designed by Bernardes in Petropolis, Brazil. Drawing via, photo via

Icaro de Castro Mello

Icaro de Castro Mello was not only an architect; he was also an award-winning athlete. After studying architecture, he founded the Castro Mello firm (still practicing), devoted to the design of sports facilities. Specializing in this area, Castro Mello was able to execute numerous stadiums and other arenas in Brazil, including the national stadium in Brasilia.

Top: The Stadium of the University of Sao Paulo. Bottom: The National Stadium in Brasilia. Photo via and via

Osvaldo Bratke

Mainly active in the residential-project sphere, Bratke was in charge of building a viaduct in Sao Paulo followed by private residences around the city. His most central project was the house of Oscar Americano, completed in 1953.

Inside and out at the residence of Oscar Americano. Photos via

Deccio Tozzi

Though much younger than most of the honorary members above, Deccio Tozzi (born 1936) was already active in the 1960s and continued the modern movement into the 21st century. His 2002 project, the Veneza Farm Chapel, could have easily been built 50 years before.

Deccio Tozzi’s school “Jardim Ipê”, 1965. Photo via

The Veneza Farm Chapel by Tozzi. Photo via

Recommended books on Brazilian Modernism: Brazil’s Modern Architecture by Elisabetta Andreoli / Phaidon Press, When Brazil Was Modern by Lauro Cavalcanti / Princeton Architectural Press, and Oscar Niemeyer and Brazilian Free-Form Modernism by David Underwood.

Architects: Showcase your next project through Architizer and sign up for our inspirational newsletter.

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from Journal https://architizer.com/blog/inspiration/stories/oscar-niemeyer-brazil-modernism/ Originally published on ARCHITIZER RSS Feed: https://architizer.com/blog

[cobblestonestreet]

Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton There was a particular night when Cream allowed Jimi to join them for a jam at the Regent Street Polytechnic in central London. Meeting Clapton had been among the enticements Chandler had used to lure Hendrix to Britain: “Hendrix blew into a version of [Howlin’ Wolf’s] ‘Killing Floor’,” recalls Garland, “and plays it at breakneck tempo, just like that – it stopped you in your tracks.” Altham recalls Chandler going backstage after Clapton left in the middle of the song “which he had yet to master himself”; Clapton was furiously puffing on a cigarette and telling Chas: “You never told me he was that fucking good.”

[noamifionn-blog]

Mayfair Modern Balance Units

Mayfair Trendy is a newly launched luxury rental situated at Rifle Range Street in Bukit Timah of District 21. The development has a land facet of ninety two,347 sqft and contains of 171 apartments. Mayfair Modern is constructed up by 2 blocks of eight-storey residences. The building construction is slated to be accomplished by This autumn of 2024. Mayfair Fashionable is situated within Singapore prime central region with accessibility to every part of the island. Mayfair Modern design is impressed by Mayfair London's elegant Georgian townhouses idea, where comparable townhouse design idea are also discovered all over the world mostly in all upscale districts. Mayfair Trendy handle to convey this quintessential design combining with urban dwelling way of life to Singapore. Situated inside Bukit Timah in a non-public residential enclave of bungalows, landed houses and condominiums, Mayfair Modern present future residents with low density but city living in the central area of Singapore. It is only 5 minutes stroll away to King Albert Park MRT station of Downtown Line, where Orchard Street is only 6 MRT stops away. Drivers will even discover Mayfair Trendy simply accessible through Pan Island Expressway (PIE) and Ayer Rajah Expressway (AYE). Mayfair Modern Price Supermarkets, Procuring Malls, Retails, Food Centre, and Market are all within shut reach from Mayfair Trendy. It only takes 15 minutes to get to Central Enterprise District (CBD) space and Orchard Road purchasing belt. Reputable schools and establishment similar to Methodist Ladies’ School, Pei Haw Presbyterian Primary College, Nanyang Women High College, Ngee Ann Polytechnic, and Haw Chong Establishment are all within close proximity to Mayfair Modern. Future residents of Mayfair Trendy on the lookout for weekend city escape solely wants brief travel to Bukit Timah Nature Reserve and Singapore Botanic Gardens. The Bukit Timah Saddle Membership and Champion Public Gold Course are each inside shut proximity to Mayfair Modern.

[oberlincollegelibraries]

Sunday Edition: Books with Photos

How do you take a break? With finals around the corner and stress mounting, it is important to take care of yourself. This week’s Sunday Edition brings you books from Oberlin College Library’s collection featuring photos. In these gripping books, photographs are central to narratives of history and culture. From science fiction movies to a small town in Upstate New York, photos provide a respite from text heavy readings. Check out these books and others on the New Books Shelf in Azariah’s Cafe!

Typeset in the Future: Typography and Design in Science Fiction Movies by Dave Addey

“In Typeset in the Future, blogger and designer Dave Addey invites sci-fi movie fans on a journey through seven genre-defining classics, discovering how they create compelling visions of the future through typography and design. The book delves deep into 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Alien, Blade Runner, Total Recall, WALL·E, and Moon, studying the design tricks and inspirations that make each film transcend mere celluloid and become a believable reality. These studies are illustrated by film stills, concept art, type specimens, and ephemera, plus original interviews with Mike Okuda (Star Trek), Paul Verhoeven (Total Recall), and Ralph Eggleston and Craig Foster (Pixar). Typeset in the Future is an obsessively geeky study of how classic sci-fi movies draw us in to their imagined worlds—and how they have come to represent “THE FUTURE” in popular culture.” -Provided by Publisher

The World Atlas of Street Fashion by Caroline Cox   

    “Since the early 20th century, city sidewalks have become runways where idiosyncratic modes of dressing are presented, consumed, and exported. Their messages include resistance, solidarity, subversion, social transformation, or musical affiliation, and a group of like-minded individuals can create a powerful sartorial force. Organized by continent and with 600 color images, The World Atlas of Street Fashion examines street style in all its global diversity. The book shows how Punk’s generic language of anarchy is redeployed in London, Berlin, Tokyo, or Jakarta and takes on the unique flavor of each. It also reveals how street style can be overtly political: the Sapeurs of Kinshasa use elegance to reframe themselves as gentlemen, and the cholo gangs of East Los Angeles took strength from the Chicano movement of the 1960s. Street style can also be obsessive, as seen here through the K-Pop enthusiasts of Seoul, who inhabit the lives of their music idols by re-creating publicity stills through elaborate cosplay. The author discusses how such scenes can develop cachet by being underground, fostering a look’s distinctiveness and integrity. Through its extensive research, striking photography, and handsome design, World Atlas of Street Fashion is the essential resource on world street style.” -Provided by Publisher

Upstate Girls: Unraveling Collar City by Brenda Kenneally

“Welcome to Troy, New York. The land where mastodon roamed, the Mohicans lived, and the Dutch settled in the seventeenth century. Troy grew from a small trading post into a jewel of the Industrial Revolution. Horseshoes, rail ties, and detachable shirt collars were made there and the middle class boomed, making Troy the fourth wealthiest city per capita in the country. Then, the factories closed, the middle class disappeared, and the downtown fell into disrepair. Troy is the home of Uncle Sam, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the Rensselaer County Jail, the photographer Brenda Ann Kenneally, and the small group of young women, their children, lovers, and families who Kenneally has been photographing for over a decade.

Before Kenneally left Troy, her life looked a lot like the lives of these girls. With passion and profound empathy she has chronicled three generations—their love and heartbreak; their births and deaths; their struggles with poverty, with education, and with each other; and their joy.

Brenda Ann Kenneally is the Dorothea Lange of our time—her work a bridge between the people she photographs, history, and us. What began as a brief assignment for The New York Times Magazine became an eye-opening portrait of the rise and fall of the American working class, and a shockingly intimate visual history of Troy that arcs over five hundred years. Kenneally beautifully layers archival images with her own photographs and collages to depict the transformations of this quintessentially American city. The result is a profound, powerful, and intimate look at America, at poverty, at the shrinking middle class, and of people as they grow, survive, and love.” -Provided by Publisher

Unseen: Unpublished Black History from The New York Times Photo Archives by Darcy Eveleigh, Dana Canedy, Damien Cave, and Rachel L. Swarns

“It all started with Times photo editor Darcy Eveleigh discovering dozens of these photographs. She and three colleagues, Dana Canedy, Damien Cave and Rachel L. Swarns, began exploring the history behind them, and subsequently chronicling them in a series entitled Unpublished Black History, that ran in print and online editions of The Times in February 2016. It garnered 1.7 million views on The Times website and thousands of comments from readers. This book includes those photographs and many more, among them: a 27-year-old Jesse Jackson leading an anti-discrimination rally of in Chicago, Rosa Parks arriving at a Montgomery Courthouse in Alabama a candid behind-the-scenes shot of Aretha Franklin backstage at the Apollo Theater, Ralph Ellison on the streets of his Manhattan neighborhood, the firebombed home of Malcolm X, Myrlie Evans and her children at the funeral of her slain husband , Medgar, a wheelchair-bound Roy Campanella at the razing of Ebbets Field.

Were the photos--or the people in them--not deemed newsworthy enough? Did the images not arrive in time for publication? Were they pushed aside by words at an institution long known as the Gray Lady? Eveleigh, Canedy, Cave, and Swarms explore all these questions and more in this one-of-a-kind book.

UNSEEN dives deep into The Times photo archives--known as the Morgue--to showcase this extraordinary collection of photographs and the stories behind them.” -Provided by Publisher

[peckhampeculiar]

An inspired idea

EUGENE OFOLIE CODJOE REALISED A LONG-HELD AMBITION WHEN HE OPENED ECAD, HIS GALLERY AND STUDIO IN SE15. 

The Peckham resident explains how he discovered a passion for photography – and what’s coming up next at the space

WORDS: COLIN RICHARDSON; PHOTO: BENJAMIN RICE

It has taken Peckham resident Eugene Ofolie Codjoe years of hard work to realise his dream of owning his own photography gallery. Now, just over a year since the dreaming stopped and reality kicked in, Eugene reckons it’s all been worth it.

ECAD (Eugene Codjoe Architecture and Design) gallery and studio opened its doors in November 2017. It occupies a unit in the White Building, on the corner of Consort and Brayards roads, a short hop from Rye Lane.

Eugene had been looking for the ideal space for quite some time, so when the unit became free, he snapped it up. Two months later, following a thorough fit-out of the space, ECAD announced its arrival on Peckham’s cultural scene.

Eugene’s inspiration is The Photographers’ Gallery in central London, which became the first public gallery in the UK to be dedicated solely to photography when it opened. “It started me thinking, ‘I’d love to have a space like this’,” he says. But the real germ of the idea lies in the fertile (back)ground of his life in architecture.

“The ambition to own a gallery came from my passion for and love of architectural spaces,” he says. “When I walk into a gallery, I don’t look at the artwork straightaway; I look at the space and what the space fills me with. It’s a lovely feeling. Then, when I’ve felt it, I go and look at the images.”

It’s that sense of wonder that Eugene hopes his own gallery will inspire in others – and as a space, it’s just right. It’s small and intimate enough that you can get up close and personal with the work, but large enough to allow you to step back and take it all in. As well as the gallery, there’s a portrait studio behind the scenes.

To date, the gallery has hosted nine exhibitions, starting in 2017 with a show of Eugene’s work. The 10th exhibition, Intimate Waters, by local artist Mark C Long, is open now and runs until February 24. Noel Clegg’s “beautiful fine-art, black-and-white imagery of Venice” is on show in April.

Eugene was born in Queen’s Park in north London. “At school I had a flair for drawing,” he says. “It was always in me. When I got to the end of the sixth form, ready to leave school and go into further education, I remember going to see my careers officer and telling him what I was about, what I had studied, and he instantly said, ‘I see you in the building industry’. And that’s how it started.”

Eugene went on to study at Willesden College of Technology (now the College of North West London), where he learned to build as well as draw. “My technology tutor was a bricklayer by trade and he happened to be having a rear extension built on his house,” Eugene says. “He got me to do the drawings and then, because he knew I had DIY skills, he asked me and a friend if we’d like to learn how to build an extension. He taught us how to lay bricks and we ended up building the whole thing from start to finish.”

That experience stood him in good stead. From Willesden, he went to Kingston Polytechnic (now Kingston university) to study architectural technology for five years. Upon graduating, he could have gone on to complete his studies as an architect. Instead, he decided to get a job.

“That was in 1987 and I’ve never looked back,” he says. “I’ve got a solid 30 years behind me of construction technology and design technology, planning, working on site – I can speak the lingo of the contractors.

“My first job was at Baltic Quay at Surrey Quays. I did the drawings for it and was the site architect. That was when I started taking photographs. I started to record the evolution of the build.

“I’ve never studied photography; I’m self-taught. I found it very rewarding. As well as photographing my projects I started photographing my mornings; what I call my ‘urban serenity’. When I worked full-time as an architect, I was out of the door at five in the morning. At that time of the day, the city is yours. There’s no one else around.”

Eugene resigned from full-time employment in 2016, when the architectural practice he was working for at the time underwent a restructuring.

“There was definitely a glass ceiling,” he says of his time as an employee. “I chose to refuse that it was there for a long time. I worked for at least eight very established and well-revered architectural practices and I’ve been the only black person at every single one of them. I’ve held my ground, I’ve done a really good job at all of them, they know that. But I was the only one. So, if my experience is representative of black people in architecture, that’s a sad fact of life.

“I didn’t use that as a chip on my shoulder, though. I’d just got to the point where I was tired of working hard and not really getting the recognition that I thought I deserved.”

Eugene, a Peckham resident of 20 years, lives off Queen’s Road with his wife, a ceramicist who works for the nearby Kiln Rooms. He still works as an architect, fitting in freelance commissions around the demands of the gallery. He has to. It takes time to establish a gallery, especially one as out-of-the-way as ECAD. His friends think he’s mad.

“They think I should be somewhere with more footfall,” he says. “I disagree. On holiday, isn’t it nice when you go off the beaten track and find a little place you didn’t know was there? That’s what I want this place to become. I want people to say, ‘I was in Peckham the other day and I came across this great gallery on Consort Road.’”