#architecturs

[sciatu]

TEATRO DI TAORMINA

Non è un teatro è il nido della parola quella che è legge e gioia avventura e conoscenza. È la forma del suono che nasce nel suo centro e diventa universo È l’immaginazione resa realtà la concretezza dei sogni il ricordo che rivive l’anima degli uomini che qui prende forma e diventa voce, movimento lento gesto, danza sacra È lo specchio della follia dell’amore e passione ne rivela la grandezza i limiti, ne raccoglie i sogni, celebra carnalmente silenzi e dolori esplode nella loro gioia giudica i loro errori. Non è solo un teatro È un altare, una croce, una piazza, una discarica è lo sguardo severo del giudice quello dolce degli amanti il movimento che crea il silenzio della distruzione la rinascita nella parola �� poesia, luce nelle tenebre la preghiera di chi non crede è, nell’eterno silenzio la miracolosa voce della vita.

It is not a theater, it is the nest of the word, that which is law and joy, adventure and knowledge. It is the form of sound, which is born in its center, and becomes the universe. It is imagination made reality, the concreteness of dreams, the memory that comes to life, the soul of men, which here takes shape and becomes voice, movement. slow gesture, sacred dance. It is the mirror of madness, of love and passion, it reveals their greatness and limits, collects their dreams, carnally celebrates silences and pains, explodes in their joy, judges their mistakes. It is not just a theatre, it is an altar, a cross, a square, a landfill, it is the severe gaze of the judge, the sweet gaze of the lovers, the movement that creates, the silence of destruction, the rebirth in the word, it is poetry, light in the darkness, the prayer of those who do not believe, is, in the eternal silence, the miraculous voice of life.

[vanalex]

[landsccape]

[ur-daily-inspiration]

These Tiled Steps In San Francisco Glow At Night From The Moonlight

[vangoghcore]

by kath__alina

[fuckyeahchinesegarden]

pomegranate tree in 怡园yiyuan, suzhou, jiangsu province of china by Rtkiycs

[marzipanandminutiae]

society's infantilization of decorated objects is honestly one of the greatest recent crimes against humans' innate desire for beauty

[uroko]

Rainy Night in Tokyo // valvey_film

[mcmansionhell]

we've found it folks: mcmansion heaven

Hello everyone. It is my pleasure to bring you the greatest house I have ever seen. The house of a true visionary. A real ad-hocist. A genuine pioneer of fenestration. This house is in Alabama. It was built in 1980 and costs around $5 million. It is worth every penny. Perhaps more.

Now, I know what you're thinking: "Come on, Kate, that's a little kooky, but certainly it's not McMansion Heaven. This is very much a house in the earthly realm. Purgatory. McMansion Purgatory." Well, let me now play Beatrice to your Dante, young Pilgrim. Welcome. Welcome, welcome, welcome.

It is rare to find a house that has everything. A house that wills itself into Postmodernism yet remains unable to let go of the kookiest moments of the prior zeitgeist, the Bruce Goffs and Earthships, the commune houses built from car windshields, the seventies moments of psychedelic hippie fracture. It is everything. It has everything. It is theme park, it is High Tech. It is Renaissance (in the San Antonio Riverwalk sense of the word.) It is medieval. It is maybe the greatest pastiche to sucker itself to the side of a mountain, perilously overlooking a large body of water. Look at it. Just look.

The inside is white. This makes it dreamlike, almost benevolent. It is bright because this is McMansion Heaven and Gray is for McMansion Hell. There is an overbearing sheen of 80s optimism. In this house, the credit default swap has not yet been invented, but could be.

It takes a lot for me to drop the cocaine word because I think it's a cheap joke. But there's something about this example that makes it plausible, not in a derogatory way, but in a liberatory one, a sensuous one. Someone created this house to have a particular experience, a particular feeling. It possesses an element of true fantasy, the thematic. Its rooms are not meant to be one cohesive composition, but rather a series of scenes, of vastly different spatial moments, compressed, expanded, bright, close.

And then there's this kitchen for some reason. Or so you think. Everything the interior design tries to hide, namely how unceasingly peculiar the house is, it is not entirely able to because the choices made here remain decadent, indulgent, albeit in a more familiar way.

Rare is it to discover an interior wherein one truly must wear sunglasses. The environment created in service to transparency has to somewhat prevent the elements from penetrating too deep while retaining their desirable qualities. I don't think an architect designed this house. An architect would have had access to specifically engineered products for this purpose. Whoever built this house had certain access to architectural catalogues but not those used in the highest end or most structurally complex projects. The customization here lies in the assemblage of materials and in doing so stretches them to the height of their imaginative capacity. To borrow from Charles Jencks, ad-hoc is a perfect description. It is an architecture of availability and of adventure.

A small interlude. We are outside. There is no rear exterior view of this house because it would be impossible to get one from the scrawny lawn that lies at its depths. This space is intended to serve the same purpose, which is to look upon the house itself as much as gaze from the house to the world beyond.

Living in a city, I often think about exhibitionism. Living in a city is inherently exhibitionist. A house is a permeable visible surface; it is entirely possible that someone will catch a glimpse of me they're not supposed to when I rush to the living room in only a t-shirt to turn out the light before bed. But this is a space that is only exhibitionist in the sense that it is an architecture of exposure, and yet this exposure would not be possible without the protection of the site, of the distance from every other pair of eyes. In this respect, a double freedom is secured. The window intimates the potential of seeing. But no one sees.

At the heart of this house lies a strange mix of concepts. Postmodern classicist columns of the Disney World set. The unpolished edge of the vernacular. There is also an organicist bent to the whole thing, something more Goff than Gaudí, and here we see some of the house's most organic forms, the monolith- or shell-like vanity mixed with the luminous artifice of mirrors and white. A backlit cave, primitive and performative at the same time, which is, in essence, the dialectic of the luxury bathroom.

And yet our McMansion Heaven is still a McMansion. It is still an accumulation of deliberate signifiers of wealth, very much a construction with the secondary purpose of invoking envy, a palatial residence designed without much cohesion. The presence of golf, of wood, of masculine and patriarchal symbolism with an undercurrent of luxury drives that point home. The McMansion can aspire to an art form, but there are still many levels to ascend before one gets to where God's sitting.

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[sciatu]

IL CREPUSCOLO A SIRACUSA

Il tramonto ad Ortigia, vive di leggeri contrasti, come nel colorarsi di rosa delle antiche case e dei palazzi rivestiti così di una parvenza di quiete e pace contro la rombante fretta dei turisti che cercano un parcheggio, o di ciarliere comitive colorate che seguono sul cellulare, strade serpeggianti verso i punti più belli dell’isola o verso i tanti ristoranti che riempiono vicoli e cortili. È un contrasto che vive del lento scurirsi del cielo e dell’accendersi dei piccoli vicoli, del vociare dei ragazzi e delle silenziose forme statuarie dei grandi alberi, un contrasto che trovo nei balconi che raccolgono l’ultima luce contro il vociare sereno ed allegro delle famiglie sedute nei vicoli, nel veloce cambiare della luce del sole riflesso sulle alte finestre contro il pallore ingrigito dei vicoli bui, dell’andare e venire dei camerieri con le mani ingombre di profumate pietanze e nell’immobile nell’attesa del desiderato pranzo, nel passeggio lento ed intimo delle copie che raccolgono passionale amore nell’eleganza compita dei palazzi contro l’indifferente sonno dei bambini distesi in traballanti passeggini, nella musica tradizionale siciliana allegra e travolgente che scioglie la freddezza dei turisti nordici. Contrasto che si perde nelle strade principali affollate e luminose e nel silenzio dei vicoli dove i padroni sono gatti curiosi, contrasto che rivive nel silenzio degli imponenti cortili e nella baraonda dei ragazzi che giocano a calcio con una lattina di coca. Un contrasto che si scioglie nelle discussioni oziose delle coppie mentre si aspettano i piatti da consumare, nel sospiro leggero della brezza che scivola tra i vicoli silenziosi, nell’odore del mare che riempie le strade deserte e la barocca bellezza delle chiese. Anche noi ci fermiamo in un buon ristorante così che il sapore della notte ormai prossima si impreziosisca con il sapore dei calamari farciti da pinoli e uva passa e la fragranza fiorita di un vino bianco siciliano.

The sunset in Ortigia thrives on light contrasts, such as in the pink coloring of the ancient houses and buildings thus clad in a semblance of quiet and peace against the roaring rush of tourists looking for a parking space, or of chatty colored groups following on their cell phones winding roads towards the most beautiful points of the island or towards the many restaurants that fill alleys and courtyards. It is a contrast that thrives on the slow darkening of the sky and the lighting up of the small alleys, the shouting of the boys and the silent statuesque forms of the large trees, a contrast that I find in the balconies which collect the last light against the serene and cheerful shouting of the families seated in the alleys, in the rapid change of sunlight reflected on the high windows against the graying pallor of the dark alleys, in the comings and goings of the waiters with their hands full of perfumed dishes and in the motionless waiting for the desired lunch, in the slow and intimate walk of the copies that collect passionate love in the refined elegance of the palaces against the indifferent sleep of children lying in rickety strollers, in the cheerful and overwhelming traditional Sicilian music that melts the coldness of Nordic tourists. A contrast that is lost in the crowded and bright main streets and in the silence of the alleys where the owners are curious cats, a contrast that relives in the silence of the imposing courtyards and in the hubbub of the boys playing soccer with a can of coke. A contrast that dissolves in the idle discussions of the couples while they wait for the dishes to be eaten, in the light sigh of the breeze that slips through the silent alleys, in the smell of the sea that fills the deserted streets and the baroque beauty of the churches. We too stop in a good restaurant so that the flavor of the coming night is embellished with the flavor of squid stuffed with pine nuts and raisins and the flowery fragrance of a Sicilian white wine.

[zegalba]

Great hand forged snake window guards on a home in California

[389]

Fossil sink

[rabbitrah]

"Le repos du fakir" (2003), Stéphane Argillet and Gilles Paté

[maviyenot]