It’s not always easy to see the value of the things around you.
As a kid in this city in the 1960s, I was surrounded by modern architecture.
I grew up in Valleyview, surrounded by avant-garde homes, one-of-a-kind works of modernism designed by some of the city’s leading architects.
I went to Ross Sheppard High School, star-gazed at the planetarium, took swimming lessons at Coronation Pool, shopped at the Bay downtown, saw movies at the Paramount and the Garneau, went to bar mitzvahs at the Beth Shalom synagogue.
I didn’t know it at the time, but my Edmonton was actually a laboratory for modern design. Our postwar oil boom made this city a perfect laboratory for architectural experimentation. We were building a new city, with money and brashness to burn. Architects gathered here, some (more…)
GREAT BUILDINGS should be preserved and restored, as Yale University plans to do with its Art and Architecture center, not demolished and replaced, as Mayor Menino envisions for Boston City Hall. The mayor needs to return to his roots as a preservationist to save and improve this icon of the New Boston in the 1960s.
In New Haven last week, Robert Stern, dean of the School of Architecture, was busy preparing to move the school out of the building for a year so that it could be fitted with new ceilings, lighting, and air conditioning. “It’s extremely important,” he said of the building, which was designed by Paul Rudolph and finished in 1963. “It represented a break from the increasingly wayward direction of modern architecture.” (more…)
University students and faculty are collaborating to transform an old house into an environmentally- and cost-friendly home through the ecoMOD project
On Fourth Street SW sits a dilapidated house, windows covered with wooden blocks, doors and window screens leaning against the wall. Originally built in the 1860s, this historic yet rundown building is now being transformed into an energy-efficient, wheelchair-accessible, affordable residence through the efforts of University students and professors.
These students and faculty are participating in what is called the ecoMOD project, “a research and design/build/evaluate project … that aims to create a series of ecological, modular and affordable house prototypes,” according to the project’s Web site. This multi-year project is a joint effort by the Architecture School and the Engineering School, but also involves students studying subjects ranging from economics to nursing. (more…)
Exhibition on the work of distinguished architect Nikos Valsamakis at the Benaki Museum on Pireos
Modern Athens may not be a place with beautiful architecture but it is the city of an architectural landmark in the history of Western civilization, the Parthenon. At times, this alone can make living here seem like a rare privilege. The Parthenon along with the celebrated Attic sky and the radiant light are at the heart of the Greek soul. The Parthenon encapsulates the importance of harmonious proportions (as in “the golden mean”) over excess and ostentation, while Greece’s radiant light expresses extroversion, which, in terms of daily living, means that the out-of-doors is a vital part of Greek life. (more…)
Deteriorating or not, the 98-year-old Shire building in Old Town still has some friends.
Despite the building owner’s desire to level it, the Temecula Valley Historical Society unanimously recommended Friday that the city do everything in its power to preserve the building.
“I believe we should preserve the building as it is, completely,” said Historical Society member Eve Craig. “This is probably the most historically significant site in Old Town. And it seems that Old Town is becoming ‘New Town.’”
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