Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill Collection provides visitors with the opportunity to view a virtual reconstruction of Walpole's extensive collections--everything from armor to wall hangings--housed in his custom-built Gothic villa,
Strawberry Hill. (For video tours and discussions of its ornamentation, ongoing restoration &c., check out the
Strawberry Hill Youtube Channel.) Objects can be viewed according to maker, type, or room; there's also a virtual tour, based on contemporary paintings and sketches. For more about Walpole, plus links to e-texts of his fiction (most famously, the pioneering Gothic novel
The Castle of Otranto), visit
The Literary Gothic.
posted by thomas j wise
on Jan 21, 2012 -
5 comments
National Register Photostream — Authorized under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the
U.S. National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect our historic and archeological resources. Properties listed in the Register include districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects that are significant in American history, architecture, archeology, engineering, and culture.
posted by netbros
on Dec 23, 2011 -
6 comments
A Pattern Language explores the living structure in good and bad buildings, human artifacts, and natural systems, discussing the presence of the same living order in all systems. [Christopher] Alexander proposes that the living order depends on features which make a close connection with the human self. The quality of works of art, artifacts, and buildings is defined not merely in terms of living structure, but also in their capacity to affect human growth and human well-being.
posted by Trurl
on Dec 15, 2011 -
38 comments
This weekend marks the time of
the Hajj, a core pillar of Islam in which
great tides of humanity venture to the ancient city of Mecca to honor God.
Predating Mohammed's birth by centuries, the pilgrimage comprises
several days of rites, from congregation like snow on
Mount Arafat and the ritual
stoning of Shaitan to the circling of the sacred
Kaaba (the
shrouded cubical monolith Muslims
pray toward daily) and kissing the
Black Stone (colored by the absorption of myriad sins, and believed by some to be a
fallen meteorite).
While the city has
modernized to handle this largest of annual gatherings -- building highway-scale ramps,
gaudy skyscrapers for the ultra-rich, and
tent cities the size of Seattle -- it remains mysterious, as unbelievers are
forbidden from entering its borders.
Richard Francis Burton became famous for
touring the city in disguise to write
a rare travelogue, but contemporary viewers have a more immediate guide:
Vice Magazine journalist Suroosh Alvi, who smuggled a minicam into the city to record
The Mecca Diaries [alt], a 14-minute documentary of his own Hajj journey.
Browse the manual to see what goes into a Hajj trip, or
watch the YouTube livestream to see the Grand Mosque crowds in real time.
posted by Rhaomi
on Nov 4, 2011 -
31 comments
In northeast India, a giant cliff leads up into a hidden world: Lothlórien Meghalaya. Nearly two kilometers high and buffeted by monsoon storm clouds, this is possibly the wettest place on earth. Once, twenty-five meters of rain fell here in a year, the world record. Living here poses an unusual problem, and it's not just keeping dry. Nearly all the rain falls during the summer monsoon. Rivers switch from gentle streams to raging torrents. They become wild and unpredictable, and almost impossible to cross. Harley and his niece, Juliana, are busy cultivating a cunning solution. [more inside]
posted by troll
on Nov 4, 2011 -
30 comments
We and the Color is a blog about creative inspiration in art, graphic design, illustration, photography, architecture, fashion, product, interior, video and motion design. Also
on Flickr.
posted by netbros
on Oct 28, 2011 -
1 comment
Most people know that Venice has long been threatened by chronic flooding, but in recent years the Queen of the Adriatic has faced a rising tide of a different sort:
advertising.
From the
Doge's Palace to
St. Mark's Square to the bittersweet
Bridge of Sighs -- named for the grief its splendid views once inspired in crossing death row prisoners -- immense billboards
lit late into the night now mar the city's most treasured places.
Allegedly built to cover the cost of restoration work in the face of government cutbacks, the ads have brought in around $600,000 per year since 2008 -- a fraction of the shortfall -- and show no sign of going away any time soon. Their presence prompted a consortium of the world's leading cultural experts led by the
Venice in Peril Fund to air
an open letter demanding the city government put a stop to the placards that "hit you in the eye and ruin your experience of one of the most beautiful creations of humankind." Mayor Giorgio Orsoni, for one, was not moved, saying last year "If people want to see the building
they should go home and look at a picture of it in a book."
posted by Rhaomi
on Oct 4, 2011 -
59 comments
St. Peter's was a seminary built near Cardross, on the outskirts of Glasgow. It is remarkable for its modernist design, the
architects having drawn significant inspiration from Le Corbusier's brutalist
monastery at La Tourette, and has been
A-listed by Historic Scotland. During its construction, the Second Vatican Council recommended that priests should be trained and educated in the communities they were to serve; the quasi-monastic setting of St. Peter's thus meant it was obsolescent before its completion. Although it was briefly adapted to serve as a rehabilitation centre for drug abusers, it was abandoned in the 80s and, by 2008, found itself on the World Monument Foundation's
list of most endangered sites (PDF, see p.58). There has been recent talk of the Scottish Government funding a £10m
restoration project, but it is not entirely clear if the restoration is intended to turn the building into an arts centre, a museum or an 'intentional modernist ruin'.
[more inside]
posted by Dim Siawns
on Sep 19, 2011 -
19 comments
Clarke Quay Singapore,
The Cement Factory,
Takasugi-an,
Nobis House,
Kew House,
Rolex Learning Centre,
Central Park,
Walt Disney Concert Hall,
Containers of Hope,
Museum of Liverpool,
Busan Opera House,
The Meera House,
Nakahouse
OpenBuildings is an collaboration community dedicated to architecture where you can
browse buildings by
collections,
people/firms,
city guides or their
vicinity to you.
posted by Foci for Analysis
on Sep 12, 2011 -
2 comments
The Animal Architecture Awards have just announced the winners of their 2011 contest. Taking first place is Simone Ferracina’s Theriomorphous Cyborg, a (speculative) augmented reality game inspired by Jacob von Uexküll’s notion of the animal umwelt. Not truly architectural, Theriomorphous Cyborg instead shifts how a human participant relates to space and the landscape. Each level in the free-form game takes the player through different modes that relate to the sensory capacities of various animals. (
via)
[more inside]
posted by infini
on Sep 1, 2011 -
3 comments
In 1972, Washington, DC
opened the doors to the HD Woodson Senior High School. It was the city's first new school in twelve years, and the first to be constructed after riots
devastated the city in 1968. Like its sister school across town, it had been
built to withstand another riot, and protect its students within its fortress-like walls. For a time, it stood as the pride and joy of the city's school system, featuring a diverse range of academic and vocational programs in a state of the art 8-story building complete with escalators, science labs, and a six-lane pool; a symbol of hope for a downtrodden community.
By 2008, however, things had gone horribly, horribly wrong. The building was literally crumbling, many of its original facilities had closed due to neglect, only 13% of sophomores were proficient in reading or mathematics, and violence was a daily concern. Facing no other choice, the city closed the school in 2008, and
demolished the brutalist structure shortly thereafter.
After a three year
series of delays, next week,
students will begin classes in the
newly reconstructed HD Woodson High School; a 3-story state of the art building complete with elevators, science labs, and an eight-lane pool; a symbol of hope for a downtrodden community -- leading many to question: Will it work this time? The correlation between architecture and academic performance is not well-studied, and
previous efforts have been inconclusive at best.
posted by schmod
on Aug 18, 2011 -
49 comments
"Hiroshi Teshigahara's
Antonio Gaudi is a spare, astonishing, and haunting documentary on the designs of famed turn of the century Spanish architect, Antonio Gaudi (1852-1926). A profound influence on the Spanish art nouveau movement, Gaudi's sensual adaptation of Gothic, Middle Eastern, and traditional architecture is a truly a unique artistic vision.
Teshigahara immerses the viewer into Gaudi's unorthodox vision using lingering takes and mesmerizing panning sequences, accompanied by an equally eclectic soundtrack that vacillates from lyrical symphony to disquieting near silence. The
film, largely structured without verbal narrative, unfolds as a figurative mosaic of Gaudi's early influences and nascent vision in the mid 1800's - from an overview of the Catalonian culture, to the contemporary works of other prominent architects, to the medieval art and architecture pervasive in the region." (Janus/Criterion, 1:12, color)
posted by puny human
on Aug 3, 2011 -
15 comments
Philaphilia, a blog about Philadelphia buildings past and present, in which the little known architectural terms "badassivity," "concrete testicles" and "shitfucktastic garbitechture" are presented for your edification.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders
on Aug 1, 2011 -
36 comments
Dog and Deco. My name is Pickles McConchie. I’m a 15 year old Art Deco and camera loving Terrier from Scotland. I like to travel the country with my bitch and pose in front of art deco factories and industrial buildings from the 1920s, 30s and 40s, as well as other twentieth century architectural gems.
posted by The Discredited Ape
on Jul 12, 2011 -
12 comments
