MetaFilter posts tagged with modernism

a vague nostalgia for a benevolent, quasi-modernist English bureaucratic aesthetic

RogerB — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 08:06:28 -0800

Lash Out and Cover Up: Owen Hatherley in Radical Philosophy on "Keep Calm and Carry On," manufactured nostalgia for austerity, and modernist kitsch, in its authoritarian and ironically adapted forms. (Previous calm-keeping and on-carrying and Owen Hatherley.)

Helveticise your web experience

acb — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:19:04 -0800

Love Helvetica and modernist typographic design? Seen the film? Now, with the power of browser userscripts, you can have the 20th-century high-modernist experience in your favourite web applications. Scripts exist to Helveticise Gmail, Twitter and Google Reader, and work with a variety of modern browsers. Of course, you'll need to provide your own copy of Helvetica; Arial is not quite the same.

Eternal sunshine

WPW — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 12:43:37 -0800

RIP Julius Shulman, iconic photographer of modernist architecture.

The dead hand of neo-traditionalism

acb — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 04:39:49 -0800

Controversy has erupted in Britain after it emerged that Prince Charles used his personal influence with Qatari royalty to sack modernist architect Richard Rogers from a development in London. Charles has been an outspoken critic of modern architecture and advocate of neo-traditionalist styles, and even created a model village to showcase his ideas about "proper" architecture. Charles' preferred replacement for Rogers is Quinlan Terry, known for his neo-classicist leanings. There is more at stake than the question of Charles' architectural tastes. For one, Britain's constitutional monarchy is meant to refrain from exercising powers over the day-to-day business of government, and the possibility of the future king having used his influence to bend the planning process to his tastes raises a troubling precedent. Some are saying that such interventions on his part are specifically unconstitutional.

We might've done this before, but better.

Jeff_Larson — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 15:28:52 -0800

Mapping with Isotype: A collection of examples of Otto Neurath, Gerd Arntz, and Marie Reidemeister’s cartographic language, isotype. (Still influential today).

the death of illiquidity

philip-random — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 15:11:41 -0800

Massive Poetry Bailout in the works Let there be no mistake: the fundamentals of our poetry are sound. The problem is not poetry but poems. The crisis has been precipitated by the escalation of poetry debt—poems that circulate in the market at an economic loss due to their difficulty, incompetence, or irrelevance.

Morgues for an era that well knows what to do with them

Sonny Jim — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 03:34:36 -0800

Atlantic Yards is the largest project Frank Gehry, now seventy-eight, has ever undertaken. And if it proves to be his last large project, it will be a fitting capstone to a career utterly blind to the public function of architecture. For how better to assert your dedication to personal expression over context than to have your distinct visual style serve as the emblem for the death of two Brooklyn neighborhoods?

Charles Taylor discusses the anti-humanism of Modern architecture. [Via] [Previously]

book (design) stories

carsonb — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 01:31:30 -0800

book (design) stories: modernist book design in germany and switzerland 1925–1965 (and beyond)

Forgotten Architects

sveskemus — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 05:38:40 -0800

Forgotten Architects: In the 1920s and early 1930s, German Jewish architects created some of the greatest modern buildings in Germany, mainly in the capital Berlin. A law issued by the newly elected German National Socialist Government in 1933 banned all of them from practicing architecture in Germany. In the years after 1933, many of them managed to emigrate, while many others were deported or killed under Hitler’s regime. Pentagram Papers 37: Forgotten Architects is a survey of 43 of these architects and their groundbreaking work. The paper is based on the extensive research of architect Myra Warhaftig. Warhaftig spent twenty years investigating the fates of these architects and only recently published her findings in her book German Jewish Architects Before and After 1933: The Lexicon. David Sokol has written about Warhaftig and her project in an article published in the Jewish culture blog Nextbook.

The Modernist Journals Project

mediareport — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 09:50:15 -0800

The Modernist Journals Project collects literary arts journals from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including both issues of Wyndham Lewis' Vorticist manifesto Blast, the first ten years of Poetry magazine (with Amy Lowell, T.S. Eliot, G.K. Chesterton and foreign correspondent Ezra Pound), topical essays, the Virginia Woolf-inspired December 1910 Project, the amazing proto-dada zine Le Petit Journal des Réfusées and a searchable biographical database of famous and not so famous artists and writers.

Dan Dare and the Birth of Hi-Tech Britain

Artw — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 09:39:53 -0800

Dan Dare, pilot of the future, scourge of the Venusian Mekon menace, and modernist architectural inspiration?

Earle of the land of Imagination

Ambrosia Voyeur — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 14:35:15 -0800

4 Artists Paint 1 Tree, a segment from Disneyland included on the recent DVD release of Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty, features the artistic process of one of my favorite painters and cartoon modernists, Eyvind Earle. If you've seen Sleeping Beauty, Lady and the Tramp, Paul Bunyan or Peter Pan, you're familiar with the fantastical and brilliant landscapes he produces. His paintings show a particular fondness for Big Sur and Central Cali fornia.

Gillespie, Kidd & Coia: Architecture 1956-1987

Len — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 09:16:45 -0800

Gillespie, Kidd & Coia: Architecture 1956-1987 The firm of Gillespie Kidd & Coia were regarded as the most significant architects of 20th century Scotland. Through their building programme for the Catholic Church, the pair became known as “God’s architects” and their modernist style marked their buildings out in a country whose post-war rebuilding programme often prided drab functionality over optimistic, forward-looking design. The creative directors of the firm from 1956 until its winding up in 1987 were Andy MacMillan and Isi Metzstein, and it was these two architects who were responsible for the firm's major achievements. List of major works Themes and Variations: The post-war designs of Gillespie, Kidd & Coia Four films and one podcast from the fantastic Building Design Podcast: Lessons in Architecture: Beginnings (MacMillan and Metzstein discuss their early days; video, 66.8MB, direct download.) Lessons in Architecture: Sacred and Secular – St Paul's, Glenrothes, 1956 (Andy MacMillan on the design of their first church; video, 31.5MB, direct download.) Lessons In Architecture: Cell & Site – The Lawns halls of residence, Hull University, 1968 (Isi Metzstein on the philosophy of the design of the project; video, 22.5MB, direct download.) Slide-In (MacMillan and Metzstein discuss the relationship between their own work and their Scottish forebears; video, 27.7MB, direct download.) AF Gold Lectures: Charlie Sutherland and Charlie Hussey of Sutherland Hussey interview Isi Metzstein (Isi Metzstein lecture on Gillespie Kidd & Coia buildings, followed by interview; MP3, 68.5MB, direct download.) St Peter's Colledge, Cardross Completed for the Catholic Church, 1966; closed 1980; now derelict. History Images: original drawings; original photos; the main building today. Johnathan Glancey: The Building that God forgot Architecture Scotland: Why we should save St Peter's Space and Light: The structure of St Peter's Seminary, Cardross (Documentary film from 1960s; duration 19:17; embedded video.)

"There has never really been any modernity, never any real progress, never any assured liberation."

Blazecock Pileon — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 23:46:18 -0800

Meditations on: the poetic and profane; on silence; death; catastrophe; Cage — and yet more strangeness and beauty from David Ralph Lichtensteiger's travels within the world of 20th C. avant garde music and postmodernism.

Utopian Modernism In London

jack_mo — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 03:47:19 -0800

Utopian Modernism In London: A Series Of Drifts... is a tour of modernist landmarks, tying architectural practice to politics and movements in art. Author Owen Hatherley also keeps a weblog chiefly concerned with art and utopianism in Weimar Germany and the early Soviet Union. Photographer Ludwig Abache's site contains more architectural imagery, from London and beyond. (via newthings)

Maximize Your View

afx114 — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 09:29:59 -0800

Room With A View. Has the view out of your living room window become boring and stale? No problem, build yourself a million dollar Rotating Home. A former office manager, self prclaimed "hobbyist" Al Johnstone has built quite the technological feat [PDF] despite having no engineering background, obtaining around 30 patents in the process.

Electric Bouguereau

Smedleyman — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 08:45:22 -0800

Bouguereau who? In 1900, his contemporaries Degas and Monet reportedly named him as most likely to be remembered as the greatest 19th century French painter by the year 2000. After about 1920 though, Bouguereau and the academic tradition fell into disrepute. His name was not mentioned in encyclopedias for decades. (You probably haven't heard of him unless you read this here.) Conspiracy? Or systematic suppression by the 20th century art establishment? (warning - some art NSFW - the 'him' and 'his' links)

Wrecking Ball

R. Mutt — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 07:52:34 -0800

Who Lost Gordon Bunshaft's Travertine House? 1) Widow of Lever House architect Gordon Bunshaft wills art filled modernist house (+ 2.4 East Hampton property) to The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). MOMA takes art, sells modernist house to Martha Stewart. MS guts house, lets rot, transfers ownership to daughter who sells it. New owner tears down modernist house, left with 2.4 acres of waterfront property.

Modernist design and architecture

Tlogmer — Mon, 16 May 2005 03:43:01 -0800

Design Observer and the New York Times (reg. req'd) on modernism.

John Lautner's Chemosphere: part Jetsons, part Bond and vintage L.A. Modern.

matteo — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 09:21:46 -0800

The most modern home built in the world. "From the outside it looks like a spaceship you cannot enter. But if you go inside, it feels very cozy… very Zen and calming. Maybe because you are floating above the city, in the sky". John Lautner's Chemosphere residence is the product of a fortuitous union of architect, client, time and place. Leonard Malin was a young aerospace engineer in late-1950s L.A. whose father-in-law had just given him a plot north of Mulholland Drive, near Laurel Canyon. The only catch: at roughly 45 degrees, the slope was all but unbuildable. Lautner sketched a bold vertical line, a cross, and a curve above it. "Draw it up," he told his assistant. Now publisher Benedikt Taschen owns Chemosphere (NSFW), and after 20 years of neglect the house has been beautifully restored (.pdf) by Frank Escher.

Castor and Pollux walking naked, side by side, past Kafka

languagehat — Wed, 05 Jan 2005 14:25:51 -0800

Guy Davenport is dead. The irrealist writer, translator of Archilochus, friend of modernists, and influential teacher has joined Hugh Kenner in whatever lies beyond this mortal coil. More links at today's wood s lot, where I learned the sad news.

It's just not Wright.

ScottUltra — Tue, 16 Nov 2004 11:37:44 -0800

Only about 350 of the original 400 structures designed and built by Frank Lloyd Wright are still standing. As of last week, that number has decreased by one. The demolition of the 1916 W.S. Carr house in Grand Beach, Michigan was the first Wright building in over 30 years to be demolished. Mark another loss to the heritage of U.S. Modernism.

Stories about the lives we've made

tcp — Mon, 12 Jul 2004 02:24:42 -0800

Making the Modern World brings you powerful stories about science and invention from the eighteenth century to today. It explains the development and the global spread of modern industrial society and its effects on all our lives. The site expands upon the permanent landmark gallery at the Science Museum, using the Web and dynamic multimedia techniques to go far beyond what a static exhibition can do. Terrific wrapping, excellent content.

Ezra Pound Finally Makes The Library of America

MiguelCardoso — Fri, 26 Mar 2004 06:17:51 -0800

Some Of Our Best Poets Are Fascists: An interesting article by Guy Davenport. My own theory is that an inordinate percentage of great (and minor) Modernist writers were, politically speaking, bonkers. Ezra Pound, Fernando Pessoa and T.S.Eliot were all distastefully authoritarian, anti-semitic and, in general, rancorous old farts. Why is this, if anyone still cares? [Via Arts and Letters Daily.]

Ikea does not suffice.

scody — Tue, 19 Aug 2003 13:47:20 -0800

Extra ordinary, every day. Online exhibition drawn from the Bauhaus Collection at Harvard's splendid Busch-Reisinger Museum (which also includes fine holdings of Austrian Secessionism, 1920s abstraction, and German Expressionists). Fellow MeFi modernism buffs, you may start drooling...now.