Following the previous post on the isometric environments created by Franka Hörnschemeyer, here we propose a relatively old installation by Chilean … [Read more...]
Mary Miss’s 1977–1978 Perimeters/Pavilions/Decoys
Mary Miss (1944), pioneer of land art, focuses her outdoor interventions on the experience of the individual moving in a particular landscape; … [Read more...]
Factories and Plastics by Marion Tivital
The factories painted by Marion Tivital are objects reduced to minimal geometrical forms. The buildings appears in a foggy environment which blurs … [Read more...]
Nathalie Du Pasquier’s Recent Paintings and Constructions
Graphic and industrial designer, illustrator and painter, Nathalie Du Pasquier (Bordeaux, 1957) was one of the original co-founders of … [Read more...]
Giorgio Scarpa’s Models of Rotational Geometry (1978)
Genesis of form. Motion is at the root of all growth — Paul Klee Giorgio Scarpa (1938-2012) was an Italian designer, bionics researcher, artist … [Read more...]
The Building is the City: Le Corbusier’s Unbuilt Hospital in Venice
The "New Venice hospital" is an unbuilt yet renowned project by Le Corbusier. The first phase of the design took place between 1964 and 1965, the year … [Read more...]
Flat Manhattan (1883)
A moment in time when Manhattan was flat and had a strange likeness to Burri's 1984-89 "Cretto di Gibellina" (photograph below). The 1883 engraving … [Read more...]
Meteorographica, or Methods of Mapping the Weather, by Francis Galton (1863)
English Victorian polymath, sir Francis Galton was a psychologist, anthropologist, eugenicist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, … [Read more...]
“Irrational and Useless” Monument: The Abu Dhabi Mastaba by Christo and Jeanne-Claude
Since 1977 Christo and Jeanne-Claude have been working on their largest mastaba of oil barrels, a project conceived for the city of Abu Dhabi in the … [Read more...]
The Plan is a Society of Rooms*: Goldenberg House by Louis Kahn (1959)
The Goldenberg House is a 1959 unbuilt project by Louis Kahn for an area in Montgomery County near Philadelphia. This work couples previous Kahn's … [Read more...]
Qasr al-Hayr al-Sharqi, the “Eastern Castle” in the Syrian Desert
Qasr al-Hayr al-Sharqi or "the Eastern Castle", (the Arabic term Qasr means a fortified structure for monitoring a region), is situated 97km … [Read more...]
Jean-Jacques Lequeu: a Visionary at the Age of Reason
Jean-Jacques Lequeu (Architect, 1757-1825) worked in France at the same time of Etienne-Louis Boullée (1728-1799) and Claude-Nicolas Ledoux … [Read more...]
A Settlement for Equals: The Town of Biskupin in Poland
In 1933, a team from Poznan University led by Polish archaeologist professor Józef Kostrzewski, started a series of excavations close to Lake Biskupin … [Read more...]
First City in Antarctica, a 1980-83 Study by Amancio Williams
In early 1980 Amancio Williams, the Argentinian architect whose 1943 Bridge House we already featured here at Socks, was consulted by the Argentine … [Read more...]
Ascii-Art Mapping: SyMAP (or Early Computer Generated Cartography)
William Caraher, assistant professor at the University of North Dakota and writer of the site "The Archaeology of the Mediterranean World" … [Read more...]
Notes for a Short History of the Anti-Monument /1 : Claes Oldenburg Proposed Colossal Monuments
Claes Oldenburg's unbuilt "Monuments" are imaginary anti-memorials designed by the artist at the end of the 1960s. Their paradoxical anti-monumental … [Read more...]
From Lines to Volumes: Architectural Drawings by Kristin Arestava
These enigmatic pencil drawings by Kristin Arestava are an interesting experiment in architectural visualization. The abstract volumes are represented … [Read more...]
“I do not draw plans, facades or sections”: Adolf Loos and the Villa Müller
Villa Müller in Prague was designed by architect Adolf Loos, assisted by architect Karel Lhota, in 1930 for František Müller and his wife, Milada … [Read more...]
The Three Mawangdui Maps: Early Chinese Cartography
Between 1972 to 1974 three tombs in the archaeological site of Mawangdui, China, were excavated. In one of them, the archaeologists … [Read more...]
About the Spatial Experience: Hans Dieter Schaal’s Paths, Passages and Spaces (1970’s)
Hans Dieter Schaal (1943) is a German architect, stage designer, landscape designer, writer and artist. Throughout his whole career he constantly … [Read more...]
Learning from the Casbah: Horizontal Housing Units in Rome by Adalberto Libera
Adalberto Libera's "Unità orizzontale" (Horizontal Unit) in the Tuscolano neighborhood in Rome is an experimental housing complex built in the city … [Read more...]
“Silent Architecture” by Simon Ungers
Simon Ungers (1957-2006), son of O.M. Ungers, bound architecture and art throughout his career. His series "Silent architecture" … [Read more...]
Rooms in the Forest: Jan Szpakowicz’s House (1971)
The house Jan Szpakowicz designed and built for himself in 1971 deals with the Polish architect's will to inhabit the woods, merging the … [Read more...]
A City Made of Rooms : The “Neue Stadt” of Köln (1961-1964) by O.M. Ungers
In 1957 the urban planning department of Köln decided to develop a new satellite-town of 100,000 inhabitants (Neue-Stadt) in the northern … [Read more...]
