Adalberto Libera's "Unità orizzontale" (Horizontal Unit) in the Tuscolano neighborhood in Rome is an experimental housing complex built in the city … [Read more...]
“The Architecture of Madness”: León Ferrari’s Héliographias
León Ferrari (1920-2013) was an Argentinian conceptual artist who worked with a series of extremely different medias through the years. … [Read more...]
Yannis Xenakis’ Polytopes: Cosmogonies in Sound and Architecture
Fusing the ancient greek terms "poly" (“many”) and "topos" (“place”), Greek-French composer Iannis Xenakis coined a neologism for … [Read more...]
Evolutionary Housescape: the Metabolist Sky House by Kiyonori Kikutake (1958)
The house the Japanese architect Kiyonori Kikutake (1928-2011) designed and built for himself in 1958, still stands out as a monument to his … [Read more...]
House Within a House /1: Todoroki Residence by Hiromi Fujii, Ichikawa (1976)
Hiromi Fujii (1937) is a Japanese architect who started his career in 1964 collaborating with Italian architect Angelo Mangiarotti … [Read more...]
An Ancient Example of Cluster Planning: Pit Houses and Kivas in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico
The ruins of the pueblos in Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, (villages founded by ancient Native American communities, Ancient Pueblo people, … [Read more...]
Holiday Machine in Tropea, Italy (1967) by Cristiano Toraldo di Francia (Superstudio)
In the final diploma project of Cristiano Toraldo di Francia (later to become a member of the Italian architectural collective Superstudio), … [Read more...]
Seventy ‘Tana’ or ‘Tokowaki’ Variations, in Tetsuro Yoshida’s ‘The Japanese House’ (1935)
Japanese architect Tetsuro Yoshida (1894–1956) was a key figure of architectural interchange between East and West during the early 1930's. … [Read more...]
Hans Poelzig’s Sulphuric Acid Factory in Luboń, Poland (1911-1912)
In a parallel with Ross Wolfe, (yet purely coincidential) we publish here an early industrial work of architect Hans Poelzig, one … [Read more...]
A 50 x 50 House for Mass Production (1951): An Unbuilt Project By L. Mies Van Der Rohe
Mies van der Rohe addressed the question of mass-housing in his unbuilt project, the 50x50 feet House (50 feet is almost 16m) in 1951. Conceived as a … [Read more...]
An Unbuilt Project by L. Kahn: The Library of the Washington University
In 1956, architect Louis Kahn was invited to take part in the competition for "The Olin Library", a 200.000 square feet building in Washington. The … [Read more...]
Sonsbeek Pavilion in Arnhem, Aldo Van Eyck (1966)
A temporary pavilion was designed by Aldo Van Eyck and built in the summer of 1966 to host sculptures by nearly thirty artists (including Brancusi, … [Read more...]
John Hejduk: The Riga Project (1987)
This is the catalog of an exhibition held at University of the Arts, The Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery and the Great Hall, Nov. 20-Dec. 22, 1987. It … [Read more...]
Hans Hollein’s Alles Ist Architektur (1968)
“Everything is architecture“, Hans Hollein announced in the 1968 (1/2) edition of the “Bau“ journal. As correctly explained by Ethel Baraona, he was … [Read more...]
The Creation of the World According to Moses by Wilhelm & Jan Goeree, 1690
(Originally titled: De Schepping der Wereldt Volgens de Beschryving van Mozes) Via: Willigula and Invisible … [Read more...]
Oil on Canvas Works by Garcia / Frankowski
Recent architectural paintings by Cruz Garcia and Nathalie Frankowski. Garcia and Frankowsky are architects, artists and writers based in Beijing … [Read more...]
Soviet Abstract Architecture Blueprints (mid-1920s to early-1930s)
Ross Wolfe just published, on his Charnel House, these beautiful blueprints by early Soviet architects Ivan Leonidov, Leonid Vesnin, Aleksandr Vesnin, … [Read more...]
“Don’t you think there is enough anxiety at present?” The 1982 Debate Between Christopher Alexander and Peter Eisenman
CHRISTOPHER ALEXANDER: The thing that strikes me about your friend's building -- if I understood you correctly -- is that somehow in some intentional … [Read more...]
“Taking Measures Across the American Landscape” by James Corner and Alex McLean
James Corner, internationally renowned landscape architect and forerunner of the landscape urbanism movement, was author in 1996 of "Taking Measures … [Read more...]
Atemporality at Work *
* Kazys Varnelis couldn't possibly better resume this series of collage drawings recently featured on Archive of Affinities: "Chief among these is … [Read more...]
Mark Lombardi’s Narrative Structures and Other Mappings of Power Relations
(...) the great question today is the question of globalization, the question of the unity of the world. Globalization proposes to us an abstract … [Read more...]
Oscar Newman’s Underground City Beneath Manhattan
The architect and city planner Oscar Newman, better known for his dreadful "Defensible space theory", (pdf here) also fostered in 1969 the bizarre … [Read more...]
The Future of Architecture and other Collages by Nils-Ole Lund
Danish architect, teacher and collage-artist, author of Collage Architecture in 1990, Nils-Ole Lund's fosters the idea that modern architecture … [Read more...]
Hiroshi Hara, 500x500x500m, A New Type of Residential Cube for 100,000 People (1992)
Hiroshi Hara's "Multilayered Theory of the City" is put into practice through this model for an utopian metropolis. A three-dimensional lattice is … [Read more...]
