Video: The saga of Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library built in 1963, designed by architect Gordon Bunshaft of the firm of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, and is the largest building in the world reserved exclusively for the preservation of rare books and manuscripts.

Robin Hood Gardens slated for Demolition

Four years ago Gordon Brown wants to demolish Robin Hood Gardens – the brutalist council housing designed by Alison and Peter Smithson. Even a successful design competition could not spare its fate. Londonist updates us on the status of Robin Hood Gardens:

Opened in 1972, the estate, formed of two long concrete blocks designed by husband and wife team Alison and Peter Smithson (also responsible for the Economist building in Piccadilly) had become a cause célèbre in recent years, ever since tearing it down was first proposed in 2008. Architects Zaha Hadid and Richard Rogers, and former Guardian architecture critic Jonathan Glancey, joined a campaign by Building Design magazine to save the estate, and it was the subject of an exhibition. However, the decision not to award it listed status sounded the death knell.

Soon we will only have a Flickr set of photos to remember this strange, and alienating building.

Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp – Le Corbusier

While we took a look at Saint-Pierre, Firminy by Le Corbusier yesterday, let’s look at Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp: Le Corbusier 1955 tour de force.

Photo by proligde

Photo by Ryan Patterson

Photo by Anna Armstrong

Photo by brewskizzlr

Photo by Anna Armstrong

Farnsworth House opens April 1st, 2012

Today is Mies’ 126th birthday, and as my reader knows, we are a bit obsessed with the Farnsworth House by Mies van der Rohe.

We visited the house three years ago with a group from work, and it is amazing. Tours of the Farnsworth House begin on April 1st, and I would suggest going with a group of your friends, especially on weekdays where you are allowed to take photos inside. Be warned that the Fox River tends to overflow its banks, causing occasional flooding of the Farnsworth House.

Also, take some time to eat in Plano, where there is a great greasy spoon and drive around rural Illinois – it is beautiful.

Crown Hall – Mies van der Rohe

us/chcg/crown hall/02, a photo by Hagen Stier on Flickr.

The Pruitt-Igoe Myth: an Urban History

Towers of Dreams: One Ended in Nightmare:

But they’re both classic examples of modern architecture, the kind Mr. Jencks, among countless others, left for dead: superblocks of brick and concrete high rises scattered across grassy plots, so-called towers in the park, descended from Le Corbusier’s “Radiant City.” The words “housing project” instantly conjure them up.

Alienating, penitential breeding grounds for vandalism and violence: that became the tower in the park’s epitaph. But Penn South, with its stolid redbrick, concrete-slab housing stock, is clearly a safe, successful place. In this case the architecture works. In St. Louis, where the architectural scheme was the same, what killed Pruitt-Igoe was not its bricks and mortar. (Minoru Yamasaki, who designed the World Trade Towers, was the architect.)

Fagus Factory Joins UNESCO Heritage List

Fagus Werk, a photo by Joost Barendregt on Flickr.

Modernist Icon Joins UNESCO Heritage List:

Its sleek design and airy glass façade made Walter Gropius’ Fagus Factory influential, both in its day — and also now, a century later. On Saturday, the United Nations’ cultural organisation UNESCO announced it would add the factory to its prestigious list of World Heritage Sites.

Describing it as “a landmark in the development of modern architecture in Europe and North America,” UNESCO incorporated the factory, which manufactures shoe lasts, into the elite international heritage list.