POSTCARD FROM SAN SALVADOR Dear ArchitectureWeek, I am writing from San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, the smallest Central American nation. Its fragmented city layout illustrates the contrasts and extremes that are common in Central American life today. — Published 2004.0623
	BRIDGING BRASILIA The growing city of Brasilia needed a third bridge over a lake that separated half its inhabitants from their places of work. In response to a competition, architect Alexandre Chan and structural engineer Mario Vila Verde, both from Rio de Janeiro, produced the winning concept: a daring, dancing variation on an ancient structural form. — Published 2004.0609
	EARLY MODERNISM IN SERBIA Belgrade is an under-appreciated center of regional modernism of the 1920s and 1930s. This city played a role in the larger, international modernist movement but with a uniquely Serbian flavor. Sadly, many architectural examples from the period have been destroyed or altered beyond recognition, so photographic documentation remains an important preservation resource. — Editor — Published 2004.0602
	POSTCARD FROM THOMASVILLE Dear ArchitectureWeek, Visiting Thomasville, in southwestern Georgia, to help judge the 2004 Chrysalis remodeling awards (announced June 11, 2004 in Atlanta, during the Southern Building Show), I was pleased to discover a diverse and venerable built environment. — Published 2004.0526
	LAYERING OLD AND NEW A once-abandoned ruin has returned to 21st-century life as a multipurpose event space in a busy entertainment district on the banks of the Bosphorus Strait in Ortakoy, Istanbul. Global Architectural Development (GAD Architecture) has designed a glass and steel box tucked inside the masonry remains. — Published 2004.0428
	POSTCARD FROM SAN FRANCISCO Dear ArchitectureWeek, The exhibition Art Deco 1910-1939 has opened at the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco and will be on view until July 4, 2004. Although entire buildings cannot be brought into the museum, the exhibit successfully captures the essence of the deco style through films, drawings, furniture, models, posters, and reconstructed rooms. — Published 2004.0414
	POSTCARD FROM HALEBID, INDIA Dear ArchitectureWeek, During a drive of four hours from Bangalore, India's hub of information technology, one seems to slip gently back in time. The landscape gradually changes as we move through groves of coconut and banana trees. Past rocky outcrops scattered with temples, and with the coffee-growing hills of Chikmanglur on the horizon, one reaches Halebid — the site of the ancient city of Dwarasamudra, the 12th- and 13th-century capital of the Hoysala empire. Repeated invasions have left few traces of the once flourishing city, now known as Halebeedu or "the ruined city." One survivor is the Hoysaleswara Temple, built in the mid-12th century. It is set among ancient trees and verdant lawns and gleams like a gem in the afternoon light. — Published 2004.0331
	POSTCARD FROM ROME Dear ArchitectureWeek, Rome is an intensively occupied, definitively urban city. After thousands of years of concentrated human development and redevelopment, there is much hardscape, where the stony facade of one building is connected to the brick wall of the next by more stone, in the form of cobbled streets and other pavements. — Published 2004.0303
	WEST AFRICAN ADOBE Too often, when people in the West think of African architecture, they imagine nothing more than a mud hut — a primitive vernacular remembered from an old Tarzan movie. Why this ignorance to the richness of West African buildings? Possibly it is because the great dynastic civilizations of the region were already in decline when the European colonizers first exposed these cultures to the West. — Published 2004.0225
	POSTCARD FROM PERU Dear ArchitectureWeek, On my round-the-world bicycle tour, I cycled through the Andes, surrounded by snow-capped peaks and deep valleys, where I found some great examples of Peruvian vernacular. Latin American design is strongly influenced by centuries of Spanish rule. The street-and-plaza urban language was imported from Europe, and with subtle modifications, it provides the predominant urban landscape here. — Published 2004.0211

Building Culture Articles page: [prev] | 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | [next]