by Witold | Jul 11, 2017 | Architects
This week the short list was announced for London’s new Center for Music, which will be the future home of the London Symphony Orchestra and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. The usual suspects include Frank Gehry, Renzo Piano, Norman Foster, and Snøhetta....
by Witold | May 5, 2017 | Architects, Architecture, Modern life
There is a long tradition of architectural research in structures—one thinks of Nervi, Candela, Torroja, and Frei Otto, the pioneers of concrete like Perret, and much earlier the Byzantine and Gothic builders. Architects have sometimes experimented successfully with...
by Witold | Apr 12, 2017 | Architects, Architecture
“Dwelling narrowly on the legacy of designers gives the impression that architectural history concerns great men, not great places,” writes Lance Hosey in the Huffington Post. Hosey was commenting on an essay that I wrote recently in Architect, in which I speculated...
by Witold | Jul 2, 2016 | Architects, Architecture
There has been much excitement in the Twittersphere concerning the appointment of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects to design the Obama presidential library. A no-drama president has picked no-drama architects is the gist of it. No drama? Putting an 8-story blank...
by Witold | May 1, 2016 | Architects, Architecture
I came across the following passage recently. There have always been dazzling personalities that flashed out of the surrounding gloom like the writing on the wall at the great king’s feast; but they are not manifestations of healthy art. They are phenomena. The...
by Witold | Apr 21, 2016 | Architects, Architecture
The other day we drove to Mount Cuba, a horticultural center in Delaware. The forest garden is part of an estate built in the 1930s by Lammot du Pont Copeland and his wife Pamela, a branch of the mighty Delaware family. We went to look at the trillium garden, but I...
