hmmm...
 

Ooohh!
http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/ingles/home.htm

http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/ingl...exposicion.htm

All well and good
 

A lot of the architects here have done GREAT public buildings - which is all well and good - let's face it, that's where the money is

What I'd like to see is some inspired, practical architecture done for the "City" and Suburban house. I'm not talking some of the houses sitting on 2-3 acre lots - How about some NICE houses meant to sit on a 40x100, or a 60x100. 60 years ago, there was some reasonable stuff being done, but it seems that since the mid 50s, and more particularly the late 60s, every house is a square block, maximizing interior space, and with NO details at all. They seem to call details the fact that the put a false mansard roof on the face building (because otherwise the flat roof would be TOO ugly) a detail.

Then you go inside - Lighting? That's ONE fixture in the middle of the ceiling, and other than that, the rooms are plain unadorned boxes

Before I bought my new house, I was looking to put an addition onto my old house. I spent a bunch of time looking at the zoning laws, and drew up some ideas to show an architect. He was impressed with my ideas, and they would have cost no more, and in fact less than what he showed me from his "stock" ideas

Then I found my new house and the extension didn't get done

Here's a question, what ever happened to "Pattern Books" - there used to be LOTS of them. You could come up with some real ideas

Sometimes I think I'd love to go back to school to study architecture, and in particular interior design. Yes, paint and fabric would be included, but I'm talking more "heavy" design - where do you put the doors, windows, stairs and the like. Where do you put the lighting? How are the kitchen cabinets laid out?

Silly things - the house I'm in now has great lighting in the Living Room and den (Both were redone in the 70s when an architect put the den on the house), but why is the lighting in the kitchen so BAD. Yeah, they did some things right - light over the sink, a down light over the table, and a general area light, but why is there no task lighting over the main counter?

I think that lighting and inexpensive details are the most overlooked low cost improvements that can be done to the design of a house (and are hard/ expensive to retrofit) $500 in materials and maybe 2 days onto the building of a house can make all the difference

Fine Homebuilding did a series on small houses a while back. I've gotta run but I may be able to dig up some interesting stuff, since it is a passion of mine.

I've seen it, and that's where I got some of the ideas that made the architect do a double take

Sigh

At that point in time, I was spending a LOT of time in FloorPlan3d - a bunch of bugs, limitations, but not bad. Much easier than AutoCAD

Detail? Detail? What is the rubbish, form follows function, all else is unnessecary crap! Argh we have forgotten Bauhaus!! (joke)

Although i do like the concept.

Whileyou all seem to know LFW pretty well, noones commented on Corubier, interesting ;)

FLW did have a HUGE ego, and considered himself a good engineer as well as an architect, sadly, he was not. All the problems you pointed out with falling water were engineering ones, not design really. If you look at some of the stuff he did just before he died its fantstic! I definately prefer it to his early stuff, although i've never been one for deco interiors.



Bit bitter there ardax? ;) Well my currant gf of just over a year's tastes run in a very close vien so that should be fine ;) We're both moving in together mid this year, all going to plan.

Form and Function can be friends! Thats the best design of all. It delights you and it works, it works and delights you.

wow...isn't this splendid...materialism at it's finest

Humans are nautrally materialistic creatures, don't do the whole holier than thou please, we merely wish to have a visual enviroment that pleases our asthetics.

Mies van der Rohe was a total sellout, bah.

The problem is we haven't really evolved - we've had modern, which is what we have been discussing, post modern, ultra modern...hmm......Nothing new in 50 odd years, merely sidelines of previous ideas, no real new movement.

You crack me the fuck up. Can we have sex?

Modern architecture has marched and evolved till done- the purity of a square, an empty, unadorned box. International style. Soviet style. Pre-packaged containers. Something messier and not necessarily new is going on- not linear. There are more diverse and personal influences and motivations impacting the built environment well beyond the modernist evolutionary track of western architectural history. Materials, new and old and technologies have opened engineering possibilities. its a cool time to build, or restore-rethink...And some motivated individuals are creating some fantastic homes, not to advance architectural history, but to live in.

Ultraminimalism is not new.



MOdern, 60s



Le Corbusier


Rehashing older stuff.


That is the key thing, i think we need a new track, a new philosophy, the same way art deco and Bauhaus totally revamped our thinking.

i like that....haha....as soon as a say a belief that differs from the ones posted here, i'm instantly trying to prove that i'm better than you. Hey...wait a second...does that resemble what Jordan is trying to do with his house. Do you not honestly believe that it is excessive at all?

haha...that's good too....yep......because hey we all need a fucking mansion when others in our country live in poverty.

Dham.....i wouldn't fuck you..besides the fact that your a guy

I guess you didn't notice that I kept asking "Whos doing architecture for the small house"

A LOT of what a GOOD architect can do would be equally applicable to the person living in a small rundown apartment as in a McMansion, and often costs NO extra money (or VERY little), but makes the house more COST efficient to live in, and more HUMAN to live in

GOOD does NOT have to equal high cost OR large, and Large and/or High cost does not always equal good

Little things make a difference. Where do you put the lights in the kitchen? Where do you place the door in the room? Do we enclose the area under the steps, or leave it open?

All choices that cost little or no money when you build housing, but that can make a large difference in the way you live, and that can cost a fortune to change

For instance, if I'm building a room, it costs NO extra money to put the SAME door 6" to the left or right, but to CHANGE it require the whole wall to be rebuilt

So, do you think that ALL architecture is about BIG MONEY? Or can it be about good HUMAN design - In fact, I'd say that many of the big name architects are "artists" who care more about art than GOOD human design