The Story of the Flatiron Building, “New York’s Strangest Tower”

in Architecture, History | May 10th, 2023

Few out­side New York know the Flat­iron Build­ing by name, but peo­ple every­where asso­ciate it with the city. That owes in part to its ten­den­cy to appear in the vin­tage imagery of New York that adorns the walls of cafés, hotel rooms, and den­tists’ offices across the world. And that, in turn, owes in part — in very large part — to the Flatiron’s unusu­al shape, the result of a design meant to max­i­mize the prof­it of a tri­an­gu­lar plot of land bound­ed by Fifth Avenue, Broad­way, and East 22nd Street. You can hear the sto­ry of the build­ing, “New York’s strangest tow­er,” in the new video from archi­tec­ture-and-engi­neer­ing Youtube chan­nel The B1M just above.

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured The B1M here on Open Cul­ture for videos on sub­jects like Europe’s lack of sky­scrap­ers — a con­di­tion that cer­tain­ly does­n’t afflict Man­hat­tan, though at the time of the Flat­iron Build­ing’s con­struc­tion in the first years of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, the sky­scraper itself was still a fair­ly nov­el con­cept.

Laws gov­ern­ing con­struc­tion changed to keep up with devel­op­ments in the tech­nolo­gies of con­struc­tion: “Fol­low­ing a recent change in the city’s fire codes,” says the video’s nar­ra­tor, “this became one of the ear­li­est build­ings in New York to shun load-bear­ing mason­ry and instead take advan­tage of steel for its struc­tur­al frame.”


The Flatiron’s archi­tects were Fred­er­ick P. Dinkel­berg and Daniel Burn­ham, the lat­ter of whom is now remem­bered as the orig­i­nal king of the Amer­i­can sky­scraper. In fact, the very term “sky­scraper” was coined in response to the Mon­tauk Block, a high-rise he designed in Chica­go. But while the Mon­tauk Block stood only between 1883 and 1902, the Flat­iron con­tin­ues to stand proud — if, at 22 sto­ries, no longer rel­a­tive­ly tall — on the three-cor­nered plot where it first arose 120 years ago.  Alas, it has also “sat emp­ty since 2019, when its last ten­ants, Macmil­lan Pub­lish­ers, moved out.” After that began a series of ren­o­va­tions, and after that began “mul­ti­ple dis­agree­ments among the build­ing’s cur­rent own­ers and future ten­ants,” which cul­mi­nat­ed in a court-ordered auc­tion of the build­ing won by a bid­der who sub­se­quent­ly van­ished. But how­ev­er deep the Flat­iron plunges into legal lim­bo, its sta­tus as a New York icon will sure­ly remain intact.

Relat­ed con­tent:

New York’s Lost Sky­scraper: The Rise and Fall of the Singer Tow­er

Watch the Build­ing of the Empire State Build­ing in Col­or: The Cre­ation of the Icon­ic 1930s Sky­scraper From Start to Fin­ish

An Archi­tect Demys­ti­fies the Art Deco Design of the Icon­ic Chrysler Build­ing (1930)

A Trip Through New York City in 1911: Vin­tage Video of NYC Gets Col­orized & Revived with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Why Europe Has So Few Sky­scrap­ers

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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What the Great Pyramids of Giza Originally Looked Like

in Architecture, History | May 9th, 2023

Ask any­one who’s trav­eled to the Great Pyra­mids of Giza: no mat­ter how many times you’ve seen them in pho­tographs or on tele­vi­sion, you’re nev­er real­ly pre­pared to come face-to-face with them in real life. But you can get fair­ly close to at least the appear­ance of real life by see­ing the Pyra­mids in 4k res­o­lu­tion, as they’re pre­sent­ed in the video above from trav­el, archi­tec­ture, and his­to­ry Youtu­ber Manuel Bra­vo (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his expla­na­tion of Fil­ip­po Brunelleschi’s dome atop the Flo­rence Cathe­dral). This isn’t just vaca­tion footage: Bra­vo tells the sto­ry of the Pyra­mids, puts them in con­text, and even incor­po­rates vir­tu­al re-cre­ations of what they would have looked like in their hey­day.

We know the Pyra­mids as icon­ic ruins, undoubt­ed­ly mighty but also seri­ous­ly dilap­i­dat­ed. When they were built in the 26th cen­tu­ry BC, they were cov­ered in white lime­stone exte­ri­or shells, giv­ing them the strik­ing­ly smooth if chro­mat­i­cal­ly reversed appear­ance of a 2001-style mono­lith — a char­ac­ter­is­tic that no doubt encour­ages cer­tain the­o­rists who imag­ine the con­struc­tion process as hav­ing been exe­cut­ed by beings from out­er space.

The tech­ni­cal­ly inclined Bra­vo pre­sum­ably has lit­tle time for such notions, fill­ing the video as he does with details about the archi­tec­ture and engi­neer­ing of the Pyra­mids, many of them thor­ough­ly human in nature, such as the delib­er­ate­ly con­fus­ing pas­sage­ways meant to throw off plun­der­ers.

Along with high-res­o­lu­tion footage and ren­der­ings of what the Pyra­mids looked like then and look like now, Bra­vo also includes his own on-foot explo­rations, show­ing us cor­ners of the com­plex (and one espe­cial­ly claus­tro­phobe-unfriend­ly tun­nel) that we don’t nor­mal­ly see unless we take a tour our­selves. This close-up per­spec­tive gives him the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­nect the mod­ern human expe­ri­ence of these ancient mon­u­ments to their vast scale and his­tor­i­cal­ly dis­tant con­cep­tion. To be awed and even over­whelmed is per­haps the most nat­ur­al response to the Pyra­mids, and for some, it’s worth the trip to expe­ri­ence that feel­ing alone. For oth­ers, answer­ing the ques­tion of exact­ly how and why they awe and over­whelm becomes the work of a life­time.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Walk­ing Tour Around the Pyra­mids of Giza: 2 Hours in Hi Def

Take a 360° Inter­ac­tive Tour Inside the Great Pyra­mid of Giza

Take a 3D Tour Through Ancient Giza, Includ­ing the Great Pyra­mids, the Sphinx & More

What the Great Pyra­mid of Giza Would’ve Looked Like When First Built: It Was Gleam­ing, Reflec­tive White

Who Built the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids & How Did They Do It?: New Arche­o­log­i­cal Evi­dence Busts Ancient Myths

The Grate­ful Dead Play at the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids, in the Shad­ow of the Sphinx (1978)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch a Traditional Japanese Carpenter Make 190+ Different Joints, All Without Nails, Screws, or Glue

in Architecture, Art | May 3rd, 2023

Before the inter­net, it would have been hard to imag­ine that peo­ple around the world would one day be unable to get enough of tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese car­pen­try, and specif­i­cal­ly tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese join­ery. And before Youtube, who could have pre­dict­ed that videos show­ing each and every step of a wood­work­ing project — with­out nar­ra­tion, or indeed expla­na­tion of any kind — would find an enthu­si­as­tic view­er­ship? At the inter­sec­tion of these two sur­pris­ing phe­nom­e­na stands that chan­nel H Car­pen­ter, whose unadorned, method­i­cal, and detailed por­tray­als of wood­en joint-mak­ing have racked up mil­lions upon mil­lions of views.

In tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese join­ery, which we’ve fea­tured many times before here on Open Cul­ture, the car­pen­ter uses no nails, screws, or adhe­sives. Rather, he carves the ends of the pieces of wood to be joined into inter­lock­ing three-dimen­sion­al shapes that can hold sol­id for decades, or even cen­turies.

The biggest advan­tage of this tech­nique, writes a com­menter on one video, “is that it min­i­mizes the use of rust-prone nails and oth­er mate­ri­als, reduces dam­age to the wood, and damp­ens seis­mic shak­ing with unfas­tened joints” — always a con­sid­er­a­tion in earth­quake-prone Japan. “Fur­ther­more, the entire build­ing can be dis­as­sem­bled like Lego blocks, and only the dam­aged parts can be replaced and rebuilt as before.”

Like many oth­er Japan­ese tra­di­tions, this form of car­pen­try has been around for a long time indeed, and through the cen­turies has built up a for­mi­da­ble library of joints, many of them com­plex enough  not to be com­pre­hen­si­ble at first glance. With 193 videos on the rel­e­vant playlist so far, H car­pen­ter seems to have made a mis­sion of con­struct­ing all of them on Youtube not just to aid our under­stand­ing of their work­ings, but also to pro­vide us with the sen­so­ry plea­sures of the process itself. (A few mil­lion of his views are sure­ly account­ed for by ASMR enthu­si­asts alone.) Just like his fore­bears in the craft, he does it with­out using a sin­gle nail — as well, per­haps as a coun­ter­bal­ance to the chat­ter of the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, with­out speak­ing a sin­gle word.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Art of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Wood Join­ery: A Kyoto Wood­work­er Shows How Japan­ese Car­pen­ters Cre­at­ed Wood Struc­tures With­out Nails or Glue

Mes­mer­iz­ing GIFs Illus­trate the Art of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Wood Join­ery — All Done With­out Screws, Nails, or Glue

See How Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Car­pen­ters Can Build a Whole Build­ing Using No Nails or Screws

Japan­ese Car­pen­ters Unearth 100-Year-Old Wood Joiner­ies While Tak­ing Apart a Tra­di­tion­al House

Build­ing With­out Nails: The Genius of Japan­ese Car­pen­try

Free Soft­ware Lets You Cre­ate Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Wood Joints & Fur­ni­ture: Down­load Tsug­ite

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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How the World’s Biggest Dome Was Built: The Story of Filippo Brunelleschi and the Duomo in Florence

in Architecture, History | March 15th, 2023

Even if Flo­rence did­n’t rep­re­sent the absolute pin­na­cle of human civ­i­liza­tion at the end of the thir­teenth cen­tu­ry, it had to have been a strong con­tender for the posi­tion. What the city lacked, how­ev­er, was a cathe­dral befit­ting its sta­tus. Hence the con­struc­tion, which com­menced in 1296, of just such a holy struc­ture, in accor­dance with ambi­tious plans drawn up by archi­tect Arnol­fo di Cam­bio. But when di Cam­bio died in 1302, work came more or less to a stop for near­ly half a cen­tu­ry. Con­struc­tion resumed in 1344 under Giot­to, whose own death three years lat­er left the project to his assis­tant Andrea Pisano, who was him­self suc­ceed­ed by Francesco Tal­en­ti, Gio­van­ni di Lapo Ghi­ni, Alber­to Arnol­di, Gio­van­ni d’Am­bro­gio, Neri di Fio­ra­van­ti, and Andrea Orcagna.

None of these archi­tects, how­ev­er astute, man­aged to fin­ish the cathe­dral: in 1418, it still had a gap­ing hole on top where its dome should have been, and in any case no viable design or engi­neer­ing pro­ce­dure to con­struct one. “So they had a com­pe­ti­tion, and every­body was invit­ed to sub­mit their projects,” says Youtu­ber Manuel Bra­vo, who tells the sto­ry in the video at the top of the post.

Enter the sculp­tor Fil­ip­po Brunelleschi, who declared, in effect, “I can do it. I can build you the dome. And what’s more, I can build you the dome with­out coins or earth.” That last was a ref­er­ence to an ear­li­er archi­tec­t’s sug­ges­tion that the dome under con­struc­tion be sup­port­ed with a mound of dirt filled with mon­ey, so peas­ants would glad­ly vol­un­teer to cart it away after com­ple­tion.

Brunelleschi’s con­sid­er­ably more ele­gant idea was inspired by the ruins of antiq­ui­ty, not least the Pan­theon, which then boast­ed the largest dome ever built in Europe, dis­cussed by Bra­vo in a pre­vi­ous video. In this one he breaks down the inge­nious tech­niques Brunelleschi used to out­do the Pan­theon, and with­out using a tem­po­rary sup­port­ing struc­ture of any kind. Instead, he incor­po­rat­ed ring-like ele­ments “tying the dome from out­side, as if they were belts like the ones we wear,” as well as “a par­tic­u­lar kind of brick­work, a pat­tern with a series of spi­ral ribs” which “allowed them to lock togeth­er the bricks that were placed hor­i­zon­tal­ly.” The result, a struc­ture “com­plete­ly self-brac­ing in all its phas­es of con­struc­tion,” has stood firm­ly since 1469 as, quite lit­er­al­ly, a crown­ing glo­ry: not just of the Duo­mo, but of Flo­rence as well.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Fil­ip­po Brunelleschi, Untrained in Archi­tec­ture or Engi­neer­ing, Built the World’s Largest Dome at the Dawn of the Renais­sance

How to Build Leonar­do da Vinci’s Inge­nious Self-Sup­port­ing Bridge: Renais­sance Inno­va­tions You Can Still Enjoy Today

The Life & Times of Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Geo­des­ic Dome: A Doc­u­men­tary

The Beau­ty & Inge­nu­ity of the Pan­theon, Ancient Rome’s Best-Pre­served Mon­u­ment: An Intro­duc­tion

The His­to­ry of West­ern Archi­tec­ture: A Free Course Mov­ing from Ancient Greece to Roco­co

Free Course: An Intro­duc­tion to the Art of the Ital­ian Renais­sance

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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An Architect Breaks Down the Design of New York City Subway Stations, from the Oldest to Newest

in Architecture, Art, Design, History, Travel | March 13th, 2023

With 26 lines and 472 sta­tions, the New York City sub­way sys­tem is prac­ti­cal­ly a liv­ing organ­ism, and way too big a top­ic to tack­le in a short video.

Archi­tect Michael Wyet­zn­er may not have time to touch on rats, crime track fires, flood­ing, night and week­end ser­vice dis­rup­tions, or the adults-in-a-Peanuts-spe­cial sound qual­i­ty of the announce­ments in the above episode of Archi­tec­tur­al Digest’s Blue­prints web series, but he gives an excel­lent overview of its evolv­ing design, from the sta­tions them­selves to side­walk entrances to the plat­form sig­nage.

First stop, the old City Hall sta­tion, whose chan­de­liers, sky­lights, and Guas­tavi­no tile arch­ing in an alter­nat­ing col­ors her­ring­bone pat­tern made it the star attrac­tion of the just-opened sys­tem in 1904.

(It’s been closed since 1945, but savvy tran­sit buffs know that they can catch a glimpse by ignor­ing the conductor’s announce­ment to exit the down­town 6 train at its last stop, then look­ing out the win­dow as it makes a U‑turn, pass­ing through the aban­doned sta­tion to begin its trip back uptown. The New York Tran­sit Muse­um also hosts pop­u­lar thrice year­ly tours.)

Express tracks have been a fea­ture of New York’s sub­way sys­tem since the begin­ning, when Inter­bor­ough Rapid Tran­sit Com­pa­ny enhanced its exist­ing ele­vat­ed line with an under­ground route capa­ble of car­ry­ing pas­sen­gers from City Hall to Harlem for a nick­el fare.

Wyet­zn­er effi­cient­ly sketch­es the open exca­va­tion design of the ear­ly IRT sta­tions — “cut and cov­er” trench­es less than 20’ deep, with room for four tracks, plat­forms, and no frills sup­port columns that are near­ly as ubiq­ui­tous white sub­way tiles.

For the most part, New York­ers take the sub­way for grant­ed, and are always pre­pared to beef about the fare to ser­vice ration, but this was not the case on New Year’s Day, 2017, when rid­ers went out of their way to take the Q train.

Fol­low­ing years of delays, aggra­vat­ing con­struc­tion noise and traf­fic con­ges­tion, every­one want­ed to be among the first to inspect Phase 1 of the Sec­ond Avenue Sub­way project, which extend­ed the line by three impres­sive­ly mod­ern, airy col­umn-free sta­tions.

(The mas­sive drills used to cre­ate tun­nels and sta­tions at a far greater depth than the IRT line, were left where they wound up, in prepa­ra­tion for Phase 2, which is slat­ed to push the line up to 125th St by 2029. (Don’t hold your breath…)

The design­ers of the sub­way placed a pre­mi­um on aes­thet­ics, as evi­denced by the domed Art Nou­veau IRT entrance kiosks and beau­ti­ful per­ma­nent plat­form signs.

From the orig­i­nal mosaics to Beaux Arts bas relief plaques like the ones pay­ing trib­ute to the for­tune John Jacob Astor amassed in the fur trade, there’s lots of his­to­ry hid­ing in plain sight.

The mid-80s ini­tia­tive to bring pub­lic art under­ground has filled sta­tions and pas­sage­ways with work by some mar­quee names, like Vik Muniz, Chuck Close, William Weg­man, Nick Cave, Tom Otter­ness, Roy Licht­en­stein and Yoko Ono.

Wyet­zn­er also name checks graph­ic design­er Mas­si­mo Vignel­li who was brought aboard in 1966 to stan­dard­ize the infor­ma­tion­al sig­nage.

The white-on-black sans serif font direct­ing us to our desired con­nec­tions and exits now seems like part of the subway’s DNA.

Per­haps 21st-cen­tu­ry inno­va­tions like count­down clocks and dig­i­tal screens list­ing real-time ser­vice changes and alter­na­tive routes will too, one of these days.

If Wyet­zn­er is open to film­ing the fol­low-up view­ers are clam­or­ing for in the com­ments, per­haps he’ll weigh in on the new A‑train cars that debuted last week, which boast secu­ri­ty cam­eras, flip-up seat­ing to accom­mo­date rid­ers with dis­abil­i­ties, and wider door open­ings to pro­mote quick­er board­ing.

(Yes, they’re still the quick­est way to get to Harlem…)

Relat­ed Con­tent 

A Sub­way Ride Through New York City: Watch Vin­tage Footage from 1905

How the Icon­ic Col­ors of the New York City Sub­way Sys­tem Were Invent­ed: See the 1930 Col­or Chart Cre­at­ed by Archi­tect Squire J. Vick­ers

Design­er Mas­si­mo Vignel­li Revis­its and Defends His Icon­ic 1972 New York City Sub­way Map

The Sound of Sub­ways Around the World: A Glob­al Col­lec­tion of Sub­way Door Clos­ing Announce­ments, Beeps & Chimes

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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A 3D Computer Animation of the Panopticon, Jeremy Bentham’s 18th Century Design for an All-Controlling Prison

in Architecture, Philosophy | February 16th, 2023

Near­ly two cen­turies after his death, the eigh­teenth-cen­tu­ry util­i­tar­i­an philoso­pher and social reformer Jere­my Ben­tham — or most of him, any­way — still sits in state in the main build­ing of Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don. For a time in the mid-twen­ty-tens, he was equipped with the Panop­ti­Cam, “an online cam­era that streams what Ben­tham sees while sit­ting in his cab­i­net at UCL.” That most every­one gets the joke behind its name speaks to the endur­ing rel­e­vance of one of Ben­tham’s ideas in par­tic­u­lar: the Panop­ti­con, “a prison designed so that a prison guard could look into all cells at any time, and ensure that pris­on­ers mod­i­fied their behav­ior for the bet­ter.”

In Ben­tham’s Panop­ti­con, many pris­on­ers could be mon­i­tored effec­tive­ly by just a few unseen guards. This accords, as Michel Fou­cault writes in 1975’s Dis­ci­pline and Pun­ish, with the prin­ci­ple that “pow­er should be vis­i­ble and unver­i­fi­able. Vis­i­ble: the inmate will con­stant­ly have before his eyes the tall out­line of the cen­tral tow­er from which he is spied upon. Unver­i­fi­able: the inmate must nev­er know whether he is being looked at any one moment; but he must be sure that he may always be so.” Fou­cault drew con­nec­tions between the Panop­ti­con and the com­plex, large-scale soci­eties that had devel­oped since Ben­tham’s day. Imag­ine if he’d lived to see the rise of social media.

In a series of posts by Phi­los­o­phy for Change, Tim Rayn­er takes up just such an exer­cise. “By mak­ing our actions and shares vis­i­ble to a crowd, social media expos­es us to a kind of vir­tu­al Panop­ti­con,” he writes. “This is not just because our activ­i­ties are mon­i­tored and record­ed by the social media ser­vice for the pur­pos­es of pro­duc­ing mar­ket analy­sis or gen­er­at­ing tar­get­ed adver­tis­ing.” But “the sur­veil­lance that direct­ly affects us and impacts on our behav­ior comes from the peo­ple with whom we share.” In the online Panop­ti­con, “we are both guards and pris­on­ers, watch­ing and implic­it­ly judg­ing one anoth­er as we share con­tent.” Rayn­er wrote these words more than a decade ago, but any­one who has expe­ri­enced life on social media then can hard­ly deny the par­al­lels with Ben­tham’s vision.

Far from improv­ing our behav­ior, how­ev­er, this con­stant online sur­veil­lance has in a fair few cas­es made it con­sid­er­ably less appeal­ing. What­ev­er the nature of its actu­al effects on those who inhab­it it, the Panop­ti­con is an unde­ni­ably pow­er­ful struc­ture, at least metaphor­i­cal­ly speak­ing. But we should remem­ber that Ben­tham intend­ed it to be a real, phys­i­cal struc­ture, one that could con­tain not just pris­ons but oth­er types of insti­tu­tions as well. Whether a Panop­ti­con has ever been whol­ly built to his spec­i­fi­ca­tions seems to be a mat­ter of debate, but we can see what one would look like in the 3D ren­der­ing by Myles Zhang at the top of the post: an appro­pri­ate medi­um, after all, in which to per­ceive an idea most ful­ly real­ized in the dig­i­tal realm.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Jere­my Bentham’s Mum­mi­fied Body Is Still on Dis­play – Much Like Oth­er Aging British Rock Stars

What Would Michel Fou­cault Think of Social Media, Fake News & Our Post Truth World?

Michel Fou­cault: Free Lec­tures on Truth, Dis­course & The Self (UC Berke­ley, 1980–1983)

On the Pow­er of Teach­ing Phi­los­o­phy in Pris­ons

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Futurist Architectural Designs Created by Étienne-Louis Boullée in the 18th Century

in Architecture, Art, History | February 15th, 2023

If a painter is ahead of his time, his work won’t sell par­tic­u­lar­ly well while he’s alive. If an archi­tect is ahead of his time, his work prob­a­bly won’t exist at all — not in built form, at least. Such was the case with Éti­enne-Louis Boul­lée, who con­struct­ed few projects in the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry in which he lived, almost none of which remain stand­ing today. The best Boul­lée devo­tees can do for a site of pil­grim­age is the Hôtel Alexan­dre in Paris’ eighth arrondisse­ment, which, though hand­some enough, does­n’t quite offer a sense of why he would have devo­tees in the first place. To under­stand that, one must look to Boul­lée’s unbuilt works, the most notable of which are intro­duced in the video from Kings and Things above.

“Paper archi­tect” iden­ti­fies a mem­ber of the pro­fes­sion who may design struc­tures pro­lif­i­cal­ly but sel­dom, if ever, builds them. It is not a desir­able label, espe­cial­ly in its impli­ca­tion of will­ful imprac­ti­cal­i­ty (even by archi­tec­tur­al stan­dards). But as prac­ticed by Boul­lée, paper archi­tec­ture became an art form unto itself: he left behind not just an exten­sive essay on his art, but volu­mi­nous draw­ings that envi­sion a host of neo­clas­si­cal build­ings as ambi­tious in his time as they were unfash­ion­able — and often, due to their sheer size, unbuild­able.

These includ­ed an updat­ed colos­se­um, a spher­i­cal ceno­taph for Isaac New­ton taller than the Great Pyra­mids of Giza, a basil­i­ca meant to give its behold­ers an impres­sion of the uni­verse itself, a roy­al library of near-Bor­ge­sian pro­por­tions, and even an actu­al Tow­er of Babel.

 

For Boul­lée, big­ger was bet­ter, an idea that would sweep glob­al archi­tec­ture a cen­tu­ry and a half after his death. By the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, the world had also come to accept a Boul­lée-like pref­er­ence for min­i­mal orna­men­ta­tion as well as his con­cep­tion of what his con­tem­po­raries jok­ing­ly termed archi­tec­ture par­lante: that is, build­ings that “speak” about their pur­pose visu­al­ly, and in no uncer­tain terms. (You can hear more about it in the video below, a seg­ment by pro­fes­sor Eri­ka Nagin­s­ki from Har­vard’s online course “The Archi­tec­tu­al Imag­i­na­tion.”) When Boul­lée designed a Palace of Jus­tice, he placed a cour­t­house direct­ly over a jail­house, artic­u­lat­ing “one enor­mous metaphor for crime over­whelmed by the weight of jus­tice.” This may have been a bit much even for the new French Repub­lic, but for those who appre­ci­at­ed Boul­lée’s work, it point­ed the way to the archi­tec­ture of the future — a future we would lat­er call mod­ern.

via Aeon

Relat­ed con­tent:

The World Accord­ing to Le Cor­busier: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Most Mod­ern of All Archi­tects

The Unre­al­ized Projects of Frank Lloyd Wright Get Brought to Life with 3D Dig­i­tal Recon­struc­tions

What Makes Paris Look Like Paris? A Cre­ative Use of Google Street View

The Cre­ation & Restora­tion of Notre-Dame Cathe­dral, Ani­mat­ed

Why Do Peo­ple Hate Mod­ern Archi­tec­ture?: A Video Essay

How to Draw Like an Archi­tect: An Intro­duc­tion in Six Videos

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

 

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An Introduction to the World-Renowned Architect Zaha Hadid, “the Queen of the Curve”

in Architecture | February 13th, 2023

Zaha Hadid won the Pritzk­er Prize, archi­tec­ture’s most pres­ti­gious award, in 2004. She was then in her ear­ly fifties — prac­ti­cal­ly a school­girl by the stan­dards of her pro­fes­sion — and had only com­plet­ed four build­ings. Yet the Pritzk­er com­mit­tee already sus­pect­ed that she saw pos­si­bil­i­ties in the built envi­ron­ment, and per­haps entire dimen­sions, that oth­ers did not. Indeed, she would spend her remain­ing dozen years prov­ing them right, as evi­denced by the lega­cy of impres­sive struc­tures she left all across the world, from the Con­tem­po­rary Arts Cen­ter in Cincin­nati and the BMW Cen­tral Build­ing in Leipzig to the Lon­don Aquat­ics Cen­ter and the Guangzhou Opera House.

Liv­ing in Seoul, I myself have occa­sion every so often to pass through a Hadid build­ing: the Dong­dae­mun Design Plaza, which opened in 2013. Essen­tial­ly a col­lec­tion of shops and exhi­bi­tion spaces, it has become best known as a qua­si-pub­lic gath­er­ing place full of back­drops suit­able for Insta­gram pho­tog­ra­phy.

In its size, shape, and aes­thet­ic, the DDP stands well apart from its urban con­text, look­ing like a space­ship sent by an advanced alien civ­i­liza­tion to col­o­nize an old down­town gar­ment dis­trict. In that respect it’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Hadid’s work, which real­izes the kind of irreg­u­lar, unre­lent­ing­ly curvi­lin­ear forms prac­ti­cal­ly unknown in archi­tec­ture before her rise to its high­est lev­el of star­dom.

“In her build­ings, walls are nev­er quite ver­ti­cal, floors sel­dom remain flat for long, and the twain meet not in nine­ty-degree angles but, rather, in the kinds of curves one finds in skate­board parks,” writes the New York­er’s John Seabrook, pro­fil­ing Hadid in 2009. “There is no sin­gle Hadid style, although one can detect a water­mark in her build­ings’ futur­is­tic smooth­ness. Cer­tain themes car­ry through her use of mate­ri­als (glass, steel, con­crete), her lines (cor­ri­dors often trace flow­ing arabesque shapes, while roof struts make sharp Z‑shaped angles), her struc­tures (she favors col­umn-free spaces), and her sculp­tur­al inte­ri­ors and asym­met­ric façades.”

Such dis­tinc­tive designs — of build­ings as well as of fur­ni­ture, jew­el­ry, and oth­er con­sumer objects — earned Hadid the infor­mal title of “queen of the curve.” You can learn more about her reign and its last­ing influ­ence in these two video essays, one from Curi­ous Muse and the oth­er from The B1M. Like all the most inno­v­a­tive archi­tects, Hadid had visions real­iz­able only with, and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly influ­enced by, the tech­nol­o­gy of her time. “The idea is not to have any 90-degree angles,” she once said, and the devel­op­ment of advanced com­put­er-aid­ed design tools in the nine­teen-nineties made that idea a real­i­ty. In pur­su­ing that idea to its very lim­its, she took the most con­crete of all art forms and, improb­a­bly, made it abstract.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch 50+ Doc­u­men­taries on Famous Archi­tects & Build­ings: Bauhaus, Le Cor­busier, Hadid & Many More

The ABC of Archi­tects: An Ani­mat­ed Flip­book of Famous Archi­tects and Their Best-Known Build­ings

The World Accord­ing to Le Cor­busier: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Most Mod­ern of All Archi­tects

Why Do Peo­ple Hate Mod­ern Archi­tec­ture?: A Video Essay

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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