March 8, 2025 Ι Metropolis Magazine The question at the heart of Women Architects at Work: Making American Modernism (by Mary Anne Hunting and Kevin D. Murphy, Princeton University Press) is very simple: “What is Modernism?” Focusing on early women Modern architects with special attention on graduates of the Cambridge School of Architecture and Landscape… Continue reading Women Architects Struggled to Find a Home Within Modernism
Tag: Modernism
Remembering the Landscape Architect Who Embraced the City
Bloomberg CityLab Ι March 1, 2025 In 1972, the New York Times described the landscape architect M. Paul Friedberg as one of the “New Left of playground designers” for his radical breaks with tradition. His playgrounds and landscapes emphasized abstract, elemental forms for play and exploration, inserted into gritty New York City public housing projects,… Continue reading Remembering the Landscape Architect Who Embraced the City
Perkins&Will revisits Crow Island School near Chicago to update and upgrade a groundbreaking modernist monument to creative pedagogy
Feb. 6, 2025 Ι Architect’s Newspaper Based on a child-centered and scaled view of primary school pedagogy that celebrates learning in landscape and artisanal craft, Crow Island School, in the North Shore Chicago suburb of Winnetka, is typically regarded as the first modernist school in the nation. Now, it is undergoing an exacting renovation and… Continue reading Perkins&Will revisits Crow Island School near Chicago to update and upgrade a groundbreaking modernist monument to creative pedagogy
When French Communists Went on a Brutalist Building Boom
Feb. 1, 2025 Ι Bloomberg CityLab Let’s say, hypothetically, that there’s a left political party in an affluent Western country. It dominates in urban areas but struggles elsewhere; its working-class voter base has splintered with deindustrialization and more progressive, college-educated factions have emerged. As the nation becomes more multicultural, the party gets increasingly attuned to… Continue reading When French Communists Went on a Brutalist Building Boom
In Chacarita Moderna: The Brutalist Necropolis of Buenos Aires, Itala Fulvia Villa’s architectural authorship of the necropolis is reclaimed
July 12, 2024 Ι Architect’s Newspaper In letters from Argentina’s Sociedad Central de Arquitectos in the 1930s, Itala Fulvia Villa, only the sixth Argentine woman architect, was addressed as “Senorita Arquitecto,” as if the letter writers feared setting a precedent with the feminine gendered form of “architect” in Spanish. They had little reason to fear… Continue reading In Chacarita Moderna: The Brutalist Necropolis of Buenos Aires, Itala Fulvia Villa’s architectural authorship of the necropolis is reclaimed
SOM’s Baxter International suburban office park is part of a vital but unheralded design legacy
Architect’s Newspaper Ι June 15, 2023 As a young architect with SOM in 1972, Richard Tomlinson saw something special in the Baxter International suburban office campus, which was already underway when he joined the firm. “It was conceived as a dynamic campus that made flexibility a fundamental principle,” he told AN. “What fascinated me about… Continue reading SOM’s Baxter International suburban office park is part of a vital but unheralded design legacy
New Exhibition Shines a Light on George Fred Keck’s Solar Home of 1933
February 8, 2022 Ι Architectural Record Chicago architect George Fred Keck (1895-1980) unlike many of his Modernist contemporaries, was a technocrat and tinkerer first and foremost. Long before the advent of solar panels, his solar homes sought to use new technology and materials to make architecture congruent with climate. His 12-sided House of Tomorrow, built in… Continue reading New Exhibition Shines a Light on George Fred Keck’s Solar Home of 1933
Inside the ‘Tartarian Empire,’ the QAnon of Architecture
April 27, 2021 Ι Bloomberg’s CityLab In 1908, architect Ernest Flagg completed the Singer Building in Lower Manhattan, a Beaux-Arts showstopper made for the Singer sewing machine company. From a wide base, a slender 27-story tower rose, topped by a mansard roof and a delicate lantern spire. Every inch dripped with sumptuous detail inside and… Continue reading Inside the ‘Tartarian Empire,’ the QAnon of Architecture
Chicago’s Wrightwood 659 Hosts Compelling Exhibition of Indian Master Doshi
Architectural Record Ι Sept. 16, 2020 As the first Pritzker Prize laureate from the south Asian subcontinent, with a seven-decade career, Balkrishna Doshi is easily viewed as a Modernist standard bearer for Indian architecture. And Balkrishna Doshi: Architecture for the People now at Chicago’s Wrightwood 659 (its only stop in North America) plays up Doshi’s… Continue reading Chicago’s Wrightwood 659 Hosts Compelling Exhibition of Indian Master Doshi
Bertrand Goldberg’s Temple to Futures Past
Architect Magazine Ι March 2020 In October of 2013, Luis Collado and Jose Luis de la Fuente visited Wilbur Wright College, one of the City Colleges of Chicago’s seven campuses, located in the city’s far northwest side bungalow belt. Founders of the architecture firm STL Architects, who often work on education projects, they were interested… Continue reading Bertrand Goldberg’s Temple to Futures Past