2 August 2006 | Architecture, Museums
From the Architectural Record: “In June the Museum of Modern Art announced that Barry Bergdoll will succeed Terence Riley as Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design … His main focus will be the 20th century—and the 21st. In addition to what he calls ‘monographic shows,’ he expects to mount shows on ‘process,’ including, [...]
22 June 2006 | Architecture, Museums
From the New York Times: “Ending seven months of speculation, the Museum of Modern Art is to announce its new chief curator of architecture and design today: he is Barry Bergdoll, chairman of Columbia University’s art history department, who will begin work in January … ‘I’ve always thought of myself as working on modern architecture,’ [...]
26 May 2006 | Architecture, Books
Reviewers say the new Louis Kahn tome from Phaidon by Robert McCarter does justice to the architectural achievements Estonia-born undercover polygamist. Dean Hawkes likes the book’s “clear objectivity” and “straightforward way,” while Benjamin Schwarz observes that there hasn’t been a treatment this full since Vincent Scully’s “characteristically woolly 1962 assessment,” perhaps because of Kahn’s distance [...]
12 May 2006 | Architecture, Baroque/Neoclassical
Michelangelo, fine, but amid all the St. Peter’s anniversary hubbub let’s not neglect Carlo Maderno, writes Axel Christoph Gampp. The much-maligned architect hasn’t received much attention since Howard Hibbard’s 1972 study, but Gampp takes up the cudgels for him.
11 May 2006 | Architecture, Islamic
“During the past couple of years, a number of historic monuments have been re-opened after lying for years under layers of rubble and scaffolding. There are still several hundred either in the process of being conserved and restored or on the waiting list to undergo conservation and restoration … In 2001, Caroline Williams, a well-known [...]
14 April 2006 | Architecture, Books
Two new books afford a comparison of the architectural tastes of two very different rulers. Hans-Joachim Giersberg recounts how Frederick the Great’s 18th-century Schloss Sanssouci (photos here and here) tried to integrate nature and culture under the theme of Wine, with a marble hall opening right out onto the vineyard, against the architect’s advice. Two [...]
12 April 2006 | Architecture
Writing on Juergen Schulz’s The New Palaces of Medieval Venice, Debra Pincus concludes that his “varied and rich career has been capped by a book that can only be termed revolutionary. Venetian scholarship has clung to the idea that the Venetian palace is a Byzantine import … Instead, Schulz proposes that the early palaces of [...]
7 April 2006 | Architecture, Journals
In the March 2006 issue of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, twelve academics from outside the field of the history of architecture explain “what they have learned” from it and what directions they’d like to see it go in. Editor Nancy Stieber notes: “We are accused of looking at buildings too closely, [...]
7 April 2006 | Architecture, Conservation
“Italian authorities on Wednesday unveiled the final fresco restoration of the St. Francis Basilica here following a 1997 earthquake – but because of the quake’s devastation, only a quarter of the missing masterpiece remains … Rather than repaint or reconstruct the image from scratch, Italian art historians and restorers decided to painstakingly restore what fragments [...]
6 April 2006 | Architecture, Modern
Wolfgang Pehnt’s history of German architecture from the 1901 Darmstadt exhibition through the recent rebuilding of the Berlin Olympic Stadium is an old-fashioned, magisterial great-buildings survey, subtle and comprehensive — so find Dieter Bartetzko in the FAZ and Gert Kähler in the Süddeutsche. Jürgen Tietz (see NZZ and H-Soz-u-Kult) notes that Pehnt also manages to [...]
4 April 2006 | Architecture, Books
G. Ulrich Großmann’s overview of castles in Europe betrays a fascinating subject with dry, uninspiring and didactic prose, finds the Frankfurter Allgemeine.
29 March 2006 | Ancient, Architecture
The Göbekli Tepe stone temple in southeast Anatolia makes the pyramids and even nearby Çatal Hüyük look rather young, reports archaeologist Klaus Schmidt. It’s now thought to be 12,000 years old. Its massive stone pillars, decorated with enigmatic animal-script ideograms (cranes, foxes, snakes, boars, gazelles) of a hunter-gatherer people, suggest that temples predated settlements in [...]
27 March 2006 | Architecture, Medieval
According to LiveScience, “Computer animation software used in newer Star Wars films to bring the pint-sized Jedi to life has now been modified to investigate the mysteries of cathedral architecture … secrets guarded by stonemason guilds for centuries … How cathedrals were constructed, then, can say a lot about the circumstances of why and by [...]
20 March 2006 | Architecture, Books
Anna Minta’s profound study of architecture, town planning and monument building in Israel doesn’t dwell on familiar high points such as Tel Aviv’s Bauhaus “white city”, writes the Neue Zürcher Zeitung‘s reviewer Roman Hollenstein. Instead, it incorporates a thorough consideration of planning and policy. Minta takes a particularly detailed look at Jerusalem, including the history [...]
14 March 2006 | Architecture, Islamic
The 24-year restoration of Yemen’s Amiriya Palace is finally complete. “It was built in 1504, but abandoned 13 years later and left to crumble.”
2 March 2006 | Architecture
Reviewing La Bellezza della Città: Stadtrecht und Stadtgestaltung im Italien des Mittelalters und der Renaissance for CAA Reviews, Areli Marina writes: “the last decade has brought an explosion of new research not only on medieval and Renaissance urbanism in Italy but also in the history of Italian jurisprudence … the essays in this book contextualize [...]
