just the news today, architects compared to Le Corbusier, should we analyze as to how he remains a constant referent for Architecture Media?
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LC and Moses
Leaving aside whether such a city is anything to be thankful for, it’s actually a stretch to say that Moses was so prophetic. If Moses had a vision, it was that of Napoleon III’s Haussman, tempered by Le Corbusier’s insistence on social and moral improvement through planning and design. The problem that Moses the Title I slum clearer set out to remedy was the congested haphazardness of the existing city, and the solution was clean lines and open, sanitized spaces. Moreover, Moses loved to beat naysayers over the head with his impressive record of “getting things done.” In Title I projects, that often meant new forms of housing, some of it financed by union pensions and committed to what we now call “affordability.” If there was “vision” at work here, it was the socialist tinged vision of Abraham Kazan, of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and the United Housing Federation. 1
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LC and Thom Mayne
March 14 2007 will go down in history as the day everyone decided they love LA-based Thom Mayne. First, Nicolai Ourousssssoffffff writes a valentine to his favorite living architect. Well, he plays it coy and doesn't come right out and say Mayne is his favorite living architect but we assume he is after last week's love note and today's big, wet sloppy kiss. Behold, upon describing Mayne's newly finished San Francisco Federal Building, Ouroussoff can barely contain his adoration:
The sense of airiness is magical. Protected by the perforated steel screen, the windows can be operated from inside, and when they are open, a cool breeze drifts through the space. Beautiful undulating concrete ceilings help channel the air from north to south, sensitizing us to the natural world waiting outside. (Unfortunately, some of this effect has been lost by the erection of a crude system of partitions and office cubicles.) Aside from the compositional inspiration, what the architect is clearly seeking to retrieve from Modernist forebears like Le Corbusier is an unflinching optimism. In a world where commercialism regularly trumps public service, Mr. Mayne seems to be telling us that the values of Old-World Modernism may not be so bad. Rather than obliterate this architectural past, he aims to imbue it with the human element that Modernism forgot, the quirks and odd delights that can root a building in personal and emotional territory. 2
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LC and Richard Meier
At Hotel Raphael, Richard Meier's reference to his model is the use of chairs and a canapé designed by Le Corbusier (the famous LC2). The colors of the walls in the rooms are in pastel yellow-green and brown-beige, in the common areas in the lobby and on the third floor in "Swiss Coffee", a pastel color between white and beige. The (night table) lamps are Meier 8 FMS. Tempur beds and Simmons mattresses complete the picture. Free broadband internet is available throughout the hotel.
Richard Meier acknowledges to be primarily influenced by the architects Le Corbusier, Alvar Aalto, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Louis I. Kahn and Frank Lloyd Wright. Collage is important to him as a formal exercise. In her book about Richard Meier (get it from Amazon.com), Dana Hutt states: "Central to Meier's abstraction is the use of light as a material." This includes both natural and artificial light. Purity and clarity dominate his concept of space, form and light. Meier himself says: "My goal is presence, not illusion."
cont'd... http://www.cosmopolis.ch/travel/rome/hotel_raphael_081.htm
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LC and tatlin, Breuer, Aalto (and architects still in production)
The entrance to the show is pure seduction: a streamlined silver Tatra 77a boasting triple headlamps, suicide front doors and a louvered rear panel with dorsal fin — an absolute shark of an automobile. Mount the main stairs, flanked on either side by seven reproduction armchairs by Gerrit Rietveld, and you enter the rotunda, filled with modernist icons, from models of structures actual and imaginary by Le Corbusier and Vladimir Tatlin, respectively, to a period Marcel Breuer chair and an Alvar Aalto vase still in production. 3
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and the list continues....