London

Mass & Void crazy architecture #5 Frederic Chaubin

In a similar vein to the last post on Filip Dujardin, here is another architectural photographer. But, these buildings are actually real.

Frederic Chaubin took on a research project travelling around the former Soviet Union photographing some of the lost buildings from that age. Due to the political forces at work during that era, the majority of architects are unknown.

They are all in his book CCCP - Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed.

Mass & Void crazy architecture #4 Filip Dujardin

Here is some work by photographer Filip Dujardin. 

He is an architectural photographer who got a bit bored by normal buildings and decided to take buildings to an absurdity via Photoshop.

Something of mine...

Today I went back to a project I designed a few years ago, which in it's principal spaces can be considered as a series of interconnected voids - almost like spaces in a a carved-out timber model. I didn't have much time for reflection but managed to snap this picture looking from void,  through void, to void...

LICA building, Lancaster University, 2010.

Also from the larger central void you can see the break-out to the sky, or the light breaking in.

Mass & Void crazy architecture #3 Yona Friedman

Working in the same vein as people like arching ram and Cedric price, here are a few images of Yona Friedmans work. The villa spatiale (spatial city) work may be particularly interesting for some of you.

The drawings are nice and vibrant too.

Mass & Void (not so crazy) architecture #2 - Kollhoff

Ok, so not as crazy as crazy #1 -Soleri, but an interesting case study nonetheless.

This is Hans Kollhoff at knsm island in Amsterdam with double courtyard brick wraparound.

Particularly interesting is how he creates 3 different types of courtyard with different privacy levels in a single formal move.

Mass + Void Crazy Architecture #1 - Paolo Soleri

Paolo Soleri (1919-2013) was an Italian/American architect who created his own town of Arcosanti, Arizona. Amazing masses and voids in concrete. 

He'd trained under Frank Lloyd Wright, but it looks like there's a bit of Louis Kahn influence in there as well...

FAT - New Islington

Some of you have been asking about how to remain in keeping with the local context of terraced housing and also about facade retention.

This project by FAT is more facade reinvention than retention. Its also interesting how they hide an essentially modernist building behind the reinterpreted facade.

Franco Purini, drawings 1976-79

Here are some interesting drawings i came across by Franco Purini. Especially if you consider it within the theme of Mass and Void.

Voids in masses, masses in voids, masses through masses .

BEGIN!

Thanks to Hadrian for kicking off the blog. It would be great if we can get all the students participating in this. Think of it as a big digital melting pot of all your ideas and inspirations.  It could be quotes, artworks, building precedents and eventually work of your own.

Posts should be varied and broadly related to the studio themes in some sort of way - but this is up to you students to decide what could be relevant!

 Here's some initial thoughts of mine to get things rolling.

 

“Under Suprematism I understand the primacy of pure feeling in creative art. To the Suprematist, the visual phenomena of the objective world are, in themselves, meaningless; the significant thing is feeling, as such, quite apart from the environment in which it is called forth.” 

 

—	Kazimir Malevich, “On Suprematism,” c. 1927