Category Archives: Architecture

September 15

Grand Designs: André Le Nôtre and the Gardens of Versailles

On the 15th of September 1700, French landscape architect, and the principal gardener of King Louis XIV of France, André Le Nôtre died in Paris. Regarded as one of the greatest landscape designers of all time, Le Nôtre was responsible for the design and construction of such famous French gardens as Chantilly, Fontainebleau, Saint-Cloud, Saint-Germain, […]

August 03

Architectural Wonders: Melnikov’s House

On the 3rd of August 1890, Russian architect and painter Konstantin Melnikov was born in Moscow. A pious Orthodox Christian from a peasant family, Melnikov had managed to gain admission to the prestigious Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and study with Russia’s greatest neoclassical painters and architects on the eve of the October […]

July 01

Buckminster Fuller on Childhood and Education

On the 1st of July 1983, American neo-futuristic architect, system theorist, designer and inventor Buckminster Fuller died in Los Angeles, California. The man who used to launch his lectures by introducing himself as “the world’s most successful failure” was in fact one of the most brilliant and nonconformist minds of the twentieth century. Expelled from […]

June 03

Josephine Baker: Muse of Modern Architecture

On the 3rd of June 1906, the American dancer, singer, and actress Josephine Baker was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Her life story is a typical ‘rags to riches’ tale. Born in poverty, having lived in the slums of St. Luis, where she slept in cardboard shelters and searched for food in garbage bins, she […]

May 28

The Larssons’ Handmade, Homemade Bliss: Swedish Arts and Crafts

On the 28th of May 1853, artist and designer Carl Larsson was born in Stockholm. Following a difficult childhood spent in poverty, Larsson got a break when an art teacher recognised his talent and directed him towards a creative career. He started off working as an illustrator of books, magazines, and newspapers, then moved to […]

May 05

The Skylon and Churchill Gardens: Contrasting Architectural Visions in Postwar Britain

On the 5th of May 1920, John Hidalgo Moya was born in Los Gatos, California. Some 83 years later, on the 5th of May 2003, Sir Arnold Joseph Philip Powell died in London. The two men were architects and founders of the Powell & Moya Architect Practice responsible for the design of Churchill Gardens in […]

April 28

Yves Klein’s Art: Into the Void

On the 28th of April 1928, the early postmodernist Yves Klein was born in Nice, France, to an Impressionist painter father and an Art Informel artist mother.  From a young age, Klein was fascinated with space. Allegedly, at the age of nineteen, him and his friends lay on a beach in the south of France, […]

April 09

Hiroshima: The Struggle for National Memory

On the 9th of April 1880, the Czech architect Jan Letzel was born in the town of Náchod, Bohemia. After succeeding as a prolific architect in Bohemia, Dalmatia, Montenegro, Herzegovina, and Cairo, in 1907, he moved to live and work in Japan, where together with his friend, Karl Hora, he established his own Tokyo-based architectural […]

March 22

Brinkman and The International Style in Architecture

On the 22nd of March 1902, Dutch architect and exponent of Nieuwe Bouwen, (modern architecture in the Netherlands), Johannes Andreas Brinkman was born in Rotterdam. He is perhaps best known for the design of the former Van Nelle Factory, a prime example of the International Style, which his architectural office, Brinkman & Van der Vlugt, […]

January 18

Grete Schütte-Lihotzky: House Maker, Not Homemaker

On the 18th of January 2000, Austria’s first female architect, Nazi resistance, as well as Marxist activist Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky died in Vienna five days before her 103rd birthday. Lihotzky became the first female student at the Kunstgewerbeschule, Vienna, where important modern artists such as Hoffmann, Hanak and Kokoschka were teaching. She obtained her place with difficulty, […]