30.1.17


E-019
Horrea di Hortensius, Ostia Antica . AD 25-50

'The Horrea of Hortensius is a very large store building, with an average width of 60 meters, opposite the theatre. The oldest masonry (opus reticulatum with only a few bricks) has been dated to c. 25-50 AD. Restorations can be seen from the Severan period (cellae on the west side) to the fifth century (see below).
The building consists of a rectangular courtyard with a colonnade, with rooms on all four sides. The columns of the colonnade are made of drums of tufa with Doric capitals, except for the angle columns which are entirely of travertine. The average width of the doors of the rooms is 1.70 - 1.80. The thresholds are partly of bricks and partly of travertine, with two pivot-holes. In the courtyard a long drain was found, running from south to north. In the east wall, accessible from the east extension of the south colonnade, was a small door, c. 1 meter wide, which was later filled in.'

http://www.ostia-antica.org/regio5/12/12-1.htm

26.1.17


E-018
Sea Ranch Condominium, Califormia . Charles Moore . 1963-65

'Confronted with designing the condominium complex of Sea Ranch on a spectacular Pacific Ocean site north of San Francisco, Moore Lyndon Turnbull Whitaker tightly grouped the units around a courtyard with traditional shed roofs an intersecting and towerlike wall planes, creating an overall commanding form but one of identifiably individual parts, at once casual and modest, open to views and sun yet sheltered and protected from the wind. It was a concept of cluster designed to preserve the openness of a rugged and beautiful site, the California wood tradition projected into a mid-sixties leaner sensibility and aesthetic, with a builder's type awareness of economy'

'American Architecture: Ideas and Ideologies in the Late Twentieth Century'. Paul Heyer. Ed.Wiley, 1993. p106-107



22.1.17


E-017
Al-Azhar Mosque, El Cairo . 970


'The Mosque of al-Azhar, was the first to be built in the Fatimid city of Cairo, and is the oldest and biggest Islamic university in the Islamic world, attracting students from a multiplicity of nations. The present standing structure does not date back in its entirety to the original Fatimid mosque, the rectangular surface area of which occupied only 70 m x 85 m. Today the building occupies over double that area, the dimensions reaching to 120 m x 130 m, owing to the various additions made at different periods. The ground-plan of the mosque at the time it was built was an open courtyard surrounded by three porticoes, the largest of which is the eastern portico (that of the qibla), which is composed of five arcades. The arcade that overlooks the courtyard is supported by piers, while the remaining arcades are supported on marble columns.'

http://www.discoverislamicart.org/database_item.php?id=monument;isl;eg;mon01;3;en

17.1.17


E-016
Goldenberg House, Montgomery County, Philadelphia . Louis I. Kahn . 1959


'The Goldenberg House is a 1959 unbuilt project by Louis Kahn for an area in Montgomery County near Philadelphia. This work couples previous Kahn’s compositional themes with some degrees of experimentation in the spatial relationships between geometrical forms. The central patio is the center of the house and the departing core of the composition: a perfect square surrounded by a corridor opening on the service areas,  storage rooms and bathrooms lit by skylights. In the typical Kahnian separation between servant and served areas, the outer zones include only the living rooms and the bedrooms irradiated from the central core.

At this point the rigorous perpendicular composition is contrasted by the introduction of diagonal lines inciding the exterior geometry of the house and identifing the limits of some areas in the plan. The single-pitch roofs underline the formal autonomy of the single rooms which get progressively detached from the central core. In opposition with the free floor plan, (an architectural motif of the time), Kahn identifies the specificity of the rooms attributing a distinct shape to each one of them. The rooms are autonomous but not isolated, the plan establishing a relationship among each contigous space, encouraging the circulation among the living areas.'

http://socks-studio.com/2014/04/08/the-plan-is-a-society-of-rooms-goldenberg-house-by-louis-kahn-1959/

13.1.17


E-015
Incremental Housing, Belapur, New Bombay . Charles Correa . 1983-86


'Based on observation of traditional Indian settlements, he has suggested that cities should be developed using a spatial hierarchy which ranges from the private world of the individual dwelling, through the ‘doorstep’, to the communal court (which traditionally contains the well or common tap), to the greater public space - the maidan – the public promenade of the community. The geometry of Belapur is a direct interpretation of this syntax. The basic element is the house. For Correa ‘the territorial privacy of families is of primary importance, and he believes that, in the Indian climate, ‘open-to-the-sky space’ is essential for family life. So each house has a private yard in which is a lavatory block. Lavatories are paired to reduce service runs and three or four pairs of houses are grouped round courts which, in turn, open on to larger public spaces where, given the boundless energy of Indian entrepreneuralism, shops and other enterprises will doubtless quickly spring up.'

https://www.architectural-review.com/rethink/belapur-housing-in-navi-mumbai-india-by-charles-correa/8684855.article

8.1.17


E-014
Teatro Oficina, São Paulo . Lina Bo Bardi . © Iñigo Bujedo Aguirre . 1984

'The building is 9m wide and 50 long and the plan that was developed for the building was to make it a corridor between two important pedestrian areas of the Bexiga neighborhood.
As a public street, this theatre would merge the past and present, the old and the new, architecture and the city, actors and audience – in a theatre without wings or curtains. This is a public street with no space for spectators, only for actors:  The public, the technicians, architecture, architecture and objects are literally on stage with the actors.The theatre is on longer a “box for dreaming in” but a real, possible way of life very close to that of everyday people in the street.'

http://positivedialogues.aaschool.ac.uk/?p=1842

4.1.17


F-005
Paseo San Juan junto a Arco de Triunfo, Barcelona . © Manolo Laguillo . 1980

'Manuel Laguillo (nacido en Madrid en 1953 y residente en Barcelona) es una figura de referencia en el documentalismo urbano, por la persistencia en su estilo descriptivo. Su trabajo es indisociable de la representación de la ciudad de Barcelona y sus transformaciones.'

http://www.cadadiaunfotografo.com/2011/06/manolo-laguillo.html