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Post-Modern is often characterised by the pursuit of local and contingent theories unlike the grand and totalising theory of modernism. In architecture, the Po-Mo approach has brought about a keen interest and detailed study of the oft unknown and unrecognised contributors to the field of building - the brick masons, the stone masons, the carpenters, the potters, other craftspersons and also women, whose contribution habitually goes unnoticed.
Recent thinking has also been to reposition architecture into the social sciences, so that architectural development can be seen in conjunction with other areas of culture.
Supported by the Homi Bhabha Fellowships Council, Hidden Hands - Masterbuilders of Goa by Heta Pandit not only presents the architecture of Goan houses through crafts that went to make them; it is also a narrative that attempts to link the historical, environmental, social and cultural framework that has produced the distinctive architectural style of Goa.
While elements of the Pre-Portuguese period exist, it was during the Portuguese rule that a distinctive architectural "Goanese" style evolved. In the Early Phase (1510 A.D-1750 A.D.), the Church and the army played a dominating role. Having come to trade, by force if needed, the major buildings of this period were the fortress-factories and churches and c
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Recent events have played into the hands of those who believe that architecture has lost its way and become - in some cases fatally - too fancy for its own good. Last week's report on the collapse in May of the Paul Andreu-designed terminal at Charles de Gaulle airport outside Paris, which killed four people, came amid the sudden critical scrutiny of and public scandals over Andreu's opera house under construction in Beijing.
There were the problems with Santiago Calatrava's roof for the Olympic Stadium in Athens. The Whitney Museum in New York dismissed Rem Koolhaas's plans for its extended galleries on the grounds that they were too bold and expensive. And in the squabble over Ground Zero, the only thing the competing designers seem to agree on is the need to build a Freedom Tower vastly taller than most New Yorkers would feel safe living and working in.
These setbacks and controversies have allowed sober-minded skeptics to accuse the profession of abandoning its original purpose - holding up a roof and keeping out the weather - in favor of reckless and phantasmagorical aesthetic effects, best exemplified by the wavy titanium surfaces of Frank Gehry's Bilbao Guggenheim or the angled walls of Koolhaas' new Central Library in Seattle.
Thus the fate of Andreu's "prestige" airport terminal seems a most old-fashione
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Ronald McDonald, McDonald's Chief Happiness Officer, today introduced the bold, one-of-a-kind futuristic restaurant design which will be the company's Chicago flagship site at 600 N. Clark St. Today's event marks the beginning of the company's 50th anniversary celebration. McDonald's founder Ray Kroc opened his first restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois, on April 15, 1955.
The new restaurant, slated to open in April 2005, will meld the past with the future by incorporating Ray's 'red and white' design of his first McDonald's while offering customers a contemporary restaurant with Wi-Fi and other innovative features.
"We're thrilled that McDonald's has decided to rebuild on this site in honor of their 50th anniversary next year," said Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. "This new restaurant will be a landmark destination for tourists and city residents. The company has done a great job creating a unique and attractive destination, and we are pleased that McDonald's is participating in the city's Green Roof initiative by integrating rooftop greenery into the design."
This destination will replace the "Rock 'n' Roll McDonald's," which is the third busiest McDonald's restaurant in the United States, and 12th busiest in the world. Highlighted by two 60-ft. tall Golden Arches, the flagship site will serve twice as many customers
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Dennis Duffy takes much the same approach to his interior design work as his most famous client, Red Sox star Manny Ramirez, takes to his sweet swing.
Clean, no-nonsense and, of course, dynamic.
Duffy worked with Ramirez and his wife on their posh condominium at the Ritz-Carlton Boston Common and their love-inspired home in Florida. The jobs hastened Duffy's ascension to coveted status as one of the most sought-after designers in the city. The blue-eyed talent just landed several commercial jobs (including work for One Charles, the condo project on Charles Street South) and recently unveiled a line of furniture that bears his name. Duffy's so busy he can't take new clients until the fall.
"He's glamorous and he's talented and he's handsome. He could be a diva, but he's not," said Rick Garofalo, president of Repertoire, where Duffy first worked in Boston in the late 1990s.
Most of Duffy's work is in private homes, and many clients are repeats. One, a high-tech investor, hired him to renovate her contemporary Sherborn home. Happy with the results - "It looks like my house, but better," said the client, who did not want to give her name - the woman had Duffy do her five-bedroom Florida home and then "odds and ends" in her Four Seasons condominium.
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From the moment it opened in 1975, Cesar Pelli's massive and daring Pacific Design Center, with its almost startlingly blue glass exterior, became an instant icon, looming over the surrounding small houses and shops and helping to give this neighborhood, which was incorporated as a city in 1984, a distinct identity.
But for much of its history, the so-called blue whale - 135 feet high, 245 feet wide and 530 feet long, with 750,000 square feet of showroom space for furniture and fabrics - has also been viewed as a gorgeous fortress, off limits to all but the rarefied world of high-end interior designers and their well-heeled clients.
A sister building of brilliant green glass, also designed by Mr. Pelli, was completed in 1988, but it had trouble attracting tenants, never becoming more than half full. And in the 1990's, as a design district began springing up in the area surrounding the design center, even the blue whale itself seemed precariously close to turning into a white elephant. Both buildings, however, have recently been revived.
In 1999, Charles Steven Cohen, president and chief executive of the Cohen Brothers Realty Corporation, a New York real estate company, together with Cheslock-Bakker Associates, a private investment firm in Stamford, Conn., bought the Pacific Design Center for about $157 million from the
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