Dior

If you’re drawn to over-priced luxury you’ll love the Dior flagship store designed by Pritzker prize winners SANAA. If you’re interested in architecture that delivers a spatial experience in a beautifully designed package, you’ll probably be somewhat disappointed. As far as beautiful packages go, the building certainly delivers. Unfortunately, a quick wander inside reveals yet ...

Encapsulate

Kisho Kurokawa‘s Capsule Tower, located in the Ginza District in Tokyo defies gravity on many levels. In terms of physical gravity, it’s attached rather precariously to a support core that frankly appears to the untrained eye somewhat under-engineered. Another ode to the building’s persistance is its ability to push back redevelopment efforts in what is ...

Big In Japan

After many years of dreaming to visit Japan I had the good fortune of visiting for the first time this past October. In addition to constantly experimenting with the fine food on offer I took every chance I could get to visit renowned buildings that have been an inspiration over the years. I have many ...

Portugal And Back

I was recently back in Portugal to visit my family, and had the chance to visit some projects that have been on my radar for a while now. The range and diversity of architectural practice coming out of this small country continues to be a valuable resource for me, and seeing these buildings in person ...

Exit A

OMA

Barragan

The Luis Barragan house, located in Mexico City, is deservedly appreciated but somewhat underwhelming. I wasn’t very enamored with the low freestanding bookshelves organizing the large open living/work area of the house; these furniture elements were quite reduced in relation to the very tall ceilings, yet oddly claustrophobic. Secondary areas, such as a central stairwell and studio, ...

Cubism

Daniel Libeskind’s Contemporary Jewish Museum, located in the heart of the budding gallery district of Yerba Buena in downtown San Francisco, has enjoyed a remarkably smooth transition into the urban fabric. In a city that tends to be relatively conservative when it comes to architecture on the edge of mainstream design, the museum has not ...

Eiffel’s Apprentice’s Elevator

Designed by Raul Mesnier de Ponsard, apprentice to that other engineer Gustave Eiffel, the Santa Justa Elevator located in the heart of downtown Lisbon continues the fine tradition of moving lazy or delayed commuters from point A to point B. It’s rather slow, and the persistent line of tourists means that you wait for a ...

Mental Physics, Redux

Another wall, same building. .

Hell Yes

Akin to “Yes We Can”, but with more New York attitude. Designed by Japanese minimal masters SANAA, the New Museum strikes the pose of the dame in the midst of the rough and tumble boogie-woogie cityscape that is the Bowery. Fine Art and used furniture stores – go see it because it won’t be that ...

De Young Museum

The De Young Museum, a wonderful example of contemporary modern architecture, located in the heart of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

Disney Concert Hall

One of the aspects of architecture that was pounded into me year after year during my formative years was the perpetually misunderstood notion of scale. Scale has many aspects to it, one of the most important being the relationship and proportion of adjacent volumes to each other. Over the years my sense of scale and ...

Frei Otto’s Olympic Stadium

Sometime last decade I went to Munich to visit the Olympic Stadium, design by Frei Otto. The magnificence of the roof structure is complemented by a sea of chairs, in which the shade of green is varied ever so slightly from one to the other. The effect is both mesmerizing and soothing, and must have ...

Gare de Oriente

Photographs of a Santiago Calatrava designed train station in Lisbon, Portugal.

Mental Physics

A night at the Harmony Motel in Joshua Tree, made famous by Irish rock band U2, which stayed here during the production of the Joshua Tree album, coupled with a visit to the Mentalphysics Institute, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, made for an interesting day.

Itze-Leib Schmuilowsky

Itze-Leib Schmuilowsky, better known as Louis Kahn, designed the renowned Salk Institute near San Diego, CA. This building has long been on my radar ever since I moved to San Francisco almost 6 years ago. My first attempt, 5 years ago, to visit this famed example of 20th Century design ended in disappointment, as it ...

Cooper Union by Morphosis

Cooper Union Building by Morphosis