Anchor Blocks were a German system of building blocks that were popular as a children’s construction toy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, notably in Europe. Dr F. Ad. Richter in Rudolstadt, Germany, began developing and manufacturing the system in 1879. The concept was based on the FROEBEL block system, which significantly impacted Frank Lloyd WRIGHT’s design philosophy.Read More →
Oscar Onken (1858 – 1948) was an American entrepreneur. He was professionally active in Ohio. Onken was a prominent businessman and philanthropist. Impressed with the Gustav Stickley and Austrian stands at the 1904 St. Louis ‘Louisiana Purchase Exposition,’ he founded The Shop of the Crafts in Cincinnati in 1904. Read More →
Encouraging architects to work together. READ MORERead More →
Victor Horta (1861–1947) was a Belgian architect and designer. He is considered one of the founders of the Art Nouveau movement. His Hôtel Tassel is often considered Belgium’s first house. Four of the buildings he designed have been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Maison du Peuple/Volkshuis was the headquarters for the Belgian Workers’ Party from 1895 to 1899. The Center for Fine Arts in Brussels is considered one of the finest examples of Art Nouveau. Some of his most representative designs include those of the Hotel Tassel and the Hotel Solvay.Read More →
The design of the Sydney Opera House (1956-73), which he won in an international competition, was Utzon’s crowning achievement. He envisioned a solid sculptural building made of a series of giant interlocking billowing white ‘sails’ inspired by the ships of Sydney Harbour.Read More →
Gruppo 9999 was a group of radical architects founded in Florence in 1968 by Giorgio Birelli, Carlo Caldini, Fabrizio Fiumi and Paolo Galli. Read More →
L’Esprit Nouveau. The pavillion was named after Le Corbusier’s magazine, L’Esprit Nouveau, which he started in 1920 to spread the word about his own work and that of other artists of the time.Read More →
Moderne was a decorative style that was mostly about how things looked on the outside. Moderne architecture was most noticeable in public buildings like skyscrapers and movie theatres. Postmodernism later brought back a lot of the styles that were part of the moderne movement.Read More →
Unit One was a British avant-garde community of architects and fine artists were created by designer, artist, and teacher Paul Nash to encourage Modernism in art and architecture in England. Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, and Ben Nicholson were among the group’s most prominent members, as were the architects’ Wells Coates and Colin Lucas. Read More →
From 1977 to 1983, he worked as the chief editor of the design magazine Modo and as a consultant for the fashion magazine Donna. She designed interiors for Driade, Gianfranco Ferré, Montres and GFF Duty Free, Fontana Arte, Granciclismo sports machines, and Morassutti/Metropolis, as well as serving as an image and product consultant for the Croff/Rinascente chain. Read More →
With his motto ‘form follows function,’ American architect Louis Sullivan is considered the founder of 20th-century Functionalism. Functionalism became a label for an extremely wide variety of avant-garde architecture and design in the first half of the 20th century, including Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s classical Rationalism, Erich Mendelsohn’s Expressionism, Giuseppe Terragni’s unadorned, heroic structures, Frank Lloyd Wright’s organic architecture, and Le Corbusier’s Cubist solids. Read More →
Ulrich Franzen, the German-born American architect, was a leading figure in the first post-war generation of American architects; including Paul Rudolph, Harry Cobb, John Maclane Johansen, and Philip Johnson. Read More →
“Common sense and conventional practice prohibit the evolution of architecture.” This is the first quote you find reading Tom Ngo’s Master’s thesis: The Dinner Address, A Venture into Architectural Absurdity. Read More →
Berthold Lubetkin (1901 – 1990) was a Russian-British modernist designer. He was a Russian emigre who came to London via the October Revolution of 1917. Read More →
Kaare Klint – Danish furniture designer. The Danes were greatly influenced by Germany’s Bauhaus movement in the early part of the twentieth century. Read More →
The MARS Group, or Modern Architectural Research Group, was a British architectural think tank created in 1933 by numerous famous architects and architectural critics participating in the British modernist movement. The MARS Group was created after several prior but unsuccessful attempts to establish an organization to promote modernist architects in the United Kingdom, similar to organizations created in continental Europe, such as France’s Union des Artistes Modernes.Read More →
Between 1905 and 1907, he worked as an apprentice to architect and furniture designer Bruno Paul in Berlin, where he studied wooden furniture design. He created furniture for all of his early homes, including the Werner residence.Read More →
Adalberto Dal Lago is an Italian architect and designer: born and active Milan. He was an assistant, Facolta di Architettura, Politecnico di Milano from 1964-70 and subsequently chair of interior design and then of the elements of composition. He published books on design and Modern architecture. The European Council commissioned him and architect Marco Zanus to publish a postwar European design book. Read More →
Sven Markeilus (1889- 1972) was a Swedish Architect, Town Planner and textile designer born in Stockholm.
He taught in Stockholm and at Yale University. In the 1950s, Markelius designed simple wooden furniture and printed fabrics with Astrid Sampe, produced by Nordiska in Stockholm.Read More →
Ben and Meag Poirier (Ben and Meag aren’t the first (or, for that matter, the last) couple to turn a bus into a modest mobile home.Read More →