Some old pictures of the MAISON DE VERRE http://architecture-history.org/architects/architects/CHAREAU/OBJ/1928-1931,%20Maison%20de%20Verre,%20Paris,%20FRANCE.html

OSCAR NIEMEYER, 1956-1958, NATIONAL CONGRESS, Brasília, BRAZIL This is one of the buildings which, with the Palácio de Planalto and the Federal Supreme Court, configure the Praça dos Três Poderes, but unlike the other two it does not house a unitary programme, being required to accomodate two separate assemblies: the House of Deputies and the Senate. Its privileged situation, at the final point of the perspective along the monumental axis, which makes this one of the city's major landmarks, demanded the creation of a building that would communicate its force over considerable distances. This is accomplished by translating the duality of functions into a duality of architectonic expression. The parliament building marks out a long horizontal line broken only by the block of offices, and from a distance the complex appears as a continuation of the square, on which the cupolas of the House of Deputies and the Senate seem to rest. The office towers stand out as notable landmarks, and assume the character of decisive elements in the city's skyline. http://architecture-history.org/architects/architects/NIEMEYER/OBJECTS/1956-1958,%20NATIONAL%20CONGRESS,%20Bras%C3%ADlia,%20BRAZIL.html

PAUL RUDOLPH, 1973-1978, 23 Beekman Place, New York, USA
 

It would be hard to imagine a more audacious treatment of a traditional brownstone than this four-story addition constructed of exposed neo-Miesian steelwork with a wooden sub-frame and concrete infill. Rudolph has exploited this bold gesture of building a house on top of : a house as an occasion for creating a dynamic spatial sequence as much concerned with the vertiginous vertical space within as with longitudinal extension of the volume toward the river. The former is most evident in the clear plastic decking of the footbridges that connect the riserless staircase running throughout the section to serve the various levels that articulate the internal volume. At the same time the vertical displacement in space is touched with a playful voyeurism a as we may judge from the transparent jacuzzi and sink in the main bathroom opening to the spaces below. The same sink, when artificially lit, is intended to function as an internal fountain compounded of light and water. 

http://architecture-history.org/architects/architects/RUDOLPH/OBJ/1977-1995,%2023%20Beekman%20Place,%20New%20York,%20USA.html

LOUIS I. KAHN, 1966-1972, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, USA When the Kimbell Art Museum was officially opened to the public in 1972, it marked another aesthetic achievement in the oeuvre of Louis I. Kahn and introduced a new institution with a considerable presence in Texas, and indeed, the art world at large. Situated in a park setting, the museum's nine-and-a-half-acre trapezoidal site is adjacent to other prominent museums, most notably the Amon Carter Museum, designed by Philip Johnson, which opened in 1961.

Mr. and Mrs. Kay Kimbell, after whom the institution is named, established a foundation to erect an art museum to house their growing collection. The board of the Kimbell Art Foundation-which had been established as early as 1936-hired Richard F. Brown as director of the museum in 1965 to realize the vision of and conceive a pro- gram for the institution as well as augment its collection. Brown selected Kahn for the commission; however, the contract required that the architect collaborate with Preston M. Geren & Associates, a local architectural firm. As with many institutions that realize their first building, the program took into account the future goals of the museum, allocating vast space to the expanding art collection, which would put the institution on the map and make it one of the city's major attractions.

Kahn, who never settled for easy or first solutions, took three years to produce four design proposals for the museum. The one leitmotif running through all his proposals was the employment of horizontal cycloid roofs/ceilings. As with most of his buildings, Kahn managed to come up with features that contextualized and lent unique character to the project. The signature roofs/ceilings are just such examples, firmly associating the structure with the once rural setting of Fort Worth. Specifically, in the distance and at one time visible from the site-was a grain silo (which has since been torn down). Ideologically, one can see and better understand how the overall form of a grain silo (which is comprised of a series of vaulted forms separated by a flat surface) conceptually deplaced from its vertical condition and resituated horizontally in the landscape, becomes the framework for the roof/ceiling configuration. These cycloid forms-be they employed vertically or horizontally-are the very elements that char- acterize and contextualize the Kimbell Art Museum in its Texas landscape. http://architecture-history.org/architects/architects/KAHN%202/OBJECTS/1966-1972,%20Kimbell%20Art%20Museum,%20Fort%20Worth,%20USA.html

CONSTRUCTIVISM For the 15 or so years of its existence, from the first years of Soviet power to the early 1930s, Constructivism endeavored to alter conceptions of architectural space, to create an environment that would inculcate new social values, and at the same time to use advanced structural and technological principles. Paradoxically, the poverty and social chaos of the early revolutionary years propelled architects toward radical ideas of design, many of which were related to an already thriving modernist movement in the visual arts. For example, El Lissitzky’s concepts of space and form, along with those of Kazimir Malevich (1878–1935) and Vladimir Tatlin (1885–1953), played a major part in the development of an architecture expressed in “stereometric forms,” purified of the decorative elements of the eclectic past.

The experiments of Lissitzky, Vasily Kandinsky, and Malevich in painting and of Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko (1891–1956) in sculpture had created the possibility of a new architectural movement, defined by Lissitzky as a synthesis with painting and sculpture. http://architecture-history.org/schools/CONSTRUCTIVISM.html

RENZO PIANO, 1991-1997, BEYELER FOUNDATION MUSEUM, RIEHEN, SWITZERLAND After working with Mme. de Menil, my experience with collectors was enriched by my collaboration with Ernst Beyeler. In some ways, they are alike, and they have helped me understand the spirit that motivates these present-day artistic patrons. The artist creates a work, but the collector creates a collection; it is their work of art, their way to express sensitivity and love of beauty. By creating museums, collectors provide homes for their creations, protecting them against the risks of the world forever, and at the same time giving them a second identity. A picture will be remembered not just as a Picasso or a Kandinsky but also as a piece in the Beyeler collection. Ernst Beyeler is a very demanding man, it must be said, especially of himself. He is a perfectionist who does not like surprises. Before giving me the job, he wanted to see all my previous works. He is a watchful and hands-on client who wanted to create a close collaboration. I always had to take great care to understand and interpret his desires, as well as to be very forceful, to stop myself from being dragged down the wrong road. Piano, Renzo, The Renzo Piano logbook, Monacelli Press, 1997 http://architecture-history.org/architects/architects/PIANO/OBJ/1991-1997,%20BEYELER%20FOUNDATION%20MUSEUM,%20RIEHEN,%C2%A0SWITZERLAND.html

AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS Although not the seat of government, Amsterdam, in the province of North Holland, is the acknowledged capital (hoofdstad) of the Netherlands and, until World War II, was its architectural leader. Its local professional groups—Architectura et Amicitia, De 8, and Groep 32—were successively at the forefront of innovation, and despite the subsequent evaporation of regional hierarchies, the city has retained its prominence. Its inclusive and diversified buildings, especially those from the first third of the century as well as from its final decade, are endowed with a specifically local flavor, even when responding to more global design trends. Amsterdam’s watery foundations (many of the buildings rest on wooden pilings) and extensive network of canals and islands, no less than its distribution into distinctive quarters, ensure its unique character. Although 20th-century structures are interspersed among the picturesque remnants of the older city, the majority of these buildings were planted in an encircling girdle that extends dramatically but deliberately from the historic core. In Amsterdam, chronology and geography After the Golden Age of the 17th century, the cosmopolitan and prosperous harbor city became a somnolent town with a declining population until belated industrialization and the construction of international canals and railways commenced in the late 19th century and Amsterdam awoke to an expansive future, with concomitant woes (a desperate housing shortage, ruthless demolition, tactless road building, and the filling in of canals and open space) and wonders (prosperity generating provocative new construction). Thanks to the National Housing Act (Woningwet) of 1901, which required Dutch municipalities to provide extension plans and building codes (which in Amsterdam included aesthetic prescriptions), the city’s development proceeded responsibly. Initially, the main augmentations were southward, but eventually rings of buildings surrounded it in all directions. In the 1920s, Amsterdam was called the “Mecca of housing”; its social democratic administration insisted that dwellings answer artistic demands, serve the community, and embody the cultural aspirations of the working and lower-middle classes. Housing has continued to be the dominant building type. http://architecture-history.org/schools/AMSTERDAM.html

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT, 1923, Ennis House, Los Angeles, USA A significant portion of the Charles Ennis house is dedicated to the massive concrete block retaining walls that support the building on the steeply-pitched hillside. Other concrete block houses designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, constructed in the same region and around the same time, exhibit a more typical scale in line with his approach to residential architecture. Wright referred to this as "human scale," intending to reduce the traditional unnecessary heights to a level that suits the occupants. However, the Ennis house deviates from this rule: its rooms have high ceilings, which results in the concrete block mass rising above the window lines.

In terms of the floor plan, the house essentially consists of two bedrooms, with a guest room located adjacent to the dining room. The bedrooms for the original owners are separated from each other and connected by a long enclosed gallery and an open terrace. The dining room, kitchen, and guest room are situated on a raised level above the living room. This residence is one of the last designed by Frank Lloyd Wright to feature stained glass and one of the first, alongside the nearby Freeman house, to incorporate mitred glass windows. The design's monumental nature is somewhat softened and made more human by the scale of the concrete blocks and the combination of plain and patterned blocks. http://architecture-history.org/architects/architects/WRIGHT/OBJECTS/1923,%20Ennis%20House,%20Los%20Angeles,%20USA.html

READ ABOUT ARCHITECTURE Architecture Matters

Betsky, Aaron The architecture of the Renaissance

Benevolo, Leonardo The Eternal Present, Volume I: The Beginnings of Art

Giedion, Sigfried The Eternal Present, Volume II: The Beginnings of Architecture

Giedion, Sigfried Unpacking My Library: Architects and their Books

Steffens, Jo Follow the link to download the books.

VILLA E-1027 was designed in 1926-29 as a summer house by Irish designer Eileen Gray (1878–1976) with her partner Jean Badovici. It takes its name from the position of their initials in the alphabet – E for Eileen, 10 for J, 2 for B and 7 for Gray.

The modernist villa was built over two storeys into a terrace on a hillside overlooking the French Riviera, and featured built-in and separate furniture designed by Gray including her famous E-1027 side table. Le Corbusier, who was later to build his Cabanon retreat on an adjacent site, visited the house in 1938-89 as a guest of Badovici and added his own murals. The house fell into neglect for many years before being taken into public ownership and restored as part of the Cap Moderne site.