*️⃣Unité d'Habitation of Berlin

Architect #LeCorbusier #Corbusier
City #Berlin
Country #Germany #EU

🔤The post war isolation of West Berlin had made it difficult to rebuild the city. In the same time the East German government, with support from the Soviet Union, had built a whole new housing section in East Berlin. In an effort to compete with the East German accomplishment, the Senate of West Berlin created the IBA (International Building Exhibition or Interbau). Le Corbusier had just completed his Unité in Marseille in 1952 and it was arguably the most famous social housing project in the world and it was especially him who was invited to participate in the IBA.

Walter Gropius said about the Unité: "Any architect who does not find this building beautiful, had better lay down his pencil."

#quote@simoderna

Read ful history in Wikipedia.

The building is constructed in béton brut (rough-cast concrete) and is part of the initial architecture style we know today as brutalism. The structure was built with on site prefab cast concrete panels and poured ceiling slabs. The Modulor system is the base measure of the Unité and Corbusier used not more than 15 Modulor measures to construct the entire structure form. There is a polychrome as Le Corbusier tends to do in all his works, using red, yellow, blue and green.

🔤
Colour #mixed
Material #rawconcrete
Function #residential
Feature #retro
Address: Flatowallee 16, 14055 Berlin, Germany
Google street
Front side google street
Washing room google street
Google earth

©️
pics by #DavidAltrath
text by Wikipedia

channel map

*️⃣Dream Downtown Hotel

Architect #Handel
City #NewYork
Country #USA #NA

🔤In 1964, the National Maritime Union of America commissioned New Orleans-based architect Albert Ledner to design a new headquarters for the Union. Two years later, he designed an annex for the headquarters on the site where Dream currently sits. In 2006, Handel Architects was engaged to convert the complex into the Dream Downtown Hotel. #renovation

The "otherness" of Ledner’s 1966 design was critical to preserve. Along the 17th Street exposure, the sloped façade was clad in stainless steel tiles, which were placed in a running bond pattern like the original mosaic tiles of Ledner’s Union building. New porthole windows were added, one of the same dimension as the original and one half the size, loosening the rigid grid of the previous design.

The 16th Street side of the building, previously a blank façade when the building served as an annex, was given new life.
The skin is constructed of two perforated stainless steel layers, its top sheet of holes a replication of the 17th Street punched-window design and the inner sheet a regular perforation pattern.

🔤
Colour #metallic
Material #aluminium
Function #hospitality #hotel
Feature: #heritage
Address: 355 W 16th St, New York, NY 10011, United States
Google street
Google street 2
Google earth

©️
pics by #Damonte and Phillip Ennis
text by architects and Archdaily

channel map

*️⃣Church on the Water

Architect #Ando #TadaoAndo
City #Nakatomamu close to #Sapporo
Country #Japan #AP

🔤It is a small chapel which is attached to the Alpha Resort hotel. Ando establishes a sacred chamber, isolated from the mundane and focuses all the visuals toward a small forest of birch trees through which a stream flows.

Ando has substituted the frontal wall of the temple, in which there would traditionally be divine images of certain religious significance, with a more vivid and eloquent representation of the Creator: nature itself.

In this way, he creates a living, multicolour and ever-changing scene, that changes from the sepia tones of autumn to the glaucous hues of winter; from the florid blooms of spring to the intense greens of summer.

This concept, known as "shakkei" (借景) or "borrowed scenery," integrates nature as part of the interior space.

"You cannot simply put something new into a place. You have to absorb what you see around you, what exists on the land, and then use that knowledge along with contemporary thinking to interpret what you see." – Tadao Ando.

#quote@simoderna

🔤
Material #rawconcrete
Function #religious
Feature #retro #water
Address: Nakatomamu, Shimukappu, Yufutsu District, Hokkaido 079-2204, Japan
Google street
Cross roof google street

©️
pics by #HirofumiInaba, Yoshio Shiratori, Wikipedia and Pinterest
text by Wikiarquitectura and japanarch.com

*️⃣TWA Hotel

Architect #Saarinen #EeroSaarinen
Refurbishment by
#BeyerBlinderBelle #BBB
City #NewYork
Country #USA #NA

🔤Constructed between 1959 and 1962, its wing-like roof, supported by “Y”-shaped piers, captures an era of optimism in air travel. Saarinen compared its shape to the “Leonardo da Vinci flying machine.” However the architect never claimed that his design was meant to represent anything physical; it was, he insisted, an abstraction of the idea of flight itself.

This innovative design showcases thin-shell construction, with a reinforced concrete shell roof supported at the corners, and incorporates elements of Neo-futurist architectural style.

Inside, the vast open space, framed by tall windows and the tube-shaped departure-arrival corridors, facilitates the efficient movement of passengers and their belongings.

Although parts of the original structure were demolished, the head house was adapted into the TWA Hotel in 2019. #refurbishment

🔤
Colour #red
Material #concrete
Function #hospitality #hotel
Feature #retro #interior #heritage
Address: 1 Idlewild Dr, Queens, NY 11430, United States
Google street
Evening google street
Google earth

©️
pics by #StewartCohen and inc.nyc
text by Archeyes and Archdaily

#bonus@simoderna (Catch me if you can movie had a scene filmed here)

*️⃣Westfriedhof station

Architect #AuerWeber (station) Designer #IngoMaurer (lights)
City #Munich
Country #Germany #EU

🔤Together with the rough walls, the station is reminiscent of a cave. Originally, the architect had planned a glass pane in front of the walls, but he liked it better that way. However, the walls had to be secured with a steel net in 2003, as individual pieces had loosened from the wall time and again.

The light comes from eleven lamps, each 3.80 metres in diameter, which have luminaires in blue, red and yellow. At the western end sunlight falls in. This divides the platform into different colours.

Because of its lighting design, it is occasionally used as a photo motif by advertising agencies and the special atmosphere has also been used as a record cover ("Keep on Movin', by the Haggis Horns").

🔤
Colour #blue
Material #stone
Function #transportation #metro
Feature #retro #interior
Address: 5G9H+QC7 Munich, Germany
Google street

©️
pics by #MarcusTollhopf
text by Wikipedia