In which we continue with excerpts from The Language of Post-Modern Architecture by Charles Jencks. I’m still reading the sequel, The New Paradigm in Architecture, on the subway, and am appalled at the copy errors (and glittery “high-class” typography of Walbaum on coated stock).
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PAOLO PORTOGHESI & VITTORIO GIGLIOTTI, Casa Baldi 1, Rome, 1959–61. Half Baroque, half modern in its curves and materials. The wall planes curve to acknowledge windows or doors, or create overlapping foci of space. Unlike later buildings by the same architects, the forms aren’t entirely sculptural, but keep semantic memories (e.g., cornice, building block, closed bedroom).
[LoPMA 81:134] -
KIYONORI KIKUTAKE, Tokoen Hotel [東光園], Kaike Spa, Yonago[, Japan], 1963–64. The “Japan Style” is evident in the constructional elements and the roof restaurant with its gentle curves. In addition, the building is highly readable and broken into different semantic areas: Boardrooms and conference rooms at the base, and open deck, two levels of hotel rooms (on the inside proportioned by tatami mats), and the vertical stairway.
[LoPMA 86:144] -
ROBERT, MATTHEW, JOHNSON-MARSHALL & PARTNERS [names corrected from original], Hillingdon Civic Centre, 1974–77. Decorative brickwork around the windows, a large bureaucracy fragmented in to a village scale, a collision of several pitched roofs with Frank Lloyd Wright and “human values.” The building is also curiously reminiscent of the large nineteenth-century resort hotels in America. The architects consciously attempted to design within the users’ language.
[LoPMA 98:173] -
BRUCE GOFF, Bavinger House, Norman, Oklahoma, 1957. Goff is the master of ad hoc building, or the Army & Navy Surplus Æsthetic, using any conceivable leftover materials. Here a continuous spiral of space is surrounded by sandstone and rubble picked up on the site. A mast and steel cables lifted from boat technology hold up the roof. But he also uses natural, organic materials, such as the untreated wooden mullions cut from nearby trees. In addition to all this, Goff is the only major architect who uses schlock in a convincing way. He forces us to reëxamine taste-cultures which have heretofore been disregarded.
[LoPMA 107:191]