Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand was an architect and professor who developed a process of architectural systematization based on a square frame. His theory is augmented by numerous architectural references, organized by typology.
Japan Architect, Theoretical Architecture and Graphic Representation
Japan Architect is an international magazine aimed at promoting contemporary Japanese architecture through projects, theoretical drawings and essays.
Hypogeum, The Funeral Tower
The funeral tower is the result of an analysis of the hypogea found in the Valley of the Kings in Thebes. The succession of different types of hypogea forms a framework where the full and empty spaces dialogue along a vertical funeral procession.
Lina Bo Bardi, Casa sul Mare di Sicilia
La Casa sul Mare di Sicilia is a theoretical project by Lina Bo Bardi designed in 1940 for the magazine Domus. She designed a Mediterranean house, integrated in the landscape, and built using the collective cultural imaginary.
André Ravéreau, Musée d’Art Musulman d’Alger
André Ravéreau was a French architect, emigrated to Algeria, who knew how to inscribe his projects in the entirety of a culture, its climate, its location, its constructive knowledge.
Vertical City and Urban Fiction
The Austrian experimental scene of the 1960s marked the architecture of its time. It brought together a great generation of avant-garde Austrian architects and artists such as Walter Pichler, Hans Hollein and Raimund Abraham. This prestigious group notably influenced the (often theoretical) production of many international architects of the 60s and 70s. In successive exhibitions, architectural, urban and technological themes were questioned and models such as vertical city were explored.
Compact City, Primitive Forms and High Tech Language
With the Compact City project, Walter Pichler reinterprets architectural themes that were much discussed in the 1960s. He explored through modeling and drawing an alternative, mixing high-tech architecture and primitive influence.
Walter Pichler, Nucleus and Underground Building
Walter Pichler was an Austrian artist who produced a large number of drawings and sculptures, with the aim of exploring the relationship between object and space. Very influenced by the archaic civilizations he designed many projects of underground buildings articulated around nucleus, making these constructions real machines.
Palais de la Découverte, Technical Monumentality and Ovoid Forms
During the 1937 Paris Universal Exhibition, three adopted French architects proposed a highly technical building, the Palais de la Découverte (Palace of Discovery), far removed from the new theories of modern architecture.
La Maison de la Publicité, an High Tech Architecture Ahead of its Time
La Maison de la Publicité is a project designed by Oscar Nitzchke in 1936. The building, a kind of media machine, presents a façade with a fine metallic structure, covered with changing advertisements, long before the first examples of high-tech architecture.