Within the confines of this quaint church lies a captivating design - a grotto-inspired nave positioned above a ground floor housing classrooms and support rooms. From the exterior, it appears as a solid, cast-in-place, board-formed concrete monolith. However, a closer examination reveals its true nature - an ingenious composition of two thin concrete shells enveloping thirteen parallel structural frames. This suspended sanctuary extends beyond the central structural plinth, cantilevering gracefully at its outer edges. Accessible through a central stair emerging at the heart of the space, this unique church embodies the principles of "la fonction oblique," a visionary concept by Claude Parent and Paul Virilio, challenging the traditional horizontal layouts to inspire future social organizations centered around inclined surfaces.

Drawing inspiration from Virilio's archaeological explorations of World War II bunkers, the church represents the intersection of two convex inclined volumes, intriguingly offset in plan. This meeting point is highlighted by a central skylight, spanning the entire width of the nave, allowing natural light to infuse the space. Departing from the conventional sectional organization of Western churches, the floor defies expectations, gracefully bending both downward and upward towards the altar. Congregants enter directly from below, embracing a dynamic and immersive spiritual experience.

Intriguing and thought-provoking, this small church stands as a testament to visionary design, challenging preconceived notions of sacred spaces, and embracing the beauty of inclined surfaces as a catalyst for social and architectural evolution.

At the heart of the Ford Foundation Headquarters lies a captivating feature - a glazed atrium adorned with an interior garden, carefully crafted to strike a harmonious balance between individual privacy and collective collaboration. Remarkably, the building's program required less space than the permitted buildable volume, presenting an opportunity for the Ford Foundation to transform the surplus area into a valuable civic amenity.

The atrium soars impressively to a height of 179 feet (54.6 meters), thoughtfully situated in the southeast corner of the building, with an asymmetric placement that visually connects the various offices and offers captivating diagonal views towards the East River. The atrium's beauty is enhanced by steel beams spanning an impressive 84 feet (25.6 meters), which support the ten-story glass facades on the south and east sides, ingeniously inviting the public gaze into the interior garden while flooding the courtyard with natural light.

On the north and west sides of the atrium, banks of offices boasting fully glazed windows enable the pleasant greenhouse-like air to circulate, creating a serene and refreshing atmosphere that overlooks the central space. As you ascend to the top, you'll discover the executive suite, a shared dining facility, and a magnificent skylight crowning this extraordinary hollowed-out section.

The Ford Foundation Headquarters' glazed atrium, with its interior garden and innovative design, not only fosters a sense of interconnectedness among its occupants but also opens up to the public as a luminous and welcoming urban oasis.

This building for Cooper Union is designed with a rectangular shape that includes an interesting void section. The building's lower level has slanted concrete pillars that create a smooth connection with the street and offer a view of the public gallery and auditorium spaces below. Inside, there is a central atrium that is twisted and extends through all the floors of the building. This atrium adds natural light and improves air circulation while creating social and visual connections between the floors. The atrium is made up of steel pipes covered with glass-fiber reinforced gypsum and includes beautiful, translucent, back-lit staircases. At the fourth floor, there is a double-height student lounge with great city views that can be accessed by a beautiful staircase that connects the floors. The atrium's shape merges with the west facade's perforated stainless-steel panels, blending the building with its surroundings.

The academic and laboratory building for Cooper Union is a remarkable piece of architecture designed by the architecture firm Morphosis. Here are some additional details about the building:

• - The building is located in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City.
• - The building's design incorporates sustainable features, such as a green roof, energy-efficient lighting, and a rainwater harvesting system.
• - The building is home to various academic and laboratory spaces, including classrooms, offices, and research labs.
• - The design of the building encourages collaboration and interaction among students and faculty members.
• - The building's central atrium is a major architectural feature, with its twisting lattice of steel pipes and back-lit, translucent staircases.
• - The atrium provides natural light, improves air circulation, and creates a unique visual experience for those inside the building.
• - The atrium also serves as a social hub for the building, providing spaces for students and faculty to meet and collaborate.
• - The building's double-height student lounge on the fourth floor provides stunning views of the surrounding cityscape.
• - The building's perforated stainless-steel panels on the west facade reflect the building's urban context and create a distinctive visual effect.

Bullet points summarizing the main features of the building:

• Rectangular shape with a complex, figural sectional void
• Slanted concrete piers at ground level for a fluid connection with the street and visual access to public gallery and auditorium spaces below
• Central atrium that extends through all the floors of the building, improving air circulation, adding natural light, and creating social and visual connections between the floors
• Twisting lattice of steel pipes encased in glass-fiber reinforced gypsum and back-lit, translucent staircases in the atrium
• Double-height student lounge on the fourth floor with city views
• Perforated stainless-steel panels on the west facade reflecting the building's urban context

 Are you a fan of movies and architecture? If so, then you'll love this blog post! In this post, we're going to take a look at some of the coolest movies featuring architects. From inspiring documentaries to thrilling dramas, these movies showcase the creative and innovative work of architects and the impact they have on our built environment. So, whether you're an architecture student, a design enthusiast, or just a movie buff looking for some inspiration, you won't want to miss out on these must-see films. Get ready to sit back, relax, and be inspired by the captivating stories of these architects and their groundbreaking work on the big screen.

Here are some movies featuring architects:

1. "My Architect" (2003) - a documentary about the life and work of Louis Kahn, directed by his son Nathaniel Kahn.

2. "The Fountainhead" (1949) - an adaptation of Ayn Rand's novel, starring Gary Cooper as an individualistic architect fighting against conformity and mediocrity.

3. "Playtime" (1967) - directed by Jacques Tati, this film features a memorable scene in a modern office building designed by a team of architects.

4. "Blade Runner" (1982) - while not explicitly about architecture, this science fiction classic features stunning set design and futuristic buildings.

5. "The Belly of an Architect" (1987) - directed by Peter Greenaway, this film follows an American architect struggling to complete a project in Rome while dealing with personal issues.

6. "The Matrix Reloaded" (2003) - the character of the Merovingian, played by Lambert Wilson, is a self-described "traffic control" for the Matrix who also happens to be an architect.

7. "Inception" (2010) - while not specifically about architecture, the film's plot revolves around the manipulation of dreams and includes scenes of intricate cityscapes.

8. "The Grand Budapest Hotel" (2014) - while not centered on architecture, this Wes Anderson film features many of his trademark whimsical buildings and interiors.

9. "The Architect" (2006) - starring Anthony LaPaglia and Viola Davis, this film explores the relationship between an idealistic architect and a troubled family who hires him to design their dream home.

10. "Ex Machina" (2014) - a science fiction film that features a remote research facility with stunning modernist architecture.

It's worth noting that in some cases, the architect is a major character in the film, while in others they may only appear briefly or be mentioned in passing:

• "The Fountainhead" (1949)
• "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House" (1948)
• "The Lake House" (2006)
• "The Architect" (2006)
• "The Last Tycoon" (1976)
• "The Belly of an Architect" (1987)
• "The Towering Inferno" (1974)
• "The Time Traveler's Wife" (2009)
• "The Iron Giant" (1999) - features an architect as a minor character
• "Mirrors" (2008)
• "The Island" (2005)
• "Her" (2013)
• "The Four Seasons" (1981)

 Located along Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana Beach, this museum interlaces linked floors for exhibition and display with floors for retail and restau- rants through an atrium defined by the vertical shear of those levels.

In the rectangular plan, social and exhibition programs are located between two linear bars of circulation, one interior and one exterior. A performance hall is positioned below grade, and an open-air cinema inhabits the roof. On the facade continuous exterior paths and elongated stairs extend the historic Roberto Burle Marx–designed street promenade up the side of the building, transgressing divisions between interior and exterior and allowing direct access to programs above the ground level.


The figures of this vertical circulation provide the building’s image. Along this vertical sequence a portion of the facade’s skin is composed of custom open masonry block, choreographing views out of the museum and allowing light into the museum. Through an intricate combination of incline, stack, vertical shear, and hole, this section amplifies the social and cultural vitality of Rio de Janeiro.

This rectilinear volume contains a research institute and national archives for Dutch television and radio. Limited to a height of 82 ft (25 m) above ground, the building is divided into a thirteen-story block of offices and tech- nical installations, five stories of archives below grade, and three floors of exhibition space floating above a large central hall.

Entered at grade, the space of the central hall extends both down into a stepped canyon crossed by three bridges and up into a ziggurat-shaped void adjacent to the exhibition floors.

The descending and ascending spaces shear in perpendicular directions, torquing the internal space. This sheared section is less notable for its impact on the interiors within the sheared floors than for its shaping of the atrium. Carved into the center of the building, the atrium paradoxically emphasizes the programmatic division among three volumes while joining the assembly of this sheared section into a legible whole.

The Prada flagship store in Tokyo combines an overall figural shape with inset stacked floors and nested tubes to create a steel and glass shopping icon. A structural exoskeleton made from 7-1/16–by–8-1/16-in (18 by 20.5 cm) steel I-sections welded on site and encased in a fire-resistant layer of calcium silicate form a grid of rhomboids, each 10 ft 6 in by 6 ft 6 in (3.2 by 2 m).

The entire building is set into a concrete tub, where isolation mats stabilize the structure during earthquakes. Inside, seven regularly spaced concrete floor slabs span from the exterior skin and interior circulation cores and conceal mechanical and electrical distribution.

Three horizontal tubes, aligned with groups of four rhomboids on the facade, are nested in the floor plates. These tubes enclose areas for changing and checkout and provide lateral stability. Extruded from the diagrid facade, yet embedded within the figural building volume and bifurcating floors, these nested spaces complicate distinctions between exterior and interior or from floor to floor, producing an intricate fusion of skin, structure, space, and form.

Book Reference: 

Manual of Section
https://amzn.to/3yjy9As

The rare book and manuscript library at Yale University demonstrates the capa- city of inset nesting to modulate light and climate through a multilayered con- struction. The outer box is composed of four steel Vierendeel truss walls, clad in faceted stone and precast concrete.

The grid formed by the trusses is inset with 1-1/4-in-thick (3.2 cm) translucent marble panels that filter out ultraviolet rays while providing indirect illumination. The stone container is juxtaposed with an inner box composed of a steel structure and glass panels that provide precise thermal and climatic control.

This glass box allows the tower of fragile books to be placed on full view, yet within a highly controlled environment. An exhibition mezzanine wraps around the nested volume. The walls transfer structural load to four points at the corners, where pillars elevate the stone enclosure off the ground, making the outer frame seem to float monumentally above the stone plaza in the heart of the campus.



A sunken courtyard provides daylight to underground offices and library facilities. While the nested section produces the spectacle of this library, excavated space below contains the primary support facilities for the display above, including seminar rooms, offices, curatorial spaces, and the vast majority of the books.

https://amzn.to/3yjy9As

 “True equilibrium is expressed by the straight line,” wrote Piet Mondrian.

 For him and his modernist allies, that line was inevitably black. Architects like Rietveld, and later the Eameses, gave architectural expression to arrangements of brightly colored planes organized by black.

In the same way, today’s architects and designers use black as an essential structural element.
Aloof from the vagaries of fashion and trendiness, black is a timeless choice. 

 It represents at once a totality—a convergence of all colors—and the most primal act of a designer: Taking black ink to white paper.

Peter Marino + Assoc Architects, Chanel Store, Paris, 2003.

Harrison and Abramovitz, Corning Glass Center, Corning, New York, 1951.

Peter Marino + Assoc Architects, Chanel Store, Paris, 2003. 

Zaha Hadid Architects, Museum of Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, 2003

Zaha Hadid Architects, Museum of Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, 2003.

Zaha Hadid Architects, Museum of Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, 2003.

 

Zaha Hadid Architects, Museum of Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, 2003.

Zaha Hadid Architects, Museum of Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, 2003.

Zaha Hadid Architects, Museum of Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, 2003.

Eric J. Cobb Architect, Stretch Residence, Seattle, 2003

Eric J. Cobb Architect, Stretch Residence, Seattle, 2003.

Eric J. Cobb Architect, Stretch Residence, Seattle, 2003.

 

Eric J. Cobb Architect, Stretch Residence, Seattle, 2003.

Gabellini Associates, Park Avenue Apartment, New York, 1998

Gabellini Associates, Park Avenue Apartment, New York, 1998.

Gabellini Associates, Park Avenue Apartment, New York, 1998.

 

Gabellini Associates, Park Avenue Apartment, New York, 1998.

The image of classical architecture as pristine white marble temples set against the blue sky is largely a figment of the twentieth-century imagination. 

The great Greek and Roman sites were, in their day, effusively polychromous—blue friezes, red capitals, statuary as tarted up as any in Las Vegas.

The multicolored architecture of the Renaissance is epitomized by the white, green and red scheme of the Duomo in Florence. 

In the gray ashes of World War I, the modernist Die Bauwelt published an issue titled “A Call for Color in Building.” Polychromy had became an act of revolution.

  Rockwell Group, Pod Restaurant, Philadelphia, 2000.

 As a response to a structural engineer’s drawing showing the gravitational loads along the building’s façade, the architect decided to allow this sketch to drive the exterior color scheme. Thus, areas in red denote the heaviest loads, those in blue the lightest, with yellow and orange in between.

Sherwood Mills and Smith, St. Mark’s Church,
 New Canaan, Connecticut, 1961.

Sherwood Mills and Smith, St. Mark’s Church, New Canaan, Connecticut, 1961.

 

This is a modern take on the splendid multicolored stained glass windows that were the artistic achievement of the Middle Ages. Here the windows are set in a staggered pattern within walls in a brick herringbone pattern, the light brown color allowing the effusive glass to stand out. Also blending into the background is the white ceiling, acting like a screen onto which streaming shards of color project at key times of the day.

Sherwood Mills and Smith, St. Mark’s Church, New Canaan, Connecticut, 1961.

 

Toshiko Mori Architect, Compound on the Gulf of Mexico,
 Sarasota, Florida, 2002 

Toshiko Mori Architect, Compound on the Gulf of Mexico, Sarasota, Florida, 2002.

 

An entrance hall to a beachfront house sports a prism-shaped skylight whose glass surface manages to change color with the time of day, indeed at times replicating the soft blues and pinks of a Gulf of Mexico sunset. Direct light pours in from an adjoining clerestory window, bouncing off of the angled glass surface and providing diffused light for the owner’s collection of modern art. 

Toshiko Mori Architect, Compound on the Gulf of Mexico, Sarasota, Florida, 2002.

Toshiko Mori Architect, Compound on the Gulf of Mexico, Sarasota, Florida, 2002.

Gisela Stromeyer Design, Club Incognito,
Zurich, 1998.

Gisela Stromeyer Design, Club Incognito, Zurich, 1998.

Five lanterns made of spandex stretched with fiberglass rings are illuminated. This effusive display of color and geometrics is something of a lesson in color interaction. The translucence and transparency of the fabric allows various layers to overlap; thus, blue over yellow yields green; yellow over red, orange.

Gisela Stromeyer Design, Club Incognito, Zurich, 1998.

Gisela Stromeyer Design, Club Incognito, Zurich, 1998.

The Moderns LTD, Rewarding Lives Exhibition for
American Express, New York, 2002. 

The Moderns LTD, Rewarding Lives Exhibition for American Express, New York, 2002.

The multi-hued spatial effects of the fabric-and-steel “tent” structures contrasts with the strictly black-and-white photography of Annie Leibovitz that was on display within. Because of the reflective nature of the fabric, only a small amount of color light is sufficient to give them the appearance of brilliant, oversized gems.

The Moderns LTD, Rewarding Lives Exhibition for American Express, New York, 2002.

The Moderns LTD, Rewarding Lives Exhibition for American Express, New York, 2002.

 Book Reference:
Architecture in Detail: Colors
https://amzn.to/3yfR3bA

Photo by James Woodward. © James Woodward, available from Artifice Images

In plan, the chapel of the Church at Bagsværd is the central space in a rectangular collection of rooms and courtyards, which are framed by perimeter aisles used for circulation throughout the church.

Natural light enters primarily through a large skylight located between the two uppermost folds of the curved ceiling, as well as through the glass ceilings of the perimeter aisles. The surface of this ceiling, which is at its lowest above the entry, compressing space over the congregation, vaults skyward toward the altar and accentuates lines of sight beyond the sacristy.

 A sequence of connected arcs evoking layers of clouds forms the sectional geometry of the ceiling.

 The ceiling is composed of thin board-formed concrete shells, which span 63 ft 8 in (19.4 m) between the two perimeter aisles and support the external metal roof. The structural relationship between the ceiling and roof inverts the typical hierarchy, in which interior surfaces are supported by exterior structure.

In this shaped section, the voluminous quality of the interior stands in extreme contrast to the flat surfaces of the exterior massing.