Bunker Beauties

Philosopher, media theorist and art critic Paul Virilio started taking photos of "The Atlantic Wall", the bunker defense system along the French coast in 1958. Over many years he returned to the abandoned concrete giants that had been built during WW2. In the 1970s he collected the photos with his essays in his book "Bunker Archeology"








(click for bigger bunkers)

Concrete Quarters

The wonderful world of concrete architecture is archived in the trade publication "Concrete Quaterly" which first appeared in 1947.




The first editions were full of bridges and power plant chimneys. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s the issues are full of daring and visionary buildings from Brazilia to car-plants in Venezuela and water towers in Italy.




During the 1980s "Concrete Quaterly" switched to full colour print which didn´t help to shine a better light on the boring mass-produced row-homes and suburban churches which began to litter the western hemisphere.




You can download every single issue of "CQ" as a pdf at The Concrete Centre

Brutal Beauty

The Barbican Estate in London is one of the most complex and complete examples of Brutalist architecture.



The complex was designed by architects Chamberlin, Powell and Bon and built 1965 and 1976.



The residential estate consists of 13 terrace blocks, grouped around the lake and green squares within the complex. The main buildings rise for up to seven floors above a podium level, which links all the facilities in the Barbican, providing a pedestrian route above street level. Some maisonettes are built into the podium structure.



The very nice photos were taken by Thomas Ulrich Madesen. I think that the Barbican has aged quite well.



Despite being hated by Prince Charles, the Barbican is now cosidered a national landmark.

Get Smart Fugitive - Pacific Ocean Park (Pt. 2)

Pacific Ocean Park (P.O.P.) was the last incarnation of the big amusement piers which once gave Santa Monica´s Venice Beach the title of "Coney Island of the Pacific".



The piers used to be a welcome open air background for the nearby Hollywood studios. There was hardly any silent movie star or slapstick-icon who wouldn´t use the rides and the lively atmosphere as a vehicle for their films at least once.



In the 1960s Disneyland was off limits for TV-productions so they went to P.O.P whenever a carnival was needed. By the mid 60s, the park, which started out as a serious competitor to Disneyland was already in serious decline. This might be the reason why two prominent series used the park as a spooky and empty stage-set for their respective episodes.



"Get Smart" used the park for the usual antics, but the final episode of "The Fugitive" used P.O.P. as a star attraction for the showdown between Richard Kimble and the one-armed man.
Aired in august of 1967, the episode "The Judgement" made TV-history as the most watched fiction program ever (a record that was only broken by the "Who shot J.R."-episode from "Dallas".)

Before the final showdown on the massive "Mahi Mahi" ride, there is an extensive chase that uses the bizarre and strange architecture to an almost surreal effect. Sadly even this media exposure didn´t help the struggling park. Only two months after the show aired, Pacific Ocean Park was shut down forever.

Here is the whole sequence in two parts:



Click here for P.O.P. pt 1. A place that kept my imagination despite I have never been there while it was in existence.
Part 3: In ruins

Last Train to Expo 67

In 1976 the geodesic dome "Biosphere of Man" that housed the pavillion of the USA at Montreal´s Expo ´67 caught fire during repair work. The wonderful structure that was built by Buckminster Fuller became another ruin on the field of world-expo ruins within minutes, when the fire burned away the acrylic outer shell. Anyway, the superstructure was kept intact and it is still standing until today.



This event became part of the art installation "Endgame" by Michael Rakowitz in Italy in 2006

Here, at StellaVista Towers - we celebrate the predecessor of Expo ´70 with some groovy Rocksteady goodness from The Melodians.

Hop on The Last Train to Expo 67 (click to play).

This is how it looked back in 1967


And lots of private and official videos on Youtube

Concrete Plastic

I like Zaha Hadid´s architecture as pure form and sculpture. Since she is rather popular and sticks to her style, which is a mixture of sci-fi art-nouveau, abstract sculpturing and some echoes of Le Corbusier, she is obviously hated by many.



Maybe that´s why she recently scored lots of commissions by smaller German and Austrian cities, who are not exactly known for their international architecture to build something, anything for them. So, Zaha Hadid´s forms decended on small tram-stations in Innsbruck, where she also designed a beautiful new Ski-Jump tower (very first pic).


Fire stations, a science center and a building for BMW were built in Germany. Now it´s off to Dubai, the oasis of architects, where you should´t be caught dead without at least two spectacular projects "opening sometime around 2010".




As I said before, I am much more interested in Hadid´s work as sculptor and commercial furniture designer. Her "VorteXX Chandelier" (what a wonderfully silly name) needs to find a place in my new apartment (although at first I need to find out where to get it and how to pay for it).


From tomorrow, November 1st, the Sonnabend Gallery in NYC is opening a show with installations, Hadid has been working on for some of her international projects.



These giant, amorphous convulsions of plastex are exactly my kind of thing. Huge forms that seem to flow from the ceiling, organisms that form at the edges of time and consciousness, only to freeze into a senseless and beautiful statue of externalised, forced use. Yes, you can sit on it or use it as a desk in your opera house, as the pic below shows.