Modernism

Bergen-based architect Todd Saunders’ home is a soaring symphony in Norwegian wood

Describing his latest project, a house for his own family in a leafy suburb of Bergen, Todd Saunders says, ‘It’s like three sticks, stacked on top of each other.’ At a stretch, the analogy holds – the house is...

From Vertigo to Psycho, how Hitchcock changed the role of architecture in film

Tropical modernism: a subversion, an escape and a global influence

The tropical climate subverted and softened modernism into a new form – taking the formal qualities and essential concepts of modernism, yet adapting the style with local materials and techniques better suited to the environment. Methods of passive cooling and sustainable...

Architecture in LA: sandcastles, swimming pools, pavements and post-modernism

Post-modernism grew up here on the boulevards between Sunset and Venice, behind nameless shop-fronts on the strip; it learnt its limits, abused them and reached a mid-life crisis. The city sprawled, we followed: houses in the Hills, Downtown rising – speed up to see the city from the...

Light box: Marcio Kogan brings translucent clarity to São Paulo retail for Micasa

Floating among the dense tree canopy of São Paulo’s leafy Jardins suburb is architect Marcio Kogan’s latest offering, an artfully created box named Volume C. It is the second space the Brazilian architect has created for furniture and design store...

Born again: modernist design icons are given a new lease of life

While the hunger for new contemporary design continues, there is still something alluring about revisiting those lesser known chapters of 20th century design to uncover the stories of classic products and their creators. Furniture companies and gallerists continue to mine...

Italian modernist Osvaldo Borsani’s innovative home opens up in Milan for Salone del Mobile

Osvaldo Borsani was born at the crossroads of craft and modern manufacturing. The son of a cabinetmaker, he trained as an architect in Milan in the 1930s, when the city was a centre of technological advancement and flourishing artistry, with...

Celebrating the 100th anniversary of Jørn Utzon, Danish architect of the Sydney Opera House

Jørn Utzon, the Danish architect whose accomplishments include the Sydney Opera House and a Pritzker Prize amongst many other remarkable architectural feats, was born in Aalborg, Denmark on 9 April 1918 and lived until he was 90 years old. In celebration of his 100th...

The imagined modernist world of 3D artist Alexis Christodoulou

Alexis Christodoulou wasn’t always an artist, though his dreamy 3D renders of imagined modernist interiors belies his brief tenure as one. A former copywriter at an advertising agency, Christodoulou began experimenting with the 3D modelling program SketchUp during a particularly...

London icon: inside Centre Point’s facelift by Conran + Partners

The Centre Point tower has been an instantly recognisable landmark of central London since its completion in 1966; and as any architecture lover would add, it is a key project by its creator, Richard Seifert. Also the hand behind some of the capital’s...

Piero Lissoni creates a modernist Tel Aviv home with a Milanese twist

Is there a place for modernism in our postmodern, post-everything age? Piero Lissoni thinks so. The Italian architect of purified forms, from sharp little coffee makers to lofty, linear edifices, has made a career of creating rigorously clean compositions with...

Palm Springs pays homage to architect Herbert W Burns

This weekend the Palm Springs Preservation Foundation will pay homage to the work of Herbert W Burns, the self-taught architect whose iconic apartment hotels and residences have become part of the canon of desert modernism. In what promises to be...