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Pre-departure

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Welcome, friends and family, to my study abroad blog! I leave for Rome on January 12th and will return to Sarasota on April 26th.
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Book Review: "Theory and Design in the First Machine Age"

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Reyner Banham 's Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (1960) is an engaging overview of the important theoretical developments of the early 20th century leading up to the "International Style" of the 1930s-40s.  Banham does a fairly good job, in my opinion, of avoiding excessive editorializing, although he has a clear viewpoint on the Modern Movement and finishes with a strong conclusion.  In opposition to his teacher, Nikolaus Pevsner , whose own history of modernism came out in 1936, Banham dismantled the " form follows function " credo that became the stereotype of modernism, arguing instead that formalism (a preoccupation with style and aesthetics) was an important, if not overriding, concern of Modern architects.  Two sections of the book struck me in particular: his analysis of Le Corbusier's famous book Vers une architecture (Toward a [new] architecture) from 1923, and his Conclusion (chapter 22), where he breaks the link between functionali...
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Vertical Bike Rack

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From the Architectural Archives: Decoy Houses

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Did you grow up with a "haunted house" in your neighborhood?  It turns out that some buildings that look like houses aren't really houses at all, but are instead the haunts of infrastructure.  I first learned about these decoy houses from BLDGBLOG (Geoff Manaugh's excellent and thought-provoking blog) and found the idea too fascinating to pass over.  Hidden among the ordinary houses in ordinary neighborhoods, buildings that look like houses to the casual observer are actually power substations, water pump stations, subway vents or exits, and more.  Some have been built this way from scratch in order to appease neighbors.  Others are ex-houses, converted from real houses into shells in order to conceal infrastructure or preserve the historic character of a neighborhood.  All of them are a bit spooky.  Here are few for your consideration. Image courtesy of Autopilot via Wikipedia 58 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn, NY This is an ex-townhouse , built ...
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