A number of cities across the world have been organizing free public events, called OpenHouse.The events allow behind-the-scenes access to over 100’s of great sites for one select weekend in a given city. You have the opportunity to see private houses, public structures and secret spaces that are otherwise closed to the public. And it […]
Category: learn about architecture
SeeSaw House in Surrey England
This house is not really a seesaw, it is firmly planted in the earth. Well, at least half of it is.When a structure hangs out without anything supporting it, it is called a cantilever. This house in Surrey England is an example of CANTILEVER EXTREME! And the story is that you can rent it and […]
The Building is Alive!
See the Video about PERSPECTIVE LYRIQUE. The artist who created this exhibition took a video of a building facade (front of a building) and projected it on the actual building, so that it looks like the building is ALIVE! When you apply human characteristics to a non-human object, it is called anthropomorphism. Now that word […]
Come on and Build a Paper City
Watch this video and learn how to make a cutout city. We like projects that can make a 3 dimensional space out of something two dimensional. Although this project requires the use of an Xacto knife, so you really need to be sort of old to do it, we think that the idea is really […]
On the Runway with Architecture
Like an airplane runway? No. A fashion runway, as models of buildings strut their way to show off how beautiful a structure will be if it gets built. There is an exhibit in a museum in San Francisco, California right now that is showing off some beautiful examples of models. See some examples at the […]
Inside Outside Upside Down
You may have seen the astounding drawings of M.C. Escher before – you know the one of the one hand drawing the other, or the patterns of birds that turn into fish. If not, you have to take a look at them. You can do it in a book or online at http://www.mcescher.com/. Anyway, Escher […]
More of that Way Back Machine
So the other day we mentioned Vitruvius, who wrote the 10 books of architecture, which are the foundation for all writing about architecture, really the HISTORY of architecture…even though they were written over 2000 years ago. So not as long ago, a certain man named Leonardo of Pisa, nicknamed Fibonacci, introduced the idea of the […]
A Bit o’History of Architecture
Back in Ancient Rome, in the First Century B.C.E., an architect named Vitruvius wrote a series of ten books on architecture titled “De Architectura”. These books were hand written and illustrated and we are sure they were absolutley GORGEOUS, but alas, not one copy of them survived. In the 15th century, some monks in Italy […]
Don’t Forget to Remember This
So, an author named Joshua Foer recently wrote a book, Moonwalking with Einstein, about remembering. Not just remembering to bring your lunch to school, but remembering the order of ten (10!) decks of cards that are shuffled together – REALLY REMEMBERING. As he started to write about remembering, he studied the skills of HOW to […]
Idiots Guide to Skyscrapers
Well, it is not exactly a guide, but a book that was designed by a really cool woman, Candy Chang who does all sorts of projects in the built environment to get us all thinking. I think that this book that she wrote, The Idiotic Building, points out that people who say that new ideas are […]