Short for ‘Geometric-Glamorous’, this is the mid 1970s - mid 1980s “luxurious materials + geometric forms” design aesthetic, sometimes referred to as “cocaine decor”.
…Is it? Is that a common enough alternative name? You see that in the architecture coffee table books?
When I see interior design with that many untextured surfaces I unironically do think of cocaine.
Because otherwise you have mirrors sitting on countertops everywhere. I’d see that with thirtysomething LA.
One of the highest achievements of Italian Gothic art and architecture is Orvieto Cathedral. Few buildings in the world are that ornate, and at the same time - few have such a well balanced and harmonious architecture.
Light/Mass is an ongoing series of alien-like urban landscapes found in cities across the United States. Exploring the overlooked and under appreciated architecture of metropolitan America, Light/Mass reveals the beautiful strangeness of these monument-like structures standing in familiar environments.
With the start into the new week, we want to share a new project in the database: The cemetery extension in Jesi by Leonardo Ricci. The entire complex is pervaded by phantastical shapes and what appear to be optical curvatures caused by oblique design elements.
The shape of the Boston City Hall popularized the phenotype based clearly on La Tourette, that was to be encountered in similar shapes the world over (#LaTouretteType): It can be read as a temple missing its gable.
Photos: Boston City Archives 2013 (CC BY 2.0) / Ernst Halberstadt / U.S. National Archives (CC BY 2.0) / Ron Gilbert 1985 (CC BY-ND 2.0) / Bill Lebovic / Library of Congress 1981 (public domain) / Peter Miller 2013 (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) / See-ming Lee 2010 (CC BY-SA 2.0) / Gunnar Klack 2018 (CC BY-SA 2.0)
This building takes a lot of shit, and honestly it deserves it – I don’t know how on earth they managed to make brutalism both tediously historicist and busy
Realizing that in going for a Japonisme look for Karafuto I was thinking of getting the roof tiled but as I look into it I realize that any authentic Japanese roofline or roof tile – form or color – would actually look pretty bad. So I guess the -isme bit is figuring out how to invoke what I’m going for with materials more suited and available domestically.
