architecture, progress, liberty
Joined February 2009
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Mar 16
You can just build houses if you want.
me on Oosterwold in @Countrylifemag
countrylife.co.uk/architectu…
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Retrofit - the fashion for repurposing old buildings rather than building new ones- began as a poverty measure.
In Belgium the 2008 financial crisis arrived soon after separatists in Flemish speaking Flanders won big in elections complicating the way the Belgian state intervened to prop up subprime exposed banks. It is this crisis more than a drive to sustainability which explains Belgium’s early turn towards retrofit.
This is Predikherenklooster in Mechelen. In 2011, after several failed attempts to repurpose the ruins of the monastery, the city decided to restore the historic landmark building and Korteknie Stuhlmacher architects turned it into a public library.
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kid who's seen The Backrooms and claims to be super into "liminal spaces" when they meet the real liminal space
22h
why does Belgium even exist as a country what’s their purpose in this life
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Jun 14
From Ibn Sina to space, 1980 Soviet mural in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.
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Jun 15
'Mountain Climber.' (1912) Jean-Ferdinand Willumsen's travels through Italy and Spain were inspired after buying a painting by El Greco. A great traveller, his meeting with Gauguin in 1890 significantly influenced the way he used colour, but that vivid palette is all Scandinavian
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Jun 14
Out this weekend …
Loads on Iranian revolution, Israeli spooks, Palestinians, Lebanon, hezbollah’s foundation, the US in the Middle East …
Oh, and flares and disco, obviously, it was the 70s
Jun 11
The Revolutionists is out in paperback today in UK!
SHORTLISTED FOR BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 2025
BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE TIMES, GUARDIAN, FT, ECONOMIST, PROSPECT, BBC HISTORY
yours for a tenner
here in Waterstones Piccadilly and in Foyles:
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Jun 13
Indeed, vox pops are extremely valuable when you build up a reasonable dataset.
I watched Corey Gil-Shuster interview Israelis and Palestinians on the streets over the last 10 years, and it became obvious that plans for peace were impossible. The older generations were sanguine and reasonable. The younger generation was full of irreconcilable bile and prejudice.
A harbinger of Gaza, in other words.
m.youtube.com/@CoreyGilShust…
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Jun 12
Modernism in Powell and Pressburger.
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Jun 12
huge if true
Jun 12
Noel Gallagher once opened up about his biggest musical influences. 🎤👇
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Jun 12
"Do remember they can't cancel spring"
RIP David Hockney.
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Jun 12
Mario Botta, Pope John XXIII Church in Seriate, Italy, completed in 2004. One of Botta's more serene interiors, its geometric simplicity reconciling itself to the liturgy rather than struggling against it with circular geometries.
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Jun 11
Constructed from layers of marble and gneiss, the Church of San Giovanni Battista, Mogno by Mario Botta, was built between 1992 and 1996. Botta's design - the first of many churches - replaced the previous 17th century building which was destroyed by an avalanche in 1986.
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Jun 11
You can see where the idea for this came from:
Jun 8
The only cathedral built in France in the 20th century, Evry Cathedral by the Swiss architect Mario Botta sits in the new town to the SE of paris. It is crowned by 24 silver linden trees, symbolising the hours in the day, but also, apparently, the apostles and tribes of Israel.
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Jun 10
La Dame du Lac by Pierre Székely, arguably the birthplace of parkour. A sculpture designed to be climbed on, built on the other side of the Paris Lyon motorway to the Pyramides of Evry, on the cusp of an ornamental park. Home and recreation both modernist scultpural monuments.
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Jun 10
Les Pyramides.
Jun 9
The Pyramides in Evry, an orbital town of Paris, similar in plan to Noisy-le-Grand. High density core built on top of a transit stop with an artificial lake and a plaza as a gesture to civic function. Nicknamed Pyracrimes by a rapper from the same neighborhood. cf. Pyragansta.
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Jun 10
In Hamburg they renovated the Alster-Schwimhalle and added a sauna complex.
"Opportunity missed" as Coventry's post-war swimming pool set for demolition:
dezeen.com/2026/06/09/covent…
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Jun 10
Despite the scepticism of contemporary critics, Émile Aillaud and other architects working in the Ile de France around Paris, attempted to compensate for the uniformity created by industrialized constructional methods with curved forms, like La grande Borne completed in 1971.
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Jun 10
The banlieues of Paris are full of extravagant architectural expressions with pretentious names - L'Espaces d'Abraxas and the Arènes de Picasso👇 - made by architects in the late 1960s and 1970s desperate to humanise a highly proscriptive state planning system and industrial construction.
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Jun 10
wtf
VoteHub projects Steve Hilton to advance from the Nonpartisan primary for California Governor.
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