Reading Architecture in the Works of Venturi and SANAA

Architecture is never an accident. It is a carefully planned out scheme of patterns and styles that respond to natural surroundings, celebrate materiality, and/or are referential of stylistic movements throughout history- all a means of understanding why things are the way that they are. There are different ways to understand how to analyze architecture, through the use of diagrams, patterns, relationships, and proportions to name a few. To both architects and laypeople alike, there’s a subconscious desire for a decision-making structure in design. As a result, architecture has become an exercise in self-positioning- a microcosmic reflection of the world around us as seen in the designs we build.

Gaining Perspective: 15 Projects that Explore Interior Glass Use

Despite the initially slow and arduous process of molding glass into shape, mankind has used the material for thousands of years. According to archaeological evidence, the first human-made glass tools and jewelry were found in Eastern Mesopotamia and Egypt around 3500BC — and after the invention of the blowpipe in Syria in the 1st century BC and the Western Industrial Revolution made mass production easier, the material's signature traits of transparency and durability could finally be applied on a large scale in architecture and design.

Sid Richardson Residential College / Barkow Leibinger

Supplementing an existing residential/ dormitory tower (from 1971 by Neuhaus and Taylor Architects) for Sid Rich College, the new college sets a milestone for Rice University’s rapidly growing campus in Houston. An incubator for architecture, Rice has a long history of supporting forward-looking architecture from its classical origins (a masterplan of 1910 by Cram, Goodhue, and Ferguson, Boston), through modernism in the 50-the 60s to post-modernism in the 80s (Michael Graves, James Sterling, Cesar Pelli) to an array of innovative recent buildings (Michael Malzahn, Thomas Phifer, and artist James Turrell).

Simonsson House / Claesson Koivisto Rune Architects

Unusually strict zoning regulations ‘designed’ this private house. The site, positioned next to the major river Lule älv, lies in the north of Sweden, just south of the Arctic Circle. The local regulations stipulated a house with a maximum building height of just 4.2 meters. It also stipulated that the house must have a red roof.

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