Collective Memory

“One can say that the city itself is the collective memory of its people, 

and like memory it is associated with objects and places. 

The city is the locus of the collective memory.” 

Aldo Rossi, The Architecture of the City, 1982

Emmanuel Jablonski - Cropping Buildings - 2012 - via r. cruz niemiec

Graphical representation of the idealized human diploid karyotype - National Human Genome Research Institute - via wikipedia

Burgoyne Diller - Composition - 1941

Frozen Music

"Architecture in general is frozen music"
Friedrich Von Schelling, Philosophy of Art, 1802

Mies Van der Rohe - Barcelonna Pavillon - 1928/29

Luis Barragan and Andre Casillas - Stable, Horse pool and House - 1967/69 -

 by Renee Burri

Ibarra Rosano Design Architects - Winter Residence - 2005 - 
by Bill Timmerman

 Niall McLaughlin Architect - House at Goleen - 

via Snake Ranch

Unspeakable Space

“When a work is at its peak in intensity, proportions, quality of execution, in perfection, 

there occurs a phenomenon of unspeakable space. 

The areas start shining, radiating, physically they radiate.”

Le Corbusier, quoted by Gavin McKeeney

Giovanni Guerrini, Ernesto Bruno La Padula, Mario Romano - Palazzo Della Civiltà - 1938/1943 - by Agugiaro

Aldo Rossi - San Cataldo Cemetary - 1978/? - Picture by Gabriele Basilico 2007

Yi Architects - Stuttgart Municipal Library

"architecture is not simply construction, or even the satisfaction of material needs; it must be something more [...]. Only when a harmony of proportions is reached, inducing the observer to pause in contemplation or emotion--only then will the constructive scheme have become a work of architecture."
Giuseppe Terragni, Caro Guardiano, 23 March 1931
quoted in David Rifkind, The Battle for Modernism, 2013

An Infinite Scream passing through Nature

“I was walking along a path with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.”

Edward Munch, 1893, quoted here

Araucaria Tree via I'm Revolting

Ernst Haeckel - Siphonophorae - Kunstformen der Natur - 1899/1904

H.P. Berlage - Crown for an Electric Light - Date Unknown - NAI Collection


"The first language of mankind, the most universal and vivid, in a word the only language man needed, before he had occasion to exert his eloquence to persuade assembled multitudes, was the simple cry of nature."
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men, 1754