Dennis Sharp passed away

Dear Docomomo friends,
It is with regret and sadness that we have to inform you that Dennis Sharp, joint-chair of Docomomo United Kingdom, died last week.

His contribution to Docomomo has been very important and intense. We have learnt from his opinions, points of view, texts and works and therefore it is a great loss for Docomomo and the whole architectural community.

We wish his family to have enough courage to come over this difficult situation.
Kind regards,

Ana Tostões
Chair
Docomomo International

Ivan Blasi
Secretary
Docomomo International




Dennis Sharp (1933-2010)
a British architect, professor, curator, historian, author and editor.

Dennis Sharp is a highly respected member of the architectural profession. He was RIBA Vice President from 1991 to 1993 and National Council member from 1990 to 1994. In 1992 he helped set up the RIBA Architecture Centre and was consequently Chair of the Architecture Centre Committee from 1996 to 1999. DS has published a number of authoritative books on architecture, which have been translated into many languages including Chinese, Spanish, French and Japanese. Titles include: A Visual History of 20th Century Architecture, The Picture Palace and Expressionism.

Professional Appointments
2003-04 Consultant/ Adviser on British PFI Schools for the Japan PFI Association.
1994-present Nominator: Aga Khan Award for Architecture since its inception.
1999-present Chairman: DOCOMOMO UK.
1994-00 Member AA Council and Hon Secretary.
1991-93 RIBA Vice President (and National Council member 1990-94;1996-99) Chair: Architecture Center Committee.
1977-present Director: CICA (International Committee of Architectural Critics)
1991 Professor and Academic Adviser: International Academy of Architecture
1966-present Member: Society of Authors.

Academic Appointments
Dennis has held many academic posts as Visiting Critic, Lecturer or External Examiner at UCL, RCA, North London Poly, Oxford, Cambridge and Sheffield Universities. In addition he has been Visiting Professor at many universities:
1959-68 Lecturer in Architecture: Liverpool and Manchester Universities
1968-82 Head of History, Arts and History Dept.(1968-72) and Senior Lecturer, AA School of Architecture London
1980 Visiting Professor: Columbia University, NY
1984 Visiting Professor: Adelaide University SA
1968-70 Visiting Professor: Royal University of Malta
1998 Visiting Professor: University of Otaniemi Finland
1996-99 Special Professor in Architecture, University of Nottingham

Editorial Appointments
1962-70 NW Correspondent Architectural Design
1964-70 Editor Architecture North West
1967-83 AA General Editor. AA Quarterly, AA Papers
1998-present Executive Editor: World Architecture: Journal of the International Academy of Architecture) and International Architecture and Construction
2000-present L'Architettura Rome London Correspondent
Higher Education
1960-63 Leverhulme Research Fellow in Architecture, University of Liverpool School of Architecture
1954-57 Architectural Association School of Architecture, London
1951-54 Articled pupil, Luton School of Art.
1945-51 Bedford Modern School.


In 1991, Sharp became a professor at the International Academy of Architecture[1] (IAA) in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Sharp participated in the international architecture symposium "Mensch und Raum" (Man and Space) at the Vienna University of Technology (Technische Universität Wien) in 1984, which received much international attention. Other participants included Justus Dahinden, Pierre Vago, Bruno Zevi, Jorge Glusberg, Otto Kapfinger, Frei Otto, Paolo Soleri, Ernst Gisel, and Ionel Schein.

Since 1977 Sharp was Chairman of the International Committee of Architectural Critics. From 1991 to 1993 he was Vice President of the Royal Institute of British Architects. In 1992 he was a co-founder of the RIBA Architecture Centre and served as its chairman until 1996.

Dennis Sharp was a partner in Dennis Sharp Architects (DSA) in Hertford and London. Projects include the award-winning Strawdance Studio, the renovation of the major Listed Buildings at Royal Ascot Racecourse (with HOK Sport), house conversions in Cambridge and Hertford and the renovation of Foster's Renault Centre Swindon. He was also Co-Chair of DOCOMOMO in UK.

Sharp was the author and editor of several books, including Modern Architecture and Exrpessionism, London: Longman,1966, "The Picture Place" London: Evelyn "The Bauhaus", Phaidon, "Twentieth Century Architecture. A Visual History" (4th edition:2002) and The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Architects and Architecture (1991) as well as surveys of the work of Calatrava, Nocoletti, England and Kurokawa. Recent publications include the new translation of Hermann Muthesius's The English House', Frances Lincoln, 2007.

http://www.sharparchitects.co.uk/DSA_FLASH_LAUNCH.html
http://www.sharpresolutions.com/
http://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n50-22232
http://www.libriartis.ro/carti/?id=991
http://www.architekt.de/Bekannte_Architekten/dennis_sharp.php

Световен ден за опазване на паметниците на културата и забележителните места

18th of April 2010 - International Day for Monuments and Sites

On the proposal of ICOMOS, 18 April was endorsed as The International Day for Monuments and Sites by UNESCO in 1983. This special day offers an opportunity to raise public awareness concerning the diversity of the world’s heritage and the efforts that are required to protect and conserve it, as well as to draw attention to its vulnerability. For several years now, ICOMOS suggests a topic to be highlighted on this occasion. This has allowed our members and our committees to hold activities, conferences, colloquia or other events to raise awareness on this cultural heritage among the public, the owners or the public authorities by linking a global theme to local or national realities.



http://www.international.icomos.org/centre_documentation/bib/modernheritageproperties.pdf
http://www.international.icomos.org/centre_documentation/bib/worldheritage-industrialsites.pdf


Theme for 2010 – “The Heritage of Agriculture”
Celebrate the world’s heritage on 18 April 2010!
A contribution to the United Nations 2010 International Year of Biodiversity
http://www.international.icomos.org/18thapril/2010/18_April_2010_Agricultural%20Heritage_Eng_20100323.pdf?lng=en&menuID=9&submenuID=7&idnews=278

Modern Movement Architecture and Urban Design in Eastern Mediterranean Cities

Dear friends:
Docomomo International and the Fundació Mies van der Rohe organise a debate session within the frame of the Coup de Dés programme, that provide an opportunity to discuss Modern Movement Architecture and Urban Design in Eastern Mediterranean Cities, and to analyse contemporary interventions.

Free entrance
Limited seats

Dear Docomomo friends,
2010 is the 120th anniversary of the birth of Konstantin Melnikov. The Melnikov House (1927-1929) is under threat of being taken into private hands, against the desires of the author of the house and of his son Viktor (1914-2006), well-known artist and custodian of the house for 30 years.

Please, read the Press Release document enclosed.
We will keep you updated with more information regarding the campaign to protect the building.

Kind regards,

Ana Tostoes, Chair Docomomo International
Ivan Blasi, Secretary General, Docomomo International


The Melnikov House (1927-1929) is under threat of being taken into private hands, against the desires of the author of the house, Konstantin Melnikov (1890-1974) celebrated architect of the Avant-garde period, and of his son Viktor (1914-2006), well-known artist, and custodian of the house for 30 years.

It was stipulated in Viktor Melnikov’s will that the house should become a State Museum to Konstantin Melnikov and himself (father and son.) Viktor’s daughter, Yekaterina Karinskaya is the executor of the will and is currently resident in the house.

However, the owner of half of the house, former director of property developing company Rosbuilding, Senator Sergei Gordeyev, wants to gain full ownership of the house and open a privately owned museum there. Mr. Gordeyev has stated that he does not want to honour Viktor Melnikov’s wishes either that should be a museum to father and son nor that it should be State owned.

In 2007, Mr Gordeyev founded the International Melnikov House Committee (IMHC) from representatives of the Russian and international cultural and architectural communities and architectural conservation bodies. Many members of the IMHC fear that Mr Gordeyev perceives the body as having a purely decorative character: the IMHC met once but since then have only heard from Mr Gordeyev in the form of a single reply to a collective IMHC letter. (Please see MAPS website for all IMHC correspondence www.maps-moscow.com)

Members of the IMHC listed below firmly believe that the wishes of Konstantin and Viktor Melnikov must be upheld in decisions concerning the future of the house.

Over the last five years, court cases have been in process, addressing the issue of the ownership of the property and archive. Formally, the instigators of the court proceedings are the younger daughter of Viktor Melnikov, Yelena, and her cousin Alexei Ilganaev. Mr Gordeyev actively supports them and participates in these processes with the aim of acquiring the entirety of the house and three quarters of Konstantin Melnikov’s archive.

David Sarkisyan, former Director of Moscow’s Shchusev State Architecture Museum, and member of the IMHC, who died in January this year, played an important regulating role in this matter.

We members of the IMHC believe that the Melnikov House is in jeopardy. We believe that the Russian Ministry of Culture must come forward to claim and defend the portion of the house left to the Russian State and people by Viktor Melnikov. We believe that the Russian Ministry of Culture has a responsibility to negotiate with all parties interested in the future of the house.

If action is not taken now, the Russian State, is putting the Melnikov House at risk, and in doing so is denying the Russian people and the international community their legacy. 2010 is the 120th anniversary of the birth of Konstantin Melnikov.
signed:
Clementine Cecil (Moscow Architecture Preservation Society)
Jean-Louis Cohen (University of Paris, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University)
Nataliya Dushkina (Moscow Architecture Institute)
Yekaterina Karinskaya (granddaughter of Konstantin Melnikov)
Anke Zalivako (Technical University of Berlin)

All press enquiries should go to:
MAPS Trustee and IMHC member Clementine Cecil +44 7968 003 595
clem@maps-moscow.com
IMHC member Natalia Dushkina
IMHC member Jean-Louis Cohen
IMHC member Yekaterina Karinskaya (granddaughter of Konstantin Melnikov)
+7 499 241 1873

http://www.melnikovhouse.org/home.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Melnikov
http://translate.google.bg/translate?hl=bg&langpair=en%7Cbg&u=http://www.maps-moscow.com/%3Fchapter_id%3D139

Арх. Радослав Радославов

Повод за този пост е една дискусия в блога на WhAT Association за изложбата "Преоткрий София - 130 години столица" относно къщата на Недков и кооперацията на Недков на бул. "Витоша" 48.

Тук публикувам снимки на 4 произведения от архитект Радослав Радославов и неговия племенник Константин Джангозов.
И двамата са учили при Огюст Пере в Париж.
Радославов завършва 1914 г. след като е учил заедно с Ле Корбюзие, а Джангозов - се дипломира през 1934 г.
Ето едни от най-добрите примери на българския предвоенен модернизъм в София:


двете жилищни кооперации - на Недков и Урумов на бул. Витоша 48 и 59 и ул. "Неофит Рилски";






Къща Платнаров на бул. Хр. Смирненски 36;



Апартаментна кооперация на бул. В. Левски 66 (надстроена наскоро от арх. Стефан Добрев за собственото му ателие-мезонет).

И четирите сгради са в София, а проектите са от периода 1937-40 г.

Stop the Disfigurement of John Hejduk's Berlin Tower

John Hejduk Tower defaced
Berlin, 18th March 2010

Concern is growing in the architectural community at the news of an ongoing, unsympathetic refurbishment of the 'Kreuzberg Tower' in Berlin - a rare building by the late John Hejduk.

The 'Tower' - actually a suite comprising a thin, 14-storey tower set between two 5-storey wings - is one of only a handful of built works by this influential architect. Berlin has three examples, all

social housing schemes built as part of the IBA 1987 international building exhibition.

The Kreuzberg Tower ensemble is typical of Hejduk's late work, exhibiting an intense fascination with simple geometric forms, narrative mythologies and anthropomorphic symbolism. Hejduk's three Berlin schemes bucked the colourful post-modern trends of the time with a subdued colour palette of grey and green, described by the architect as homage to the unique sky and the built fabric of the city. The present owners acquired the buildings recently as a result of a foreclosure, which followed many years of neglect. As part of ongoing refurbishment works, they have published images of the planned changes showing the removal of the distinctive sun shades over windows, enlarged balconies, and a new colour scheme in a white and bright pink, described by managers BerlinHaus Verwaltung GmbH as "tasteful living" and "apartments in Bauhaus style". In parallel with the renovation, current tenants are being forced to move out as a result of drastic rent increases.

Doctor Renata Hejduk, the daughter of the John Hejduk and an architectural historian, contacted the owner earlier this year to discuss the building alterations, but received only a dismissive

response. She commented: "I tried everything I could to get them to stop and at least consult with the Estate and other architects who were interested in helping to preserve them. They were completely uninterested and felt their facade changes would be much better than the original."

John Hejduk, best known as one of the 'New York Five' group that included Peter Eisenmann and Richard Meier, and as Dean of the Cooper Union School of Art and Architecture in New York from 1972 until 2000.

Links:
Professor Renata Hejduk, PhD - Assistant Professor, Arizona State
University, School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture.
Contact: Renata.Hejduk@asu.edu

Blogs carrying the story:
http://www.architectureinberlin.com/?p=1181
http://www.slab-mag.com/

Developer Berlinhaus:
http://www.berlinhaus.de

and links to their proposal images:
http://tinyurl.com/yhfkupv
http://tinyurl.com/yf7yxqp

Article in the Berliner Zeitung regarding rent increases.
http://tinyurl.com/yfj4d7g

Online Petition:
http://www.petitiononline.com/hejduk/petition.html

Heritage@Risk - National Marine Headquarters, Paris, France

Say no to the demolition of this major building
by the Perret brothers!
Send your name / first name / position / city / country

Les bâtiments de la Marine nationale (1928-1956, Paris, 15e) sont menacés de destruction en raison d'un vaste projet du Ministère de la Défense. Un permis de démolir a été demandé sans qu’aucune expertise préalable n’ait été engagée.

Or il s'agit d'une oeuvre exceptionnelle, tant par la qualité de son architecture, que par la position qu’elle occupe dans la trajectoire des frères Perret. Elle représente une étape décisive dans l’élaboration d’un ordre du béton armé. Sa disparition nous priverait d’un maillon essentiel pour comprendre un héritage déjà mutilé par la démolition du garage de la rue Ponthieu (1906) et des ateliers Esders (1919). Il serait lamentable qu’un ensemble dépendant directement de l’État subisse un sort analogue à celui qui vient d’être réservé, à Amiens, à une autre œuvre des frères Perret, la place de la gare, défigurée par des transformations grossières.

Les bâtiments de la Marine nationale doivent être protégés. Le dossier d’archives (l’un des plus riches du fonds Perret) témoigne de l’effervescence qui a accompagné la conception du projet. On peut, grâce à 2000 documents conservés, suivre les recherches qui ont abouti à cette œuvre savante.

Dans Le langage de l’architecture classique, John Summerson compare la Marine nationale à l’Opéra de Paris : "Le bâtiment est entièrement en béton armé et dépourvu de tout ornement. Mais il est pensé en termes d’ordres". "Il y a presque autant de relief et de variété, de rythme, dans ce bâtiment, que dans l’Opéra. Simplement, il n’y a ni moulure, ni sculpture". Peter Collins souligne la maîtrise de cet ensemble. Le soin accordé aux proportions, le jeu de l’ombre et de la lumière, la composition des bétons révèlent "quelque chose de plus profond que l’intelligente amélioration des éléments architectoniques essentiels. L’architecture industrielle est portée ici au degré le plus élevé de l’art".

Seul le bâtiment administratif est inscrit à l’inventaire. Les autres constructions vont disparaître. Démanteler un tel patrimoine pour n’en conserver que la partie administrative est inacceptable. Ce serait perdre les qualités d’harmonisation qui ont porté cette "architecture industrielle" à ce degré de dignité qu’ont su percevoir Summerson et Collins. Ce serait discréditer définitivement la politique de protection du patrimoine du XXe engagée par le Ministère de la Culture.

http://www.docomomo.com/PDF/Navy%20Headquarters%20by%20Perret,%20Paris.pdf
http://www.docomomo.com/news_heritage.htm

Heritage@Risk - Sanatorium Lemaire, Belgium

Severe Threat to Belgian Modernist Masterpiece:
Support Needed!
Sign the petition at http://www.redhetsanatorium.be/petition/index.htm

Some 19km from Brussels lays the Joseph Lemaire Sanatorium, a modernist masterpiece by the architects Maxime and Fernand Brunfaut. Both designers were closely linked with the socialist movement in the Interbellum period and played an important role in the introduction of the modernist principles in Belgian architectural culture. Before embarking on a successful personal career, Maxime Brunfaut was for a longtime Victor Horta’s principal assistant.

Just like Aalto’s famous Paimio Sanatorium and the celebrated Zonnestraal Sanatorium by Duiker and Blijvoet, the Lemaire sanatorium was conceived in a typically functionalist manner, providing a state of the art infrastructure for the cure of patients suffering from tuberculosis.

From its opening in 1937 on, the Lemaire Sanatorium attracted international attention from both the medical and architectural world who praised its functional organization, the fluid sequence of its interior spaces, the plastic articulation of the building mass and the detailing of the façades, clad with ceramic tiles. A remarkable invention is the block system.

After the building was disused in the late 1980s, it quickly fell pray to decay, vandalism and theft. Paradoxically, its listing as a historical monument in 1993 even stimulated this perishing as it led to a situation of immobility. Propositions for reuse of the structure as lofts, offices or an asylum for political refugees were aborted in an early stage. Despite its current ruinous state, the building continues to attract international attention from scholars, architects and photographers who are impressed by the strength of its forms and its interaction with the surrounding landscape.

More information on the sanatorium and petition
http://www.redhetsanatorium.be/petition/index.htm

The Factory, The Paradigm Of Modernity / Фабриката - Парадигмата на модерността

VIIth Iberian DOCOMOMO Congress / IVth DOCOMOMO ISC Registers Seminar
Gijón, Asturias, Spain - 14-17 April 2010

Call for papers
The aim of the International Seminar to be held in Spain in 2010 is to reflect on the influence of technology on the emergence of modern-movement architecture and on the new view that would lead to change in the interpretations of all artistic experiences.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) initiated a line of thought which was inevitably destined to develop: that of the world of science as the object of philosophical reflection. At the same time, scientific and technical progress would consolidate, in practice, a new change in the interpretative values of Western culture.
In opposition to the world of nature that of the device would become consolidated, governed by the laws of technology, which would develop fully inside new architectural artefacts practically unknown until the nineteenth century. The factory, as a new architectural type, had come into being.
It would be in the factory, as a new expression of construction, that architecture developed one of the most specific manifestations of modernity, quickly travelling the distance that separated the steam engine from full industrialisation.
And not only architects, but also painters, sculptors, photographers and composers found in the world of technology and its container, the factory, a motive of inspiration and reflection on the scope of their respective artistic experiences. The film world, too, became trapped by its irrepressible lure, as Charles Chaplin ironically expressed in Modern Times.
In the construction of the factory new building techniques were developed as the expression of its utilitarian needs as well as of materials that had recently become available. Poets devoted many hours to its interpretation, while painters and sculptors modelled forms and used hitherto unknown expressive resources in an attempt to decipher the symbolism of technology.
The fascination that the factory generated has reached the present day. Its past splendour, now largely reduced to ruins, continues to attract our eye: having become thoroughly obsolete, factories nonetheless tell us not only of our past but also of some of the most meaningful concerns of our present. We project our gaze onto their ruins with deep nostalgia, melancholy and uncertainty, to the point where we are prepared to prolong their existence beyond their original use, now expired, to discover their new possibilities as leisure and cultural premises.
Reflect on your past reality and its potential for the future is thus the goal of the convening of this International Seminar. To order the Seminar, specifying the intent of lectures and conferences and taking into account the place of its conclusion, it is proposed to organize the whole of the work from a sectoral perspective. These take into account not only individual buildings but also its territorial integration, an issue that we consider crucial in order to assess both its architectural merits as intervention operations on them can be made. In this sense, we propose to confine the work, in addition to general reflections on, two specific productive sectors: coal-steel and Energy (thermal and hydro).

Schedule
February 22, 2010: Deadline for abstract submission (must not exceed 2100
characters)
February 26, 2010: Selection of abstracts by the scienti c committee
March 3, 2010: Notification of acceptance to the relevant authors
April 9, 2010: Deadline for submission of the final text of the papers
accepted (must not exceed 8 pages, 16800 characters, and 12 images)
April 14-17, 2010: Congress
The abstracts should be prepared according to the attached
template and will be submitted on line, by email, by registered mail
or by courier by 15:00 pm, February 22, 2010 to:

Fundación DOCOMOMO Ibérico
Plaça Nova 5, 3ª planta, 08002 Barcelona
Tel. 93 3067859 || email: fundacion@docomomoiberico.com
http://www.docomomoiberico.com/

Scientific Committee
Miguel Ángel Areces
João Viera Caldas
Celestino García Braña
Panayotis Tournikiotis

Speakers
Miguel Aguiló
Henri Bava
Jordi Borja
Sérgio Fernandez
Celestino García Braña
Piotr Gerber
Ana Tostões
Zaparij Vladimir V.
Panayotis Tournikiotis

Congress Secretariat
Algama, S.L.
Tlf. 984492462 Fax. 985171855
E-mail: docomomo7@coaa.es

Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Asturias
Marqués de Gastañaga, 3
33009 OVIEDO
Teléfono: 985 274 993 / 985 232 316
Fax: 985 273 946
Email: coaa@coaa.es
www.coaa.es

A 'new' architectural genre - the underground house / 'Нов' архитектурен жанр - подземната къща

Incredible Underground Residence in Switzerland
http://freshome.com/2009/12/05/incredible-underground-residence-in-switzerland/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FreshInspirationForYourHome+%28Fresh+Inspiration+for+Your+Home%29&utm_content=Yahoo%21+Mail






Earth houses designed by Peter Vetsch
http://freshome.com/2008/06/24/earth-house-estate-lattenstrasse/


Earth houses in Switzerland

http://www.erdhaus.ch/main.php?lang=de&fla=y&cont=start

http://www.erdhaus.ch/main.php?fla=y&lang=de&cont=drawings