The house that fell to earth
Standing at the Moriyama House, I thought a whole bunch of things.
1. I felt that both the building and myself, its visitor, were extra-terrestrials. I’d arrived “from space” after staking the site out via satellite on Google Maps. The building had arrived from the minds of SANAA, who split the big site up so their structure would blend better with nearby structures. But while it might blend in volumetrically, it stands out stylistically from anything nearby.
2. I thought something I’ve often thought recently: that Modernism, like the Situationists’ hacienda, is yet to be built. People may have “modern” houses — in the sense that they have garages, aircon and flushing toilets — but they don’t generally have Modernist houses, houses that fit Le Corbusier’s Five Points of Modern Architecture.
3. I made a mental note to go and see Le Corbusier: Art and Architecture — a life of creativity, the big show at the Mori Museum just now.
[tags]house, architecture, modernism[/tags]
(Via Click opera.)
