EINDHOVEN MODERN
Like many urban centers in the Netherlands, Eindhoven experienced massive devastation of its architecture and infrastructure during WWII.
Europe
PHOTO GALLERY: PAIMIO SANATORIUM
Paimio Sanatorium, located among the pine forests of southwestern Finland, is both a modernist marvel and a leading example of human-centered architecture. Completed in 1933, and based on a contest-winning design by the young husband-and-wife team of Alvar and Aino Aalto, the building was designed from the ground up as a place of healing, rest, and tranquility.
Set among the pine forests east of Paimio, a small town about thirty kilometers east of Turku, the building is surrounded by green space on all sides…
TOUCH WOOD: LIVES AND AFTERLIVES OF TREES
AS THE CURRENT century plays out and the need for sustainability in architecture becomes more urgent, it is increasingly important to take the full life cycles of buildings into account. It is not enough for a building’s post-construction existence to meet base levels of energy efficiency; the materials and processes used to build it, as well as the source of those materials, must be sustainable as well. As resources go, wood is unrivaled its potential to either dramatically raise or drastically lower the carbon footprint of buildings, both before and after they are completed.
INVENTING GREENLAND
WITH A TOTAL population of 56,000 spread across a landmass twice the size of all other Nordic countries combined, Greenland’s overall density hovers at just over zero. The precursors to Greenland’s modern-day inhabitants were settlers both indigenous and European, dating back millennia and including the Saqqaq, Independence I-II, and Dorset cultures, as well as the Greenlandic Vikings who settled in the far south in 982 (led by Erik the Red). All these prior cultures and settlements, however, disappeared, leaving only archaeological records.
HOLIDAYS IN SOVIET SANATORIUMS
AT THE CENTER of the Venn Diagram of Brutalist architecture, spa culture and Communist kitsch lies the Soviet sanatorium. In its heyday, the USSR had a network of hundreds of such centers across dozens of territories, from Estonia to Kazakhstan to the Russian Far East. Though their roots lie in the Russian tradition of curative baths, the sanatoriums of the 20th century shoehorned nicely into Soviet ideals of health and responsible rejuvenation, with workers encouraged to check themselves in yearly for a tune-up of their corporal machinery.
ART WITHOUT DEATH: RUSSIAN COSMISM
THE ROOTS OF Russian Cosmism lie in the transcendental utopian writings of the 19th-century philosopher Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov, who advocated for, among other things, the exploration of space and a literal overcoming of death. Inextricably tied to the Russian Revolution and the rise of the USSR, Cosmism promoted broad ideals that mirrored the heart of Communism: that humanity should collectively strive to transcend the petty, temporary, and mundane.
THIS BRUTAL WORLD
THIS BRUTAL WORLD, a catalog of worldwide Brutalist architecture, presents its starkly beautiful black-and-white photos as both a treatise and a love letter. The book’s author, Peter Chadwick, falls resolutely and joyously on the side of Brutalism as an egalitarian, economically progressive, and fundamentally global movement.