Tag: design
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Counting the Carbon Foot Prints and Changing Our Behavior!
In a recent discussion with a planner the question of over-consumption came up and how it impacts the health of our planet. It is understood that we consume more raw materials than a sustainable eco-system can provide for. In 2007 our (global) Ecological Foot Print was 1.5 planet earth, i.e. we consumed earth’s resources 1.5 times faster than the earth…
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Architecture of Love and Death (part II)
This is the second, and last post, of Architecture of Love and Death. In the first post, I proposed that Egyptian pyramids were built in preparation of Death for their nobility, while Muslim mausoleums such as the Taj Mahal were built by family members out of love and devotion for the deceased. Islamic orthodoxy frowns upon building permanent structures over graves, fearing…
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Architecture of Love and Death (Part I)
This post is about funerary architecture of two different people in different times and places, ancient Egyptians and Muslim Mughals in India. Both of these people built great pieces of architecture to their dead. In Part 1 I will focus on the religious thought or absence of it behind these great pieces of architecture, i.e. Pyramids and Taj Mahal. I believe the former…
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Architecture of Death
While New Orleans is probably the best known city for its cemeteries, New York has some really lovely ones. A magnet for history buffs and bird watchers, Green-Wood is a Revolutionary War historic site (the Battle of Long Island was fought in 1776 across what is now its grounds), a designated site on the…
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The Farnsworth House
This spring I made my first visit to Chicago. And while I did greatly admire the architectural richness of that city, making a visit to the nearby Farnsworth House was irresistible. Built in 1951 near Plano, Illinois, the residence designed by Mies van der Rohe is considered one of the most famous examples of modernist…
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60 Mies van der Rohe Haus
This was my first visit to Berlin, and I was thinking about Bauhaus and Mies. Inevitably, the next morning I decided to visit Mies’s Lemke House at the outskirts of Berlin. I arrived there after a U-Bahn ride and a bus connection and was surprised how unassuming and humble that house looked from the street. But when you enter the…