Category Archives: Architecture

Tita Carloni Church facade in Ticino

Tita Carloni Church facade in Ticino. Since the founding of the Federal Charter of 1291, Switzerland has remained an open-minded country that has sought to balance tradition with innovation. This is true in many aspects of Swiss life, and is particularly visible in matters related to art, religion, education, and perhaps most importantly, Switzerland’s principle of federalism.

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La Tourette by Le Corbusier


La Tourette by Le Corbusier. If you travel to Lyon for either the cultural sites or for a once-in-a-lifetime culinary experience (in 2010, UNESCO added France’s gastronomy tradition to the “world intangible heritage”) you may wish to stay a half-day longer to visit an icon of modern architecture.

Situated 25 miles in the hillside west of Lyon and easily accessible by train or car, the Dominican monastery of La Tourette (1956-61) overlooks the town of Eveux-sur-l’Arbresle, and is the creation of famed Swiss architect Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, commonly known as Le Corbusier (1887-1965). Completed in 1961 and recognized in 2016 as part of UNESCO “World Heritage Sites,” the Architecture –yes, with a capital A, remains one of the most recognizable works of Le Corbusier’s oeuvre, and continues to welcome neophyte visitors, students, and faculty in architecture from all over the world.

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Vintage New York Postcards, Part 1

Detail of vintage postcard of the New York Library

Vintage New York Postcards, Part 1. The first time I saw vintage postcards of the famous skyscrapers of New York was in Rem Koolhaas’ book Delirious New York, A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. Written in 1978, the content was breathtaking in its idiosyncratic way of writing on the emerging metropolis. Beyond the beautiful Sandborn map featured on the inside of the cover, I was enamored with Koolhaas’ inclusion of many iconographic images of old postcards documenting historical NYC buildings. Later, after living in the Big Apple while a student of architecture, I started collecting those picture postcards, which ultimately developed into a serious hobby, which has a name: Deltiology.

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