Style: The Latest Architecture and News

Almost a century after the iconic aesthetic emerged, Art Deco is finally having its comeback. As seen in new projects, interior spaces, and furniture around the globe, the glitz and glam that makes us long for the Roaring 20s of the early 20th century is now giving us a small taste of the Roaring 20s revival in the 21st century. As the distinct identity of Art Deco architecture and design has continued to inspire the world, what can we expect from new designs, and the preservation of existing ones?

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Architectural education has always been fundamentally influenced by whichever styles are popular at a given time, but that relationship flows in the opposite direction as well. All styles must originate somewhere, after all, and revolutionary schools throughout centuries past have functioned as the influencers and generators of their own architectural movements. These schools, progressive in their times, are often founded by discontented experimental minds, looking for something not previously nor currently offered in architectural output or education. Instead, they forge their own way and bring their students along with them. As those students graduate and continue on to practice or become teachers themselves, the school’s influence spreads and a new movement is born.

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This article was originally published on Common Edge.

In the late 1960s, Ben Bradlee, the storied executive editor of The Washington Post from 1965 until 1991, confronted making the paper more appealing to younger readers. He ditched Lifestyle as the name of a new, updated section, which he found irksome; instead, he chose Style. As he explained in his memoir: “I liked the word ‘Style’ … I like people with style, with flair, with signature qualities.” After 50 years as Style, and nine years after Bradlee’s death, the section has been renamed Lifestyles. The editorial change notwithstanding, Bradlee used “style” as most non-architects think of it and much in keeping with how Duo Dickinson seems to frame it in a recent Common Edge piece: “Wrestling With Architectural Style in a Post-Style World.” Yet in matters architectural, at least historically, it’s long been another thing altogether.

Videos

Tales from the Altiplano is a series of live Instagram talks with Andrew Kovacs, Delphine Blast, Manuel Seoane, Patricio Crooker and many more. We will be questioning how architecture is seen as a means of reclaiming a cultural identity. How in this informal Bolivian context can we construct a new way to approach architecture. The AAVS El Alto explores the Altiplano as an example to counteract a certain gentrifying flatness of today’s architecture- providing an opportunity to describe singularities and sub-cultures, through iconographic and architectural strategies. In these unsettling times, our Programme has been suspended in response to the current health crisis. However, this series will keep alive the conversation about architecture and urbanism with artists, researchers, and young Architects and Designers.