john walmsley; architectural association

John Walmsley: ‘photographing ordinary people and the interesting things they do’

16th November 2023

By greyscape

@Barbican_City_of_London

To many British, at least, church architecture is

To many British, at least, church architecture is typically gothic; is a brutalist church appropriate? This is Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista in Florence, architect Giovanni Michelucci 1960-64. Image with thanks to @misterngo

It seems almost too easy to think about Ernö Gold

It seems almost too easy to think about Ernö Goldfinger and simply reel off his greats but that would be ignoring the amazing career of a man who transcended one world to become fully entrenched in another. He was an architect, furniture and toy designer. Born into a wealthy, Jewish family in Budapest, the family business involved lumber which led to Ernö spending his early years in the heart of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Szaszregen, Transylvania in the Carpathian Mountains and in the Austrian Alps. When he was ten, Ernö was brought back to Budapest to be educated and later continued his studies in Vienna. By the time he’d finished school, the Empire had collapsed, the family had moved to Vienna, there was an assumption he would study engineering and remain close to home, instead, he headed to Paris in 1920 to study at the École des Beaux-Arts, hanging out with the best, Man Ray, Lee Miller, Max Ernst and more. Ernö and his fellow students formed a ‘commune’ within the school, they contacted Corbusier (whom Goldfinger hugely admired), and this led to the group choosing Auguste Perret as their Maître. Perret is credited with giving Goldfinger a ‘mastery of concrete’. Perhaps Goldfinger’s career and life may have developed differently; however, politics forced a decision; he was not a French national; he needed to make a very real choice, whether to leave Paris behind and come to England in the wake of the rise of fascism or take his chances. By now married to British heiress,Ursula Blackwell, he followed her and their baby to England, becoming part of the Lawn Road Flats circle of Molly and Jack Prichard, although they chose not to live in the Isokon instead at Highpoint I in Highgate, built by fellow emigrée, Lubetkin, whom Ernö had known in Paris. Ernö was invited to become a member of the MARS group and later became the ‘Honorary Editor’ of their bulletins. He met educators, Paul and Marjorie Abbatts initially designing toys, logos, exhibitions and catalogues which led to a commission to design an experimental nursery in the Abbatts home for the Contemporary Industrial Design Exhibition. More on the next post!! Image Howard Morris

The Values of The Brutalist Concrete giants: Euro

The Values of The Brutalist

Concrete giants: European Legacy in a New Land. The movie The Brutalist has triggered fresh interest in the origins and development of modernist architecture. The film is wrapped in the bold, austere aesthetic of Brutalism. Played by Adrian Brody, the principal protagonist is a gifted modernist architect, a Jew, a survivor of the Holocaust and an immigrant, a stranger in a strange land. Architects of Jewish heritage made significant contributions to modernist design and we ask the question, why?

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Image: Barbican rooftops ©️Greyscape

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