My architecture writing heyday between 2012-2015 was the pre-kids period when I was traveling a lot more than today. Some of the following posts thus have a little travelogue ring to them. With Tokyo and North America done, let’s take the remaining buildings geographically, and go on a little tour down memory lane to Latin America (mainly Argentina, but also Brazil), Europe (mainly Germany, but also London and some other places), Africa, and Asia. What is missing in all this is a post from my current whereabouts, Australia. In what time I have left here, I shall strive to find that one tell-all building. Until then, I shall seek inspiration in the following pages.
A wedding took me to Argentina in 2014. While I had been to Buenos Aires before, a bit more time and my new architecture lens made me appreciate the city anew. Puerto Madero, a waterfront redevelopment, was still under construction back then. Torre Dorrego might be my favourite Brutalist residential tower, and I invite you to check it out. Unreal perspectives and angles revealed themselves in the Museo Xul Solar. Clorindo Testa built two striking Brutalist landmarks, the Banco de Londres and the Biblioteca Nacional, both of which I visited. MACBA, MAMBA reported from two splendid art museums. Elsewhere on the continent and while on work trips, I marveled at FIESP in Sao Paulo, and wondered why Mexico City was going up into the sky.
A trip to India in 2013 was also productive, particularly the short stay in Chandigarh, where Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh Capitol Complex looms large. I also found the Neelam Cinema quite fascinating and penned a little post on it. In Bangalore, Rafael Correa’s Visvesvaraya Centre loomed large on a long afternoon walk through the city center. One of Mumbai’s most divisive buildings, Antilia, prompted me to write about vertical expressions of inequality again. A short trip to Kuala Lumpur would have been incomplete without a Building Merdeka walking tour. My passion for Yangon’s architecture culminated in the Yangon Architectural Guide, but one building I covered in more depth elsewhere is the Tripitaka Library.
After having lived more than a decade abroad, I reconnected with my hometown Berlin around 2013. Back then, a new Gehry-designed residential tower on the central Alexanderplatz had just been announced and caused a stir–but the project was eventually shelved in 2018. Notwithstanding, the urban planning for this central piece of Berlin was a mess back then, and I doubt that it has got much better since. I also looked more closely at West Berliner Platten, the Nazi-era Waldsiedlung Krumme Lanke, the Forum Museumsinsel and L40 / Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz. Elsewhere in Germany, I recorded trips to Dessau’s Bauhaus, and two places in Dresden, the Militärhistorisches Museum and Pirnaischer Platz. A place with close family connections also got a post here: Lenzen.
Another productive period on this blog was a short stay in London in 2013, and produced posts about Richard Rogers, Woodberry Down (now demolished), Cheviot House in Tower Hamlets, my old stomping grounds Seven Sisters, as well as a long Docklands walk. A post on London’s changing skyline focused on some blockbuster skyscrapers, and was also based on a long walk.
Elsewhere in Europe, I visited the Architecture Biennale 2014 and revisited Transient The Hague, where I lived between 2009 and 2011. Even further afield, I wrote a post on Uganda House in Kampala (pictured above).
