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Published Articles

I write on occasion on Architecture, Art and Design, for publications including Building Design, the Spectator, the Saatchi Gallery’s Art and Music magazine, and Volume magazine. Selected Writing Spectator 06.10.2012 Review of ‘Why We Build’ by Rowan Moore. Art and Music Magazine 2011 (Issue 16) ‘Collage Culture’ 15.09.10 ‘The Niemeyer Letter’ Fictional letter from Oscar Niemeyer describing his reasons for abandoning architecture. Imagined for the Indomitable/Exquisite Rio de Janeiro: Reflections on the Tropical Metropolis, curated by Luciana Vidal and held at the Superfront LA gallery in the [...]

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The Niemeyer Letter

There follows the letter that Oscar Niemeyer, the celebrated architect of Brazilian modernism, wrote to a friend, apologizing for his complete abandonment of architectural activity. Thank you for your concern at my turning down the opportunity to design the new National Museum of Modern Art. The truth is, the person you wrote to is no longer. I have lost all faith in form and geometry, in the way the perfect curve can elicit feeling from the hardest of hearts. Was [...]

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Tonal Ambition

‘Tonal Ambition: Brian Roettinger’s design for the Theremin’ Volume magazine #13 (Archis 2007 #3) First called the Thereminvox, the theremin was invented by Russian scientist Lev Sergeivich Theremin in 1919. It is the first electronic musical instrument, operated with no contact but by motions of the hand in the air around two metal antennae. One hand controls pitch, and the other volume, in movements that recall of Tom Cruise’s in Minority Report. To play it well requires precise movements, as [...]

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Andrew Zago and Office dA: Literary Modernists 2005

  Ambiguity and Blurred Boundaries; The work of Andrew Zago and Office dA. 2005 Unlike many of their generation, whose work is interested in the application of new technologies to the production of architecture, or in architecture as media, the work of Office dA and Andrew Zago can be termed literary in as much as they deal in meaning and ideas. Their approach can be allied specifically to that of two early modernist/symbolist poets Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Rainer Maria Rilke, [...]

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