State Capital Publishing Company Building is located in Guthrie, Oklahoma, and was built in 1902. This architecture is a commercial style building, which is just built for commercial using, to be a publishing company. He liked to use red bricks to show a special architecture style. However, there is also something different, the details, the window frames, are strongly simplified.

The Farnsworth House was built in Plano, IL and is a work that demonstrates the connection between structure and nature. It embodies Rohe’s modernist ideals in a very artistic manner. This house seems to have very little privacy, but once again, I really enjoy all of the windows to let in the natural light. I imagine the view of the sunset or sunrise is also really nice, assuming the curtains are drawn back. One another note, this home is also very prone to flooding, but it has been able to withstand multiple floods. 

The Barcelona Pavilion was built in 1929 and designed by Rohe. This particular architecture is one of the more modern looks, especially for its time. It has great open windows to allow natural light into the building. Additionally, it seems to be constructed using plenty of natural rocks. I really enjoy this building because of how lightly designed it is. The great big windows are a great use for day time lighting. It also has this large body of water right outside the building filled with plenty of smoothed stones. 

Gray Brothers Building, located in Guthrie, Oklahoma, and was built in 1890 and rebuilt in 1893. This architecture is a Richardsonian Romanesque style building. Similar as his other productions, he like to use red white bricks to show the special architecture style.

This library is one of Lu Wenyu’s early projects designed at her and her husbands studio Amateur Architecture Studio. They designed the building with the landscape in mind reminding people that they are in between both the mountains and a lake. Most of the building is underground because buildings by lakes and water are not supposed to challenge them. The building in the water is the poetry and philosophy reading room. It is supposed to be the place were you are one and balanced with nature. The style again shows how they are trying to push into the future without leaving Chinese culture behind.

Perkins Eastman architecture firm is a global company. It was found in 1981 in New York City. They recently help create New York City’s largest free-standing cancer center. Perkins Eastman Architects, Ennead Architects, and ICRAVE collaborated to create the David H. Koch Center for Cancer Care at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. The cancer care center is 25 stories tall and 750,000 square feet.

Perkins Eastman Architects were the medical planner and interior designer of clinical spaces. The building was designed to reduce energy consumption and operate optimal efficiency. 

The above picture is what the inside of the cancer center looks like. I love the minimalism of the white, green and light wood. The overall vibe of the place is calming which is something the patients need with what they are going through.

This very small house was designed after seeing one of her friends work on porcelain. The house is made of hundreds of porcelain pottery pieces. Lu Wenyu and her husband designed the building with poetry in mind. They explained the designed like an “…ink stone from the Song Dynasty [960-1279]…” combined with the thought of their friends porcelain. They said the building is  beautiful in the rain with its dripping down and then along the long walk way. It may not have been her biggest project, but it still shows the use of recycled materials they often use and connection to culture.

This is an example of an ink stone.

Architecture | Ceramic House by Wang Shu

Lu Wenyu and her husband also designed the Gongwang Museum in Fuyang, China. They only accepted the commission if they could also design and build houses for the dilapidated village around the museum. As China has had an ever growing urbanization movement due to its growing population, they sought to connect the rural area with the urban as well as design it after the mountains. The waving roofs blend into the mountains and also seem like a whole village. They again used recycled materials and created a layered building with multiple levels. The museum itself is art comparable to the ancient art it hold.

https://www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/12473-huang-gongwang-museum-by-amateur-architecture-studio

The beautiful Kunsthaus Bregenz building in Bregenz, Austria is certainly a sight to see. This international contemporary art museum houses some of the most influential art pieces and constantly changes its displays to accommodate the influx of new art into the museum. Zumthor uses a beautiful minimalist design which in itself represents contemporary art.The museum stands in the light of the beautiful Lake Constance and is made of glass and steel and cast concrete stone which gives the building texture. The building functions as a light box and absorbs and reflects light throughout its beautiful boundaries as the day goes through its cycles. The interior of the museum is also very minimalist but still beautifully done.

Lu Wenyu helped design this amazing building in 2003 which was finished in 2008. The Ningbo museum was built from recycled materials of the destroyed Chinese village around it, some a 1000 years old. They wanted to make sure the people around the museum could keep some memories of what was there before it. They even used bamboo to help build the concrete walls adding the old to the new. They used local craftsmen to further give back to the local area. The building is a great example of combing the old with the new.

Wang Shu’s Ningbo History Museum built from the remains of demolished villages