Japan: Welcome!
I love capturing the ordinary to get a glimpse of the sense of style of a country. The entrances of houses in Japan seemed a very good way to show the diversity of different owners and regions.
Tag: architecture
Albania: Staying in a Traditional Ottoman House in Buhal
The Cullufes’ ancestral farmland by the Vjosa was confiscated under the Hoxha regime, forcing the family to move to nearby Përmet to take on menial work. For over two decades, they returned every Sunday to maintain the house, until finally, in 2017, they reopened it as a guesthouse.
On a Financial Times article pinned to the wall, 80-year-old Kristaq is quoted as saying: “I don’t travel to see the world. My goal is to bring the world here.”
Albania: The Wonderful Project of the New Pyramide of Tirana
The daughter of former dictator Enver Hoxha, Architect Pranvera Hoxha, build this pyramid, brutalist style, in 1988, in tribute to her father. Meant to be a museum, it hosted “more or less everything that Hoxha ever touched or used, and in the center was a sitting marble statue of Hoxha by Kristaq Rama.“
After the end of the communist regime, it should have been teared down, but a lot of voices around the world were against it. Then came a phase of making and rejecting concepts until the architecture company MVRDV from the Netherlands developed something genius in my eyes.
I have a thing for brutalism, but I’m aware that it can be quite depressing in a city center. This concept really got it all. It keeps the old structure, makes it light and playful and additionally adds color and lightness to everything without being frivolous and corny as so many other buildings are in the city center of Tirana.
A beacon of hope that something great and lightful can come out of the darkness.
I’m really impressed.
Architecture in Tirana
In my next post, I will show the New Pyramide of Tirana which is a real architectural masterpiece. For a lot of other new buildings I saw in Tirana and elsewhere in Albania I must say: What the heck? A lot of new stuff was built in the last years but apparently with a strange concept of architecture in mind. I’d even use the words effect-seeking, frilly and sometimes even frivolous.
This doesn’t count for everything of course but there’s quite a lot of stuff that jumps directly in your face.
Villa Koliba in Zakopane
The Villa Koliba in Zakopane is one of the oldest and well preserved examples of the Zakopane Style Housing. It was built in 1892 by artist Stanisław Witkiewicz and houses a museum for the Zakopane Architecture Style today.
Glasgow: Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s famous Tea Room
What a place! It is on Sauchiehall Street and it was opened 1903 by business woman Catherine Cranston. She told Mackintosh that he would have unlimited resources and her goal was to establish a place where even woman could meet outside their homes. I never thought about the fact, that shopping could be difficult, but there were now possibilities for women to go out unchaperoned and there were no bathrooms for them to go to.
The Many Faces of Glasgow
We have been there for only one day all together and so I can only give my first impression. I would prefer Edinburgh to live but if I would be 20 again and looking for a place to visit an Art School I would chose Glasgow.
Scottish Highlands: Drumnadrochit And Urquhart Castle
We went to see Urquhart Castle this day and walked down to Drumnadrochit afterwards. The castle is a very well visited spot overrun by families, busses and instagrammers. The castles history is well explained by a short movie in the movie theater. But the sensation of the movie is the curtains opening at the end of it with a view on the real castle in bright sunshine. With some imagination you can see, how the people lived there.
Scottish Holidays: Arriving in Edinburgh
We planned this holidays long before Covid and finally we did it. We came together – eight people from three different cities – and met in Glenelg, just opposite to the Isle of Skye in a house with phantastic views – all of which Nicky organized meticulously. We first met in Edinburgh to drive to Glenelg from there.
Tour de Oderland
A very special guided tour brought us to some different initiatives in eastern Brandenburg, where we learned, how people from the city and from the villages live and work together on the countrysite and engage actively in village live. I was most impressed by the story of Trebnitz.
hikeminded 