All posts tagged: architecture

Archigram – ‘every generation must make its own city’

Sketches and collages from ARCHIGRAM are a recurring reference point for Fat Nancy. The magazine dominated the architectural avant garde in the 1960s and early 1970s with its playful, pop-inspired visions of a technocratic future after its formation in 1961 by a group of young London architects – Warren Chalk, Peter Cook, Dennis Crompton, David Greene, Ron Herron and Michael Webb. “A new generation of architecture must arise with forms and spaces which seems to reject the precepts of ‘Modern’ yet in fact retains those precepts. We have chosen to by pass the decaying Bauhaus image which is an insult to functionalism. You can roll out steel – any length. You can blow up a balloon – any size. You can mould plastic – any shape. Blokes that built the Forth Bridge – they didn’t worry.” So wrote David Greene in a poem published in the first issue of Archigram magazine or, as Greene’s co-editor, Peter Cook, called it “a message, or abstract communication”. It was published in 1961 on a large sheet of the …

Weird and wonderful cemeteries.

FNND had reason to think about life and death recently…  So started to look around at how people are buried and found a few of these inspirational and amazingly colourful sites … and it was a reminder that ‘life doesn’t cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh’. George Bernard Shaw In life, the people of Sapanta in Romania (town population of 1,500) occupy their days tilling fields and spinning wool for thick blankets or tending flocks of shaggy sheep and big cows.  On Sundays they drink their potent local liquor of fermented fruits called Tuica, go to church and gossip at the café in their garishly coloured folk costumes.  But when a citizen of Sapanta dies, Dumitru Pop, a farmer, woodcarver and poet, gathers his notebook, chisels and paintbrushes and prepares to carve a poetic and pictorial homage of the deceased onto an oak grave marker in what villagers now call the Merry Cemetery, beside the Church of the Assumption. They don’t view death as …

Pavilion: Café and Art Centre

Pavilion is a Dubai staple, you can’t live in the city without spending more than a bit of time here.  A café and art space combined with a good menu of light bites, decent work spaces (and internet connection) and shisha for that after dinner relaxation Middle East style if you head here for supper or a private view. The space has regularly changing art exhibitions curated by The Third Line along with screenings of art and cult films. They also run workshops like the interesting idea of Saturday night writing… If you have some writing to do… do it on Saturday night at Pavilion, if you don’t have any writing to do… well head to pavilion anyway and they can set you some writing exercises! The Pavilion is a lovely idea – a non profit art space that furnishes the Emirates with a place to discuss and see artworks by local and international artists, whilst also hosting a diverse range of interesting events, providing a platform for the growing and active arts community. With …