#modernist-architecture

#modernist-architecture

If you happen to have $8 million to spend right now, perhaps do a little soul searching but then consider this listing. The Falls, as its been named, goes way beyond the standard luxury box house. Designed by architect Charles Gwathmey, likely most famous for his addition to the Guggenheim in the early '90s, the house blends with its lush surroundings, which include a running waterfall and a wildflower meadow.

In the United States, Boston, Portland, and San Francisco are just some examples of when municipal governments prioritized high-speed vehicular infrastructure over the existing urban fabric. In Canada, Montreal would have followed this trajectory if not for the intervention of several figures throughout its history, most notably Blanche Lemco van Ginkel (1923-2022). A Harvard-trained planner and architect who, along with her husband Sandy Van Ginkel, advocated for the preservation of urban heritage while applying the principles of modernist infrastructure.

Amid the orderly grid of the Giardini della Biennale, the Swiss Pavilion appears almost reticent. Its low white volumes, completed in 1952 by Bruno Giacometti, seem to withdraw from the surrounding display of national pride. The building embodies a form of modernism that resists monumentality, where precision and restraint replace spectacle, and architecture becomes less an object than a framework for encounter.

In many ways, the middle-of-nowhere location makes sense for Brasília. It's not only the most un-Brazilian-feeling city in the country but it might also be the most un-Latin American-feeling. That's what makes it so fascinating. With an out-of-this-universe architectural vibrancy stuck somewhere between kitschy Bond films of the 1970s and Jane Fonda's "Barbarella, " Brasília is a city all its own.