Richard Neutra, the mid century champion

Posted on October 9, 2016 by Michele

A few years ago, Richard Neutra, the quintessential California modernist architect, made my stay in downtown Los Angeles worthwhile.

Los Angeles’ main library had an exhibition of Neutra’s sketches and drawings and I was able to take some pictures to share with you—these are my interpretations of his work:

I love these largely horizontal airy structures; they are so “modern”, you forget they were designed in 1920’s…

I admit that I had to leave California to miss it and nothing says more Los Angeles than this beautiful photo of the Stahl House by Pierre Koenig, another modernist architect:

the photographer, Julius Shulman, became famous by this one black and white shot from 1960 (above) and its color version (below):

Born in Vienna, Neutra (1892 – 1970) was influenced by his fellow Austrians, Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele (both died in 1918 when Neutra was 26 years old); this little painting of his could have been created by Klimt himself:

Another great influence on the young Neutra was Frank Lloyd Wright who invited Neutra to work in his studio in Taliesen. They rank him second only to the great Lloyd Wright in American architecture. Other early influences were Louis Sullivan (he coined “form follows function”), Otto Wagner and Erich Mendelsohn.

This sketch is the Van der Leeuw House solarium (complete with bathing beauties) that Neutra envisioned to build for himself:

Chairs (this one from 1919) weren’t the only things besides buildings that Neutra designed,

he even designed aluminum buses!

Richard Neutra, the romantic engineer, was passionate about art, technology and architecture—I love this drawing of a cellist playing Bach:

Leaving the cold winters and the world wars of Europe, Neutra took refuge in the sunny climate and rich landscape of Southern California; with his cool and sleek modern style he coined the term biorealism: “the inherent and inseparable relationship between man and nature.”

Kashan, a symphony in gold and turquoise

Posted on August 27, 2013 by Michele

Kashan…A jewel of a city in the semi-arid center of Iran. I went back to Iran after 20 years. I visited several historical houses in Kashan and enjoyed my first visit to this region. This is one of them, built around 1880 with exquisite mirror and stained-glass work:

A much smaller example is the hotel we stayed in; this amazing boutique hotel (below), the “Manouchehri House“, revived from its ruin by the good taste of its owner, Saba Manouchehri, her super talented designer, Shanhnaz Nader Esphanahi, and Akbar Helli the traditional architect and master repairer of historic houses. Going from this (picture not mine):

to this:

and this:

This is the view from my room:

A first floor room with three beds for my parents and myself. Even the bed covers (designed by Shahnaz Nader Esfahani) are custom made for the hotel and purely Iranian:

Still jet-lagged, I could’t sleep well the first night and I saw the sun rise after having stared in delight for a couple of hours at the moonlit garden:

We had to take advantage of our short trip and a knowledgeable guide so we hurried to the breakfast area,

and tried to remember to take a look at these cute garden sculptures upon our return to the hotel!

We had our Persian tea and out the door:

Our first stop was at the Tabatabaei House. This splendid house was built in the 1840s for the affluent Tabatabaei family. It was designed by Master Ali Maryam. It has 40 rooms and more than 200 doors:

It is the same house that you see at the beginning of the blog post. I was amazed at this majestic balcony and its ceiling that looks like a traditional Persian rug (below).

Kashan is world famous for its beautiful rug weaving tradition,

and I can very well imagine Mr. Tabatabaei asking his architect to create a rug on his ceiling like the rug he must have had at his feet:

It doesn’t happen often for me to be overwhelmed by what I see and hesitate about what to shoot but I was taking pictures left and right and no time to take notes… 😉

But I remembered to take a picture of myself!

The colors on these pictures have not been processed — the golden glow that you see everywhere is real:

The intricate stucco work on the walls is even more beautiful in the midday golden light:

The persians are historically known in the art of plastering:

The stained glass is omnipresent in all of these old houses,

Some are exquisite!

We decided to go to the bazaar for lunch. Iran, the pistachio capital of the world is a heaven for nut lovers:

I found this guy’s expression in front of the sheep’s heads hilarious! The local Chelo-Kabab, the only thing that Shahs and Mullahs equally love and agree upon, didn’t disappoint us. Chelo-Kabab is the national dish of Iran consisting of steamed basmati rice and lamb kabab.

After lunch we headed to the Fin Garden. A Unesco world heritage site, it is a historical Persian Garden that symbolizes the earthly paradise. Designed for Shah Abbas I and completed in 1590, it is the oldest garden in Iran still in existence.

Water runs through it (it houses Kashan’s Fin Bath) and beautiful trees and flowers and water sources everywhere have a heavenly effect on people.

Flowers are everywhere on the ceilings and walls (above) and outside like the omnipresent pomegranate and roses:

Kashan is like Grasse in France, the capital of rose essence, Gol-Aab:

and some more ceilings:

and more gorgeous frescos:

I loved this image of this tired chador clad lady:

The next day took us to a famous bath or hammam: Sultan Amir Ahmad Bathhouse. I want to take you first to the roof—very typical of the ones in this region, it lets the sunlight in. You will see these roof domes again from inside.

Thes multiple domes contain convex glasses to provide sufficient lighting to the bathhouse while concealing it from the outside:

The bathhouse is a traditional Iranian bathhouse from the 16th century. It has two main parts: Sarbineh (the dressing hall) and Garmkhaneh (the hot bathing hall). The following image is of Sarbineh with its octagonal pool and its 8 columns.

The interior of the bathhouse is decorated with turquoise and gold tile work, brickwork and amazing plasterwork:

A symphony in gold and turquoise…

Me being a Roohani (religious in Persian and a common last name like Smith) and the new president being a Roohani, you would think this dude could be my dad or an uncle:

My dad—Morteza Rouhani— a retired pediatrician and not a mollah (here with our kind guide, Abbas Ghamkhar), was tired of following my mother and me around . Everybody asks me but my father has no connection to the Iranian President!

Another great tea (I call it paradise in a glass) and we were ready to head to another historical house.

The same person who built the Tabatabaei’s House later built this one, the Boroujerdis House for Mr. Tabatabaei’s newly married daughter. It is considered a true masterpiece of Persian traditional residential architecture. It has a funny story:

The groom not being from Kashan, was not accepted first as a good suitor (he was in the tea making business) and to show his wealth in spite of not being one of the Kashan nobility, he asks the same architect to build his home with samovars and teapots in the exterior wall carvings! I was laughing taking these pictures:

There are great plaster and stucco works of fruits and flowers and wall paintings by the royal painter Kamal-ol-molk, and three 40 meter tall windcatchers which help cool the house to unusually cool temperatures.

A windcatcher (below) is a traditional Persian architectural element to create natural ventilation in buildings:

and this is what’s happening inside the dome, magnificent ceiling,

after magnificent ceiling…

I wished I could have made a better travel log about this mystical place:

One last image from the other side of Tabatabaei House—after all we started the blog with it:

Ok one more:

We went back to Tehran, tired but happy. Guess what we drank the minute we got home?

I will keep a great memory of this beautiful city—home to my favorite poet, Sohrab Sepehri. This swallow kept us company at our hotel, the Manouchehri House:

A poem of Sepehri in English:

“I am a native of Kashan
Time is not so bad to me
I own a loaf of bread, a bit of intelligence, a tiny amount of taste!
I possess a mother better than the leaf
Friends, better than the running brook

I am a Muslim
The rose is my Mecca
The spring my prayer-carpet
The light, my prayer stone
The field my prostrate place
I take ablution with the heartbeat of windows…”

in French:

“Je viens de la contrée de Kashan.
Ma vie somme toute n’est pas trop difficile.
J’ai de quoi vivre, un brin d’intelligence, un minuscule talent.
J’ai une mère plus douce que les feuilles de l’arbre.
Des amis plus limpides que l’eau courante.

Et un Dieu présent quelque part, tout proche:
Parmi les feuilles de giroflées,
Au pied de ce pin élevé,
Sur la face consciente des eaux,
Dans les lois du monde végétal.
Je suis musulman.
J’ai comme direction de la Mecque une rose.
Comme napperon de prière une source.
Comme sceau de prière la lumière.
La plaine est le tapis de ma prière.
Je fais mes ablutions aux vibrantes fenêtres de la lumière.”

and in Persian:

اهل كاشانم
روزگارم بد نيست.
تكه ناني دارم ، خرده هوشي، سر سوزن ذوقي.
مادري دارم ، بهتر از برگ درخت.
دوستاني ، بهتر از آب روان.

من مسلمانم.
قبله ام يك گل سرخ.
جانمازم چشمه، مهرم نور.
دشت سجاده من.
من وضو با تپش پنجره ها مي گيرم.

Two Queens, one King and the holy Trinity College by the river Cam

Posted on October 6, 2010 by Michele

University of Cambridge, England, is one of the oldest universities in the world (800 years old) and is made up of 31 colleges. A college is where students live, eat and socialize. It is also the place where students receive small group teaching sessions, known as supervisions. This post will be about the grandest and most magnificent of these colleges: Trinity College.

I had the best guide to take me around several of these colleges but for this post, Trinity it is. It was founded by Henry VIII in 1546 as part of the University of Cambridge, combining two older colleges that existed since 1317 and 1324:

This is the clock gate with a statue of one of the older colleges founders, Edward III (and yes it did take me 20 minutes to walk 20 feet!)

“Pugne pro patria” or fight for your country he’s preaching with a beer belly and three crowns in his hand. Edward III quartered the Royal Arms of England (the three lions) with the ancient arms of France, the fleurs-de-lis on a blue field, to signal his claim to the French throne.

The iron-work of the gates in the Nevile’s court leading to the “backs” is very impressive (I found a funny criticism of the gates in an old book—they were built for a total sum of 4 pounds in 1691):

I love this little feather stuck on these ornaments:

Trinity has many notable alumni but for me its most distinguished is Isaac Newton; this is where he measured the speed of sound (you can still clap your hands and hear the echo):

He is now standing in the college’s chapel:

For the ones who don’t want to decipher the words above, here is William Wordsworth’ poem (1850):

“Near me hung Trinity’s loquacious clock,
Who never let the quarters, night or day,
Slip by him unproclaimed, and told the hours
Twice over with a male and female voice.
Her pealing organ was my neighbour too;
And from my pillow, looking forth by light
Of moon or favouring stars, I could behold
The antechapel where the statue stood
Of Newton with his prism and silent face,
The marble index of a mind for ever
Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone.”

Newton is surrounded by bright minds in the chapel and even A Man for all Seasons. I am almost sure that the second gentleman from the left is Sir Thomas More:

Of course you should first get in the chapel to see all of that!

The most beautiful sight is the Wren library—off limit to cameras—which has exquisite classical proportions and maximizes space and light having bookcases below window level. It has Newton’s own copy of the first edition of Principia Mathematica, with hand written notes for the second edition.

Trinity College undergraduate gowns are dark blue, as opposed to the black favored by most other Cambridge colleges:

Unlike any other Cambridge college the porters—aka grass police—always wear black bowler hats; they make sure that as with many other Cambridge colleges, the grassed courtyards are generally out of bounds for everyone except the Fellows or me who was accompanied by a Fellow.

And this is their headquarter:

If you get lucky to be invited to a High Table in the Great Hall, you will have a formal dinner with very interesting Fellows but if you are very lucky, like me, you will sit between the most senior Fellows, Anil Seal and Béla Bollobás!

This is what you are going to eat and drink (we were lucky enough to inherit a great Sauternes left over from the previous night’s big dinner); I was warned not to pass the serving platters to the person sitting by me and always wait for the waiter to do it!

And of course row after row of tea cups…

The great court is even more breathtaking at night where the college bathes in soft lights and the sound of the central fountain:

Just imagine going to sleep (like the other students of the college) with the sound of this old spring:

If you are a visiting scholar, you may stay in the college,

right beside the Master’s Lodge—in this case Sir Martin Rees:

I so wanted to peek through Sir Rees’ house but the best I could do was to take a furtive picture and be happy with his TED talks...

One place I could visit was the neighboring guest house in this blue hour,

and delight at the “green teas” you could have in the morning by the window…

Last but not least on my list is the river Cam and its romantic bridges made even more beautiful by the Punts (flat-bottomed boat with a square-cut bow):

It couldn’t get greener, wetter, fresher than this hazy beautiful morning spent visiting the Cambridge colleges:

And this punter, oblivious to the fine rain, enjoys the shallow and gravelly river, from one Cam bridge to the next:

After the first couple of colleges you either need a coffee at Caffé Nero accompanied by great fudge from fudge kitchen,

or something stronger: a carajillo just like Mitra D. likes it!

To be continued…

René Burri, one degree of separation between me and Che Guevara

Posted on September 11, 2010 by Michele

I met one of my favorite photographers, René Burri, last week! A few years ago, I fell in love with this beautiful image of Brazil I discovered on Burri’s great photography book:

In 1963 while working in Cuba, he made portraits of a young Che Guevara:

I went to see Burri exposing his Vintage elegant shots of the polymath architect/urbanist, Le Corbusier:

The photographer has managed to catch the architect in his creative modes/moods:

I found out that often times, Le Corbusier didn’t even notice Burri taking his picture:

I particularly like this one:

Burri was present at La Tourette monastery with Le Corbusier and he recorded some very interesting images of the monks surrounding the architect in 1959:

I love this monk (with the hat) listening in the conversation below:

Artist and photo-reporter in one, Burri, started to shadow Le Corbusier while still a student—he became the visual chronicler and personal photographer of the architect:

The whole exhibition was a glimpse into the creative life of Le Corbusier (not being among my favorite architects, I was never particularly curious about him); I learned much about his work thanks to Burri.

The master was present to kindly sign books,

and learning that I am Iranian, he tried to add another word to his autograph: cheilechoub (ch in Swiss German sounds like kh) or “very good” in Persian:

Check out some of Burri’s work here.

To see the breadth of his work (eye) visit Magnum’s site here.

To see an interesting view about Che Guevara go here.

Richard Neutra, the bridge between Taliesen and Bauhaus

Posted on March 5, 2010 by Michele

Richard Neutra, the quintessential California modernist architect, has made my stay in downtown Los Angeles worthwhile.

Los Angeles’ main library has an exhibition of Neutra’s sketches and drawings and I was able to take some pictures to share with you—these are my interpretations of his work:

I love these largely horizontal airy structures; they are so “modern”, you forget they were designed in 1920’s…

I admit that I had to leave California to miss it and nothing says more Los Angeles than this beautiful photo of the Stahl House by Pierre Koenig, another modernist architect:

the photographer, Julius Shulman, became famous by this one black and white shot from 1960 (above) and its color version (below):

This sketch is the Van der Leeuw House solarium (complete with bathing beauties) that Neutra envisioned to build for himself:

Chairs (this one from 1919) weren’t the only things besides buildings that Neutra designed,

he even designed aluminum buses!

Richard Neutra, the romantic engineer, was passionate about art, technology and architecture—I love this drawing of a cellist playing Bach:

To see my favorite architects go here

Catch the exhibition at the L.A. Library here

From Mies to Kahn, I love my architects

Posted on August 12, 2009 by Michele

I still remember the outrage in the voice of my friend, Lino Bottaro, trying to defend his native city, Venice, against the Las Vegas Venetian hotel: “how dare you suggest that they did an ok job in Vegas? Haven’t you heard of great architects like Palladio or Brunelleschi?”

Of course I have heard of those two great Italians but I have a weakness for the 20th century STARchitects like the great Mies van der Rohe above, who’s more known for his Barcelona chair than his great buildings! Mies’ visionary architecture has ushered in the glass-and-steel skyscraper era.

I fell in love with Louis Kahn’s work after watching the movie, My Architect.

A density of purpose, a phenomenal sense of place and an intense spirituality define his works. There is a silence about his buildings, they have a sense of quiet…

Knowing Oscar Niemeyer was a beautiful surprise from an article in NY Times; he’s 101 years old and still working!

Just look at this enchanting blue staircase in Brasilia…

Cutting-edge buildings designed by globe-trotting architects have changed the face of today’s cities and there is no monopoly of architecture, a sensuous and intellectual art, like in the time of Frank Lloyd Wright or Mies:

Of all of today’s self-indulgent “star architects”, I still have a soft spot for Frank Gehry’s curves; you have to be in one of his buildings to see the frozen poetry in Bilbao, Prague, Los Angeles, etc…

His Bilbao museum is the 20th century’s iconic architecture according to the architecture critic, Ada Louise Huxtable.

Last but not least, Rem Koolhaas’ unconventional designs are a force to reckon with:

I shouldn’t even get into the Diva, Zaha Hadid or Jean Nouvel, Herzog and de Meuron or Tadao Ando (the great light and water architect)…Those will be for another post, another day. Richard Meier, Taniguchi and the phenomenal Charles Gwathmey have to wait their turn too. As you can see I am passionate about architecture…

“Less is more.” Mies van der Rohe

“The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization.” Frank Lloyd Wright

p.s. Renzo Piano is missing from my list because I have not forgiven him for his wild Pompidou Center design and his Broad Contemporary Art Museum in Los Angeles has not helped his case!

the photos of Prague, Bilbao, Venice and Seattle are from my own archives.

Michele Roohani

“Life is short, art is long, opportunity fleeting, experiment treacherous, judgment difficult.”

Tag Archives: architecture