Apartment Therapy is running a wonderful photographic tour of Alvar Aalto’s studio in Helsiniki:

Check out Apartment Therapy for the whole tour.

[photos by Aaron Able]

[Click here for part 1 of the gallery.]

More pics after the jump:

Read more »

[Click here for part 2 of the gallery.]

More pics after the jump: Read more »

Working in Italy is wonderful and terrible. It’s a wonderful culture to work in, [but] the public system is terrible. So it’s a nightmare and it’s a dream.

– David Chipperfield, interviewed by the Wall Street Journal

Too true.

And that doesn’t just happen to non-Italian architects working here, local architects constantly experience that double-faced feeling as well.

An architect, a travel and food author, a scene and screen writer, a filmmaker and much more: Aldo Buzzi, a real Reinassance man of our times, passed away at his home in Milan earlier today.

Graduated from the School of Architecture in Milan in 1938, he was friends with Saul Steinberg, who illustrated some of his books, such as L’uovo alla kok and Piccolo diario americano, and who wrote his own autobiography, Reflections and shadows, together with Buzzi.

[photo of Aldo Buzzi via House of Mirth]

Rita Burmester: Artists & Architects Photographer

http://www.ritaburmester.com/casadmusic.html

The enclosed photographs are a selection of more than 400 images that have been accompanying the construction process of the Casa da Música building design by Rem Koolhaas in Porto, Portugal. This documentation process has been under taken on a personal basis by Rita Burmester.

There is hope in honest error. None in the icy perfection of the mere stylist.

–Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Prince Charles wrecked Richard Rogers‘ plans for the third time.

Last Friday at 9am, the phone rang at Richard Rogers’s hi-tech ­office by the Thames at Hammersmith, west ­London. On the line was an aide to ­Qatar’s royal family, the architect’s ­client on a multibillion pound housing project on the site of the former Chelsea barracks. The news was not good. After two and a half years of design work and days before expecting to win planning permission, the award-winning firm was sacked. The royal aide told ­Rogers a press statement would be released within an hour. ­Rogers desperately argued his corner, trying to persuade the Qataris they were making a mistake, but he could tell the game was up. His name was never mentioned, but everyone knew: Prince Charles had struck again…

Richard Rogers is now quite angry, of course — nobody likes people interfering in their job, even if such people are “unemployed individuals” which, incidentally, are also members of the Royal family. He says what Prince Charles did (id est writing a letter to the Qatari royal family to promote an alternate, more classicist design for the site, by Quinlan Terry, which he’s been backing since the beginning.) is non-constitutional, as his project being put off is not due to a democratic debate but only because of his interference.

The former Chelsea Barracks in London — Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty Images

British-based Czech architect Jan Kaplický, founder of Future Systems, died yesterday in Prague, suffering a fatal heart attack just a few hours after the birth of his daughter, Johanka.

Future Systems: Selfridges Building, The Bull Ring, Birmingham, UK

Future Systems: Media Centre, Lord’s Cricket Ground, London, UK
[photo by askbal]

Jørn Utzon, designer of the iconic Sydney Opera House and Pritzker laureate in 2003, died today in Copenhagen.

[Sydney Opera House pic by _ManWithNoName_ - used with permission]