The Center for Land Use Interpretation

The Center for Land Use Interpretation

Occupying a bleached-out building on a busy street and marked only by a small logo, the Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI) has spent nearly 20 years redefining geography, and inviting the public to join them. This isn’t about mapping roads and elevations, but looking at more unconventional aspects of the land, from satellite dishes scanning the skies to hidden networks of oil extraction in our own neighbourhoods. CLUI cracks geography open to reveal its fascinating links to culture and history, and has made it an urgent, compelling subject attracting entirely new audiences….ICON MAGAZINE ONLINE | Centre for Land Use Interpretation: Being There  by Lyra Kilston

Posthumous FLW Boathouse

Designed in 1905 for the University of Wisconsin as a working boathouse but never built, Frank Lloyd Wright's Rowing Boathouse was one of Wright's most prized designs. His goal was to create something that would be the perfect blending of form and function. He also wanted to give the oarsmen of Wisconsin a boathouse they could not only use to become a rowing powerhouse in collegiate leagues, but a boathouse that would allow them the opportunity to enjoy the beauty of their surroundings.

In 2000, three long time rowing friends had the vision of this boathouse on the shores of the Niagara River where it meets Lake Erie. After many years of fundraising, negotiations and construction, the Boathouse opened in 2007 and today stands as one of the most unique architectural Wright designs - his only boathouse design. With the design retired, there will never be another built in the world. Rowing at the Fontana Boathouse is managed by the prestigious West Side Rowing Club, a one hundred year old organization dedicated to bring the sport of rowing to the youth of WNY.

Czech Cubism

 via David Sisson

Yes, only the Czechs explored cubism in architecture. (Don’t even think about the Einstein Tower) This avant-garde art movement was active mostly in Prague from 1910 to 1914.

Members of this movement realized the epochal significance of the Cubism of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque and attempted to extract its components for their own work in all branches of artistic creativity - sculpture, painting, applied arts and architecture. The most notable participants in this movement were the architects Pavel Janák, Josef Gočár, Vlastislav Hofman and Josef Chochol. A major division in Czech architecture occurred in 1911 when many young avant-garde artists from Jan Kotĕra and his circle divorced themselves from the Mánes Association. These younger architects were more idealistic in their outlook and criticized the strict rationalism of their forebears, Otto Wagner and Kotĕra. Janák, Gočár, and Hofman founded the group Skupina výtvarných umĕlců (Group of Plastic Artists) and established a journal for the group, Umĕlecký mĕsíčník (Artistic Monthly).

After Czechoslovakia's founding in 1918, architectural Czech Cubism gradually developed into Czech Rondocubism, which was more decorative, as it was influenced by traditional folk ornaments to celebrate the revival of Czech national independence.