Daily Beast: Athens’ Architectural Heritage Is Slowly Slipping Away but These Heroes Are Saving It

Daily Beast: Athens’ Architectural Heritage Is Slowly Slipping Away but These Heroes Are Saving It. “By World War II, Athens was one of Europe’s most beautiful and eclectic cities. But a post-War building law, now seen as reckless and short-sighted, incentivised homeowners to knock down their houses and replace them with identikit concrete apartment blocks…. The post-War building spree is often given as the reason for Athens’ oppressive concrete appearance. And yet, walking through Athens today, you can still spot these pre-War survivors. There are a surprising number of them, largely hidden, subsumed, and sometimes entombed by their concrete surroundings. But they’re still there, surviving.”

Curbed New York: The unsung modernist treasures of Queens

New-to-me, from Curbed New York: The unsung modernist treasures of Queens. “In Bayside, Queens, the American Martyrs Roman-Catholic church sits proudly on a street corner, standing in high relief compared to the single-family homes nearby. It’s circular and covered in yellow bricks, with a folded-plate copper roof that’s aged into a mossy shade of green…. It’s a fine building designed by John O’Malley, one of the most prolific ecclesiastical architects in Brooklyn and Queens. You won’t find the church in most history books about modern architecture, but it is included in Queens Modern, a digital archive composed of adaptations of the movement in New York City’s largest borough, which was updated at the end of December to include deeper dives into over a dozen firms active during the mid-20th-century.” There appears to be some concern in the comments that not everything included is “real” modernist. I don’t know enough about […]

Columbia University GSAPP Updates Architectural Image Database

The Visual Resources Collection (VRC) at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) has updated its online database of architectural images. “Released within the Artstor Digital Library, the collection was launched earlier this year with 10,000 images. Now, after the completion of Phase 2, the database includes images from nearly 1,000 built projects from 44 countries as well as documentation of unbuilt projects and competitions such as the Chicago Tribune Tower and the Lenin Library.”