Architects

A Bridge Between Past and Future

        Architects have connected the past with the future by building the present, presenting visions that emulate and project our deepest spiritual needs. From Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564),  Andrea Palladio (1508–80), Francesco Borromini (1599-1667). Below, San Pietro in Montorio in Rome (1502), from Donato Bramante (1444-1514), extraordinary piece that connects Greece and Roman heritage, projecting it into the future: proportion and geometry rule the arts.

          While Frank Lloyd Wright was creating a whole original world through his work around Chicago at the beginning of the 20thCentury, after the 40's, Walter Gropius (1883-1969), and Richard Neutra (1892-1970) managed to create a whole world of innovative, functional buildings. Below, the Fagus-Werk Factory in Alfeld, Germany, from pionners Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer (1911).

          More recently, contemporary architects like Ron Herron (1930–1994), or Patricio Pouchulu (1965), pushed the boundaries and have inspired our feelings by producing long-lasting, futurists, evocative spaces. Indeed, architecture still feeds the rich art’s spectrum, framing other arts.  Below: Walking City (collage) by Ron Herron, member of the british architectural team Archigram (1964):

          Below, the Grand Egyptian Museum, GEM, by architect Patricio Pouchulu. Inspired by the forms of the desert and the dunes, the complex is behind the Giza Pyramids:

          This long link between times, even ages, has an interesting differentiation point: in the last 200 years, thanks to the industrial revolution of existing industries (from Latin “revolvere”: roll back),  originally merged with proto-sciences, we face perhaps for the first time and no doubt in such scale, the possibility to get a large number of products that are both well designed and produced at affordable prices. 

          The architecture world, presented as a whole, allows celebrating the construction of civilisation: arts, painting, sculpture, music, photography, films, fashion and artefacts, brings us today the posibility of enjoying the merge of functionality and art, like no time before.  Books, Magazines, Internet, provide an almost "infinite" amount of texts, images and information from all times.  

          This excess of information and focus on the new and the News, however, is limiting our capacity to look at the Cosmos, and particularly, at the Sky.  Something different happened in ancient civilisations, like in Old Egypt, as pointed by Pouchulu in his evocative "Eye" looking at the Sky (photo above). When was the last tine you looked at the stars, in the middle of the night...?

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