Search results for ""Author Valeria Carullo""

By the late 1960s, The Architectural Review had a history of campaigning for important issues related to the built environment. Photography had long been at the centre of their strategy as a means to communicate ideas and make them more easily understood by a lay audience. However, the project they embarked on in 1969, called ‘Manplan’, was revolutionary both in ambition and in execution. A brainchild of Hubert de Cronin Hastings, long time proprietor and part-time editor of the magazine, the project was conceived as an analysis of the state of architecture and urban planning in Britain at the end of the decade and ran as a series of eight special issues, from September 1969 to September 1970. Each issue was devoted to an individual area of human activity that was considered affected by design and planning choices. Under the supervision of series editor Tim Rock, each issue’s guest editor worked with a specially invited photographer chosen from the world of photojournalism and street photography rather than architectural photography. The photographs taken for the ‘Manplan’ project did not simply illustrate but articulated very strongly the theme of each issue. They frequently included in the composition people inhabiting and using the spaces studied by the survey, thereby shifting the focus from the architecture itself to the human element within the built environment. Designers Michael Reid and Peter Baistow – who was also an accomplished photographer - created a graphically powerful backdrop for the work of the guest photographers. Imbued with the spirit of photo-reportage and shot on 35mm cameras, the black and white images were reproduced - often at full page - using a special matt-black ink, which made them even more dramatic. The overall message was a powerful, uncompromising and highly critical comment on contemporary living conditions, which embodied both the idealism of the 1960s and the disillusionment felt at the end of that decade, while many of the issues addressed are still extremely relevant today. Most of the photographs in the exhibition and catalogue, taken by renowned professionals such as Ian Berry, Patrick Ward and Tony Ray-Jones, have never been published or exhibited before (apart from their use in the Manplan issues), while some of them were taken for the project but ultimately not used. Includes a foreword by Norman Foster, one of the original guest editors of the Manplan series.

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One of the most innovative artists and thinkers of the first half of the 20th century, László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946) emigrated to Britain after the forced closure of the Bauhaus, following his colleague Walter Gropius. This book examines the two years he spent in Britain in the mid-1930s before moving on to the United States - two intense years filled with commissions, collaborations, opportunities, disappointments, artistic exchanges and friendship.Moholy-Nagy was especially known in the UK as a photographer, his photos having previously been published in the Architectural Review. Although brief, Moholy-Nagy's English period represented the peak of his photographic activity. In Britain, he also worked as a graphic designer on books, advertisements and on London Transport posters. He worked as an art advisor for Simpsons' menswear store and designed publicity for the Isokon Furniture Company. He made a couple of documentary films – Lobsters and New Architecture at London Zoo and worked as a designer on Things to Come for Alexander Korda. As well as the films and photographic essays for the AR, he was introduced by John Betjeman to publisher John Miles, who commissioned him to illustrate three books: The Street Markets of London, Eton Portrait and An Oxford University Chest. He also worked with Gropius and Maxwell Fry on various exhibition designs, gave lectures and wrote articles throughout his stay, and The London Gallery held an exhibition of his work in January 1937. This highly visual book weaves together rarely seen images, documents and narrative to create a fascinating picture of the man and the artist during this critical and highly productive phase of his life.

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During the 1960s Italy's museum sector witnessed a fertile period of renewal. A generation of architects, working in partnership with the directors of museums, set about transforming into exhibition spaces a number of ancient monumental complexes located in the historic centres of some of the most important Italian cities. Among these was the brilliant and solitary Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa (19061978) who revitalised the discipline of museography by sagaciously combining it with restoration. His lucid intervention at Verona's Museo di Castelvecchio is emblematic of this approach: the medieval castle, the museum of ancient art, and modern architecture all harmoniously coexisting in a monument located at the heart of a city designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The far-sighted choice of Scarpa was owed to the then director of the museum, Licisco Magagnato, who tenaciously argued the case for the appointment of an architect specialising in this field to work on the city's principal museum of ancient art. The renovation work, which continued for more than a decade, took place in various phases (19581964, 1967 and 19681974) but in accordance with a remarkably consistent and coherent plan. In his work on Castelvecchio, carried out at a significant point in his career, Scarpa attained a remarkable balance between different aesthetic elements that is particularly evident in the sculpture gallery, where the renovations harmonise with the power of the 14th-century Veronese sculptures exhibited in this section of the museum. One of the most striking details is the location of the equestrian statue of Cangrande I della Scala. For the presentation of this work the architect conceived a backdrop of great poetry, drawing the visitor's attention to its historical stratifications and simultaneously creating an exemplary essay in modern architecture. This museum is the most perfectly resolved of Scarpa's works in terms of the complexity and coherence of its design, and today remains "outrageously" well preserved. It is therefore unsurprising that a photographer-artist such as Richard Bryant should have been attracted by the extraordinary compositional, spatial and luminous harmony of Castelvecchio. The book is introduced by an essay by Alba Di Lieto, the architect appointed to Verona City Council's Direzione Musei d'Arte e Monumenti, a scholar of Scarpa's drawings, and the author of monographs on his work. She describes the architect's renovation and locates it in the context of Italy's architectural panorama. She also offers insights into the cataloguing of Scarpa's graphic output in the context of the overall conservation of his work. The essay is followed by a brief history of the castle by Paola Marini, who was the director of Verona's civic museum network for 22 years. The essay is followed by a brief history of the castle by Paola Marini, who was the director of Verona's civic museum network for 22 years. In December 2015 she has taken on a new role as director of the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice the first of Scarpa's museum projects in 1949. Valeria Carullo writes in her postscript about her experience by assisting Richard Bryant in photographing the castle. She is curator of The Robert Elwall Photographs Collection in the RIBA British Architectural Library. Richard Bryant is one of the best-known architectural photographers, working all over the world. He and Hélène Binet are the only photographers with an honorary fellowship of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

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