This morning’s NYTimes has an excellent article on Architectural Minimalism, by Thomas de Monchaux:
Note: I myself know almost nothing about architecture, but you might be interested in the discussion of the London “Lloyd’s building”, in the context of a conjectural Aesthetic Realism (a side-dish to our usual fare of Mathematical Realism or Platonism), towards the end of the following essay:
*
For a similarly
minimalist thriller,
austere in that (for
very good reasons)
the perpetrator is
never explicitly named,
try
Murphy Calls-in a Specialist
*
[Update 27 II 12] Dunno whether this is Minimalism or Maximalism -- it sort of looks like Minimalism inflated with a bicycle pump:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/28/arts/design/pritzker-prize-awarded-to-wang-shu-chinese-architect.html?ref=global-home
Like I say -- I know nothing about architecture, but I know what I don't like.
Great design for a Stalinist prison, though.
[Later update]
Whoops -- and here's a different view:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2012/02/pritzker-prize-wang-shu-architect.html
This one I like, assuming that all those niches are intended as hidey-holes for hamsters.
~
Some intra-architecural terminology for a related idea:
Against the Art Nouveau, the
frivolous ornament, the useless decoration, the sentimental object, the Bauhaus
raised the banner of functionalism. The arched baroque and the involuted
rococo were replaced by stark
geometrical planes and the unadorned curtain wall.
-- Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology (1962, rev.
ed. 1965, 1988), p. 243
.
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