architecture
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A secret underground temple, occupying nearly 300,000 cubic feet, has been outed and taken over by Italian police, who were investigating the owner for tax evasion. Built underneath a normal-looking house near Turin, Italy, the underground building is made up of nine ornately decorated temples sprawled over nine levels.
[T]he 'Temples of Damanhur' are not the great legacy of some long-lost civilisation, they are the work of a 57-year-old former insurance broker from northern Italy who, inspired by a childhood vision, began digging into the rock.
(via bb) (4) #11/23/2007
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Umberto Eco (paraphrased): Places like Las Vegas help preserve cultural artifacts. He's actually writing about a proposed theme park in Italy with shiny reproductions of ancient buildings.
(1) # 4/4/2007
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A meditation on the use of architecture, guns, and cars in the films of Michael Mann. Mann's films are always a feast for my eyes, and I don't even enjoy reading car magazines. (thx, drew)
(0) # 12/8/2006
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A composer in Edinburgh has allegedly discovered a medieval composition encoded into the architecture of a 15th century chapel in Scotland. He believes that the markings on 213 decorated cubes represent the Chladni patterns of a melody that, when played in sustained notes within the chapel, will perhaps unlock another secret. Perhaps he'll find Jesus and Mary Magdalene in flagrante delicto.
(0) # 5/21/2006
Gehry in Las Vegas

No matter what city I live in, I can't seem to get away from Frank Gehry's architecture. In Cambridge, I lived less than a mile away from Gehry's Stata Center on the MIT Campus. Now here in Las Vegas, Gehry recently unveiled his design for the Lou Ruvo Alzheimer's Center, to be built in the downtown area.
Reactions to the design have been mixed -- business as usual for a Gehry building. But a letter in today's Review-Journal asks: Will Gehry's amorphous design confuse the very Alzheimer's patients it's meant to help? My inclination is to say no -- I have the feeling that the building is quite navigable from the inside, based on my experiences exploring the Stata Center. Still, not a terrible point, no?

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