Architecture

The flat layout of the building made for constant chance encounters in the hallways. Vertical buildings create rigid boundaries, since floors and stairs are harder barriers, so the horizontal footprint caused people to run into dozens of others throughout a typical day. From the air, it looked like an oblique letter E (with a little extra E), and... See more

Favelas, spontaneous architecture

Rio is not known as the safest city. There are favelas 4 situated on the hillside. Yet there is a lot we can learn from them.

The architectural design of favelas is not planned. For decades, people helped each other with constructing the unit next door (on a whim it seems!), resulting in a complex and intricate... See more

All these losses, for me, carry equal weight, precisely because, for Black, research and writing about building held as much transformational potential as design and construction. Indeed, it might be true that, for Black, such a duality did not exist. Perhaps, for him, writing and spatial thinking were one and the same. This is what most excites me... See more