Galveston

This is not what you think. Yes, a house on stilts, and yes, to escape floods. But this determined American City went to unbelievable engineering lengths to avoid wet feet. Spooked by a hurricane in 1900 and subsequent floods, the town decided to raise the ground by building a perimeter wall, jacking up all the buildings on stilts, "some as much as seventeen feet", and then proceeding to fill the space within the walls up to the new ground level. Thanks (again) to pruned for the link, and poetry; "Once airborne, a proto-Archigram city in quasi-flight, fill was delivered from a canal that engineers had dug down the middle of the island." More pictures, text,and poetic quotes at pruned. Enjoy.

T house

Unusual plan organisation by Sou Foujimoto for a small house in Japan. Nice diagram too. Thanks to Tropolism.

Hubert Blanz

Beautiful work by Hubert Blanz using elevated motorways and junctions. Reminds me of this project Mike and I did in China. Go to his website, look at all his pictures, and buy one if you can afford it. Taking the banal and making it beautiful is what it's all about really. Thanks to Pruned's dream for putting me on to him. Actually, Pruned is full of interesting and inspiring things, so have a look when you've finished with Mr. Blanz.

Hampton Court

Forget the maze in the gardens, Henry VIII's palace is a pretty amazing labyrinth itself. The Tudor portions are fantastically organic in plan, and it just keeps going and going. The later parts, by a certain Sir Christopher Wren, for William III and Queen Mary II, are less interesting- all a bit perfect. Henry's palace on the other hand, whether by design or happenstance, is full of non-linear thinking, interesting left over spaces and inexplicable rooms.

Valerio Olgiati

I don't quite know how Valerio Olgiati wasn't picked up on the STS' architectural radar before now. Everything written about him, and what I see of his buildings, is intriguing. For instance, this from Joao Morgado on MIMOA, about his design for a school in Paspels, Switzerland "It is a reinforced concrete monolith...at first glance the exterior geometry seems simple, closer study reveals a chain-like reaction of slight distortions that shroud the building in an air of strangeness." Olgiati talks about wonderful realism, but I think there is something else that makes him tick. He is looking for strangeness within the banal. In there interview this month Icon magazine seemed a bit annoyed by his attempts to make his buildings hard to understand, but why should they be easy to understand? Sure, buildings should have organisational clarity, but I think they should reveal themselves slowly, and be embued with character. So if I understand Olgiati right, I think he is right on the button.