If You Like Architectural Details, You’ll Love This Comprehensive Archive of Modernist Buildings and Interiors, On View in Milan

Unless you’re very offline, design-wise, you probably know about Prague-based architecture historian and curator — as well as frequent Sight Unseen contributor! — Adam Štěch. On his well-loved Instagram account, @okolo_architecture, he’s been assiduously and beautifully cataloging 20th-century architecture and interior design details for years. His photographic efforts aren’t simply representative, they’re revelatory, and they’re currently on view as part of Salone in his Elements exhibition at Dropcity, a new center for architecture and design in Milan. By focusing on the parts — the lighting, seating, tables, railings, doors, handles, windows, floors, and more — Štěch’s 3,000 images give us a new sense of the whole: not only the larger project of how a particular building was put together in a cohesive way, but a comprehensive view of how architecture and design developed and moved throughout the last century, charting the differences and similarities of Modernist buildings over time and through place.
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Week of January 29, 2024

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: paintings made by a giant squeegee, a perfectly preserved Art Deco hunting lodge outside of Paris, and a Barcelona apartment inspired by the 1992 Olympics.
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Ceramic Fireplaces and Leather Doors: Inside the Paris Atelier and Home of Valentine Schlegel

Once a forgotten name in French post-war decorative arts, the late ceramicist Valentine Schlegel came roaring back to prominence in the contemporary design and art world a few years back, becoming a muse to the likes of Simone Bodmer-Turner, Rogan Gregory, and others who appreciated her sculpted organic forms. And yet in spite of — or more likely because of — her resurgence, her longtime Paris apartment and studio was recently emptied out entirely and sold at auction. Adam Stech was lucky enough to photograph it before that happened.
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Adam Stech on Italian Futurism, Part II: The 1930s Ceramics of Mazzotti and Nikolay Diulgheroff

Like many of the best art movements of the early 1900s, the radical Italian Futurist movement was most-known for two-dimensional works, but encompassed the applied arts as well. One of its more interesting — yet largely forgotten — practitioners was the late designer and artist Nikolay Diulgheroff, for whom ceramics became a medium of dynamic expression for his and the Futurists’ ideas.
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Adam Stech on Italian Futurism, Part I: Tour Four of Italy’s Most Avant-Garde Interiors

In the 1909 manifesto for one of the most controversial avant-garde art movements of the 20th century — Italian Futurism — founder Filippo Tommaso Marinetti confessed his admiration for the modern age and its inventions, for speed, the roar of engines, and the rage of war weapons. The group’s paintings and sculptures attempted to depict the speed and dynamism of the industrial age, but Futurism’s reach also extended to a practice in architecture and interior design, and in the past few years I toured Italy to uncover few of its best spaces.
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Tour the Incredible 1930s and 40s Gio Ponti Interiors Hidden in a 13th-Century Italian University

Between 1934 and 1942, Gio Ponti decorated numerous rooms inside Palazzo Bo — home to the University of Padua, founded in the 13th century — creating one of his most important works in interior design. In fact, the 1940s were critical for Ponti's transformation from his previous styles of Novecento Italiano and Rationalism toward softer mid-century design, which became his trademark after the Second World War. Click through to tour this seminal work with Okolo's Adam Štěch.
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An Insider’s Tour of the French Ski Resort Charlotte Perriand Designed in the 1960s and 70s

From the late 1960s through the 1980s, Charlotte Perriand designed several residential and recreational buildings in France’s Savoy Alps, inspired by the area’s traditional mountain architecture. The monumental project — Les Arcs — became one of the largest ski resorts in the world, and I had the opportunity to spend a few days there last July, documenting its interiors and exteriors.
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Tour the Unbelievable 1930s Color-Blocked Fantasy Interior Hiding Inside a Simple Brick Building in Belgium

The modernist pioneer Jozef Schellekens was the public architect of Turnhout, a Belgian town halfway between Antwerp and Eindhoven, where he worked on schools and city halls. But his best-known and greatest work was his own house, a 1935 rectangular brick-and-glass structure whose simplicity belies the expressiveness of its interior, where Schellekens created a colorful world full of bespoke built-in furniture and other functional and decorative details.
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13 Incredible Mid-Century Lobbies in Turin Featuring Mosaic Walls, Sculptural Murals, and Other Avant-Garde Motifs

During the 1940s and 50s, a group of highly unorthodox and original designers and architects working in Turin, Italy, were known for their organic and sensual forms, their eclectic inspirations and rich decorations, and their utopian ideas — a Turinese avant-garde. Many interiors reflecting this style remain in tact in the city today, including extraordinary artistic entryways which, hidden from public view, reflect the enduring wildness of the city’s architectural elite.
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Inside a Forgotten Gem of 20th-Century Belgian Art Deco

In case you missed it, writer, curator, and Prague-based architectural historian Adam Štěch hosted one of our most popular IG Live talks a few weeks ago on the topic of Belgian 20th-century architecture. Here, he gives us the backstory behind one of our favorite examples from that era — the Queen Elisabeth Foundation by Henry Lacoste.
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Week of September 17, 2018

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week was a particularly good one for maximalism, from sparkly socks and tables, to a wild "fascist futurist" bank interior, to an opulent new hotel (above) inside an old church and convent, retrofitted to perfection by John Pawson.
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