Modern Architecture

Giving non-equal time to new buildings in Europe.  Examples of old and even ancient builds are found everywhere in Europe. Indeed, I was looking at the excavated ruins from a centuries old Castle just before dinner this evening (and my dinner meeting was in the oldest building in Kaiserslautern)  They are all amazing to see.  However, because of the bombing in WWII, significant parts of Europe were rebuilt and so there are fine examples of modern architecture too.  Of course, just growth in the modern era makes for many new buildings too.

Below are some examples from places I visited this last week. I really thought I should split these pictures into two posts but the risk would be that I wouldn’t revisit them so this is a longer post that normal (I guess this is what happens when I am in my hotel room between dinner and bedtime…).

Remember to click on the pictures for a better view.

The first photo below is a Black and White photo of the domed roof over the Sony Center on Potsdamer Platz in Berlin.  I shot this looking straight up into a gray rainy sky.  You don’t get a lot of color when doing that and hence, a B&W rendition that makes sense.

This next photo is of the lobby area (shot from the second floor) of a new research center at the Hasso Platner Institute in Postdam, Germany. I really love the lines in this photograph. I gave a lecture to the Human Computer Interface class there and met a lot of very creative researchers doing very creative things.

These next two shots are of the Ars Electronica building in Linz, Austria as seen at night from across the famous Danube river (as in The Blue Danube waltz).  What is really cool about this fantastic building for art and technology is that the façade can be programmed by the motivated public.  You can get a software application and then play around with the lighting to create different effects, messages and rudimentary scenes.  I asked about censorship and they have only three categories of material not allowed that were told to me in this order (which tells me something Austria’s painful past): No swastika's, no sexual material and no color changes between red and green.  This last requirement is due to the traffic intersections on the bridge. A final comment these pictures.  The juxtaposition of Old and New is once again displayed between the new building and the old world church on the right.  So European!