A new Ionic (or perhaps Ironic) architectural order at Narodowy Bank Polski , Basztowa, Kraków, Poland. Pigeon netting veiling the the sculptures and a rampant growth of mobile phone masts and CCTV cameras subvert the meaning of the sombre 1925 architecture by Wyczyński and Hoffman. Photo: Quintin Lake
More Accidental Sculpture: Cell phone mast disguised as a tree >>
Caution High Voltage Sign (German: Vorsicht Hochspannung Lebensgefhr) on the electrified barbed wire perimeter fence surrounding the blocks at Auschwitz I Extermination Camp. Photo: Quintin Lake
Space between the two barbed wire perimeter fences overlooked by a guard tower at Auschwitz I Extermination Camp. Photo: Quintin Lake
Electrified barbed wire fence and security light reflected in the surface of the Water reservoir / Swimming pool reserved for the SS at Auschwitz I Extermination Camp. The thought of the guards swimming about and taking their recreation as a break between executions is almost incomprehensible. Photo: Quintin Lake
Auschwitz I (German name for Oświęcim) was the original camp, serving as the administrative center for the whole complex as it grew. On September 3, 1941, deputy camp commandant SS-Hauptsturmführer Fritzsch experimented on 600 Russian POWs and 250 Polish inmates by gathering them in the basement of Block 11 and gassing them with Zyklon B, a highly lethal cyanide-based pesticide. This paved the way for the use of Zyklon B as an instrument for extermination at Auschwitz, and a gas chamber and crematorium were constructed by converting a bunker. This gas chamber operated from 1941 to 1942, during which time some 60,000 people were killed therein.
Although the Auschwitz I site remains the symbol of the holocaust in popular culture with its famous “Arbeit macht frei” (Work sets you free) sign above the entrance gate and the fact that industrialised murder was developed in the camp the majority of the killing (approximately 90%) took placed in the purpose constructed extermination camp at Auschwitz II Birkenau a few miles from Auschwitz I.
VIEW MORE IMAGES of Auschwitz I here >>
Electrified barbed wire fence and wooden barracks in Auschwitz II - Birkenau. These barracks were designed as prefabricated horse stables originally made for use on the eastern Front, against the Soviet Union. The wooden bunks, or “hutches” as they are sometimes called, contained as many as six prisoners on each shelf. Originally intended to house 250 prisoners, these barracks sometimes contained as many as a thousand. Photo: Quintin Lake
Barbed wire perimeter fence with brick chimneys belonging to ruined wooden barracks behind. Auschwitz II-Birkenau Extermination Camp (Poland). Photo: Quintin Lake
Aerial view of Auschwitz II - Birkenau. Photograph captioned by the Central Intelligence Agency December 21, 1944. Source: mazal.org
Birkenau was the largest of the more than 40 camps and sub-camps that made up the Auschwitz complex. The Birkenau camp is huge, covering 425 acres. The boundaries of Birkenau stretch a mile in one direction and a mile and a half in the other direction. During its three years of operation, it had a range of functions. When construction began in October 1941, it was supposed to be a camp for 125 thousand prisoners of war. It opened as a branch of Auschwitz in March 1942, and served at the same time as a center for the extermination of the Jews. In its final phase, from 1944, it also became a place where prisoners were concentrated before being transferred to labor in German industry in the depths of the Third Reich.
The majority—probably about 90%—of the victims of Auschwitz Concentration Camp died in Birkenau. This means approximately a million people. The majority, more than nine out of every ten, were Jews. A large proportion of the more than 70 thousand Poles who died or were killed in the Auschwitz complex perished in Birkenau. So did approximately 20 thousand Gypsies, in addition to Soviet POWs and prisoners of other nationalities. Source Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum link
VIEW MORE IMAGES of Auschwitz-Birkenau here >>
The Eames House or Case Study House No. 8, by Charles and Ray Eames Los Angeles, California. Photo: Quintin Lake
Located upon a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and hand-constructed in 1949 within a matter of days entirely of pre-fabricated steel parts intended for industrial construction, it remains a milestone of modern architecture. Designed by husband-and-wife design pioneers Charles and Ray Eames, to serve as their home and studio. The Eames’ proposal reflected their own household and their own needs; a young married couple wanting a place to live, work and entertain in one undemanding setting in harmony with the site. Perhaps the proof of its success in fulfilling its program is the fact that it remained at the center of the Eames’ life and work from the time they moved in (Christmas Eve, 1949) until their deaths.
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Gehry House at Santa Monica, California, designed by Frank Gehry. built in 1978 this was his first ‘Deconstructivist’ Building. Photo: Quintin Lake
Frank Gehry’s house built in 1978 in Santa Monica represented the first and radical steps of Deconstructivist movement in architecture. Gehry took his seemingly ordinary house in Santa Monica and began changing things in incredibly strange ways. He took a step beyond the playful reworkings of Postmodern architecture, where traditional design symbols were reinterpreted, and instead starting using materials and strategies few applied to architectural projects at the time. Gehry started by tearing the drywall off of interior walls to expose structural studs buried in the old house, then subtracted and added architectural elements seemingly without a coherent plan throughout the building. He added chain link and plywood to the exterior. His transformations were responses to various impulses and were allowed to coexist without a clear rhyme or reason, flying in the face of both Modernism and Postmodernism – designs from which were typically justified in terms of some kind of central concept. This house was the start of Gehry’s freestyle architectural expression which has culminated in recent times in his most well known buildings the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles.
VIEW MORE / BUY PRINTS / LICENSE IMAGES of Gehry House here >>
Detail of cast concrete Hollyhock motif on the western facade of Hollyhock House, Los Angeles designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Photo: Quintin Lake
The Aline Barnsdall Hollyhock House,sits at the centre of in Barnsdall Art Park in East Hollywood, California, California was designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright 1919–1921. Like the Charles Ennis House, executed later, this house illustrates Wright’s fascination with the stylised forms of pre-Columbian architecture, in this case Mayan temples. Wright called the style rather disingenuously California Romanza. The stylised patterns of hollyhocks repeated in cast concrete and the window design was due to the Aline Barnsdall’s fondness for the flower. The building was restored after undergoing extensive damage from the 1994 Northridge Earthquake.
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Experiments in Architecture edited by Samantha Hardingham published by August
View through the periscope looking out to Kings Cross. Part of "An area of Outstanding Unnatural Beauty" an installation by Richard Wentworth. Photo: Quintin Lake
Experiments in Architecture edited by Samantha Hardingham and published by August Projects in 2005. Much of the material in the book was a result of the pilot PAL Architecture Lab supported by NESTA and directed by Digital Putty. Ten architects, artists and engineers nominated by heads of schools and practices in the UK collaborated on design projects. The participants were: Jason Bruges, artist / Kevin Gray, architect / George Grinsted, new media practitioner / Mark Hemel, architect / Dominik Holzer, architect / Frank Jensen, engineer / Sophie Juettner, architect / Quintin Lake, architect / Matilda Pye, artist & Keith Wilson, artist.
The book also includes contributions by David Greene, Cedric Price, Sand Helsel, Bruce McLean, Kevin Gray, Matty Pye, Richard Wentworth, Feliks Topolski, Dickson Robinson, Ben Morris, Roger Zogolovitch, Nicholas Royle & Davis Rosen. Buy on Amazon here
ArtAngel / An area of Outstanding Unnatural Beauty >>
Outdoor Photographer of the Year 2010 – Nature on the Brink. Photo: Quintin Lake
I’m delighted to announce that I have won the Nature on the Brink Category the Outdoor Photographer of the Year 2010 run by Outdoor Photography Magazine. This great news comes a few days after my win in the Travel Photographer of the Year awards so it will be hard to keep this pace up in 2011.
The image depicts a game of football game at Jardim São Marcos favela adjacent to the Fosfertil fertiliser factory, Cubatão, Sao Paulo, Brazil. Cubatao, used to be one of the most polluted places on earth dubbed “The Valley of Death”. Many residents live in shanty towns sandwiched between the factories and the jungle. I spent a few weeks with a non-commercial film crew documenting those lives of those who live there. My account of the experience can be read in Cubatao: Life in the Valley of Death
This image has also been used for the cover of the Music CD Brazil Geopolitics
VIEW MORE IMAGES of Cubatao, Brazil here
Outdoor Photographer of the Year 2010 Supplement with Issue #135 January 2011 of Outdoor Photography Magazine
Photography © Quintin Lake
Geometry & Silence 