Rietveld designed this studio house for an artist, Piet Slegers in 1952-1954. He tends to use a lot of windows in his designs as he did here. He also used a lot of geometric shapes and colors. Here the room that is all windows is the studio/ living room area and the room with less windows is the bedrooms. I like how he always added these shapes and colors into his buildings, here we can see he used red and yellow and designed the windows in a grid like pattern. This is carried into the house as well.

De Ploeg is a textile factory in Bergeijk designed by Gerrit Rietveld in 1956-1960. Again, we can see his love of geometric shapes in his work. I think that this is my favorite building by him, just because it is a factory yet it looks more interesting and more aesthetically pleasing than most building we see in our everyday lives! When I think of innovative designs for factories I tend to think it is a new concept, yet this was designed in 1960. I think it is extremely unique and impressive. The factory was restored but used Rietveld’s original designs. Rietveld also designed the factory with the employees in mind. You can see on the right side of the picture above that each wall had a huge skylight to allow natural light into the factory. He also included a park or garden outside the factory that would allow employees to relax in a green space.

Gerrit Rietveld was famous for his use of geometric shapes, you can see his use of geometric shaped in the Schroder House. Rietveld designed this house for Mrs. Truus Schroder, she wanted her house to be “free from association, and could create a connection between the inside and the outside.” This designed carried into the inside as well. I think this house is so unique and really interesting. Today the house is used as a museum. Something that is pretty interesting about the design of this house is that Mrs. Truus wanted the inside to be able to change from open to closed off rooms whenever she wanted. To accomplish this Rietveld came up with sliding panels that can be open to make one large living area or closed to make rooms.

Rietveld designed the main building of the Van Gogh museum in 1663-1964. Rietveld liked to include geometric shapes and open spaces into his architecture. We can see this in the staircase in the central hall pictured below. I think the staircase and the open design are my favorite parts about the building. There is a big skylight above the stairs that allows for natural light to fill the entire museum. I like how with the open design you can see each floor from the middle and they aren’t closed off.

While I have not had the privilege of going to Athens to see the original Parthenon, I did get to see this replica when I was in in Nashville, TN. I don’t know if other people are aware this is in Nashville, because personally I had no idea and I didn’t hear anyone talk about it. My family only found out it was there by taking a bus tour of the city. I would think that this would be a major attraction! It is an exact size replica of the Parthenon in Athens and inside is a full size replica of the 42 foot Athena statue covered in real gold. It truly is a sight to see. Even though it is a replica, it has a history of its own. The Parthenon in Nashville was only supposed to be a temporary exhibit so it was made with cheap materials. People ended up loving it so much and it got so many visitors that Nashville decided to tear it down and construct a new permanent one which opened in 1931. Now it is also the home of Nashville’s art museum.

The DoubleShot Coffee Company moved into this new location in 2019. The building is actually a 170 year old barn from Indiana. The barn was deconstructed, relocated then rebuild in Tulsa. They also included old brick that was from an old Coca-Cola plant in Muskogee. I really like how they transformed this barn into such a relaxing, warm and cozy space. And adding in the local bricks is such a nice touch. To me this building looks like it belongs in Colorado or Wyoming, so to have it in downtown Tulsa is really cool. It’s almost like an escape from the urban city to a cozy cabin. The owner of the DoubleShot Coffee company and his friend who is an architect actually came up with the design themselves.

My family is originally from California so we go back there every year to see family. We always go to San Francisco when we’re there, I grew up going to SF at least a couple times a month since it wasn’t very far from our house. This summer we didn’t get to go do much because of COVID but we still went to SF because it’s a tradition. When we were there I was so excited to see this building finally completed. Construction began in 2017 and they finished in July, 2020. This is such a unique building and I absolutely love it! I have never seen a “twisted” building before. Because of its twisting design, every resident has a 180 degree view from their unit. As a bonus, the architect also designed this building with the environment in mind! MIRA tower includes a green roof and a greywater harvesting system which cleans water from the building that does not include waste, such as water from your sink, washer or shower then recycles it back to be used again. The architects who designed the MIRA are the Studio Gang.

JW Marriot Downtown Nashville

Me and my family took a trip to Tennessee last month. We stayed in Nashville for a few nights where we rode one of those busses that take you on a tour through the city. On our tour we passed this hotel, the JW Marriot built in 2018. Of course this building stands out because it is tall and sleek since it is totally covered in windows, but what really stood out to me that I thought was really cool was that the entrance was designed to look like a baby grand piano. Nashville is known as the “Music City” and this is where many country singers got their start. Since music is so important to the city of Nashville I thought it was so cool that the architects added this personalized touch to the sky scraper. JW Marriot was designed by the architecture firm Arquitectonia. You can tell it looks like a piano more in person but the bus was moving too fast for me to get a picture and they don’t have very many online, these are the best i could find. I just really liked how they took the classic luxury hotel skyscraper and added this unique feature to remind you that you’re in music city!