SPOT THE DIFFERENCE is a game but it’s also a criticism against that portion of the Academia that believes that "typological" elements of facades are just forms or symbols instead of considering those architectural elements, first of all, as components of climatically responsive facades able to create healthy and comfortable environments specific to locations and contexts; and secondly to create user-facades interactions I.e. interactionism.
Like those puzzles where you have to find the differences, (often minimal, here much less minimal), this blog aims to think of Architecture not as a sequence of styles but as a sequence of interactionisms in which buildings from different decades can follow under the same typology of user-facade interactions. This is because, Architecture has always been an art focused on the construction of beautiful and comfortable spaces for its users and not just an art focused only on beauty and composition.
This blog is also a tribute to Fabio Novembre’s blog IO NOI where, for completely other reasons, he compares images of product design, graphic or architecture, often from different period of time, that belong though, to the same title or concept.
Spot the difference doesn’t' imply that the two projects are exactly the same. At the same time, I am confident to say that November's blog doesn’t imply that there is any issue with copyrights between the compared images.
The aim of this exercise is to define some common elements between facades and user-facades interactions through its history.
POST #1
St. George School, 1955 Steiff Factory, 1903