22. The Great Houses of Chicago

Chicago has long been one of my favourite cities in the world. How can you not love a city that invented the skyscraper:

Re-imagined the idea of an urban park:

Made "the blues" go electric, and spotlights it every year at the world's largest free outdoors blues festival:

 
And created the only pizza in the world worth eating - the deep dish pizza:

Yup, Chicago is my kind of town!

One of the best features of "ChiTown" (as the locals call it) is its magnificent historic houses. First among the best are those designed by the 20th century's best-known architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. Mr. Wright - as the good people of Chicago still refer to him - used the suburb of Oak Park as his residence, experimental lab, and showcase to the world.

Before he designed his signature Prairie Houses, Wright experimented with a variety of styles. One of the standout creations of his early career was the 1893 Walter Gale House - built about a block away from Wright's own home and studio on Chicago Street. Its key feature is a beautiful rounded-wood turret that dominates the front of the house:

Gale House is considered one of Wright's "bootleg houses" because it was designed while he was under contract to another great Chicago architect, Louis Sullivan, and forbidden to work on his own projects. Following rules was definitely not Wright's strong suit. Nor was tolerating disobedience Sullivan's. Before you could say "I'm an arrogant son-of-a-bitch who listens to no one" Wright was out on his rear.

Wright later experimented - very successfully, and to great acclaim - with high-pitched roofs and wide, thin chimneys as at the Nathan G. Moore House:

 
And indeed his own home and studio:

Eventually, Wright went on to perfect his Prairie House design with its characteristic horizontality - flat roofs, oversized eves, and square windows with leaded glass. He built them all over Oak Park, including the Edwin R. Hills House:

And Arthur B. Heurtley House:

Another neighbourhood that I love for its historic houses is Wicker Park, a west-end area that has been developed by numerous immigrant communities since the 1870s. My favourites include The Hermann Weinhardt House:

And three other historic homes that, despite their grandeur, were not named after their owners but just given addresses:

 

Yet another Chicago area that I love to walk around is the Gold Coast, particularly North Astor Street. Here you'll see some highly enviable mansions, starting with the residence of John Wellburn Root, near the south end of the street:

And finishing up with the Charnley-Persky House to the north:

The house was co-designed by Sullivan and Wright before their big breakup - which kind of brings us back full circle to the beginning of our story.

Charnley-Persky is open to the public, so go see it if you can and have fun trying to figure out which parts were designed by Wright and which by Sullivan.

21. Damascus: Azem Palace Still Standing

For the past three-and-a-half years, Syria has been ripped apart by the centrifugal forces of war. Two hundred thousand people have been killed; cities like Aleppo and Homs have been reduced to rubble; and with at least four heavily armed factions fighting for control of parts of the country, there's no telling what Syria will look like at the end of the war - or even if a single country called Syria will emerge intact. Hopes grow dimmer and slimmer by the day.
 
In the midst of all this, the Azem Palace, built for the Ottoman governor of Damascus (Assad Pacha al-Azem) in 1750, as well as much of the rest of the old city centre, stand relatively unscathed. In historical terms, the Palace is still a youngster. Damascus has been continuously inhabited since about 6000 BC. The monumental wall surrounding the Grand Mosque was built during the Roman occupation, and the mosque itself was started within 75 years of the Prophet Mohammed's death:



Damascus' Grand (Ummayad) Mosque

The Azem Palace doesn't look like anything a westerner would recognize as a palace. There are no fancy gates, turrets, long driveways or red carpets out front:

The Main Building of the Azem Palace

Instead, it's main feature is a series of rectangular black and white striped buildings, the black being basalt and the white, limestone. The buildings are placed around a courtyard dotted with fountains and orange trees.

The compound is divided into Haremlek (private family areas) and Selamlek (visitor quarters). The WOWchitecture begins inside the opulent rooms with their gorgeously painted wooden ceilings and every manner of chandelier descending from them:

  The rooms house numerous cabinets with valuable antiques:

 

 

 

 

With the Ottoman Empire being one of the casualties of the First World War, the Palace was converted into the Museum of Arts and Popular Tradition. There are many dioramas throughout the rooms showing what everyday life in the Palace was like. Since Heather was quite taken by them, we have far more photos than I'm going to show here:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We wouldn't have minded arranging similar accommodations for ourselves, but not being royalty, that wasn't going to happen. Still, I have to say that considering the Ottoman mansion/hotel we did stay in, we didn't do too badly:

 

 

 

 And, after a while, I did start to develop a certain feel for the place.

 



 

 

 

20. Barcelona: 8 Wildly Colourful Buildings not by Gaudi

The city of Barcelona is choc-a-block with the wild, colourful and fantasy-filled forms that sprung from the furtive mind of Antoni Gaudi. He may have been a genius - and my all-time favourite architect - but let's not give the eclectic Catalan all the credit for Barcelona's polychromatic cityscape. It took the efforts of many other bold, visionary, risk-taking, and often unrecognized architects to complete the task.

 One of those was Gaudi contemporary and fellow Catalan Joseph Puig i Cadafalch, who in 1889 began renovating a house for chocolate Baron Antoni Amatller. Casa Amatller, with its step-up roof covered in ceramic tiles looks like it just waltzed out of 17th-century Amsterdam:

 To see it, you won't even have to stray from the Gaudi route - it's right next door to Gaudi's masterpiece, Casa Battlo:

 Amattler didn't just reinvigorate Barcelona's chocolate industry. He also rewrote the rules of the the marketing industry. He hired some of the best-known artists of the day, notably Alphonse Mucha, to design posters marketing his chocolates:

 Another Catalan architect and contemporary of Gaudi's, Lluis Domenich i Montaner, designed so many wildly colourful buildings in Barcelona it's hard to even say which is his best. Many will put up a strong argument for the Hospital de Sant Pau, started in 1901 and built in stages until it became the largest Art Nouveau complex in the world: 

Other Montaner lovers will argue for his Palau de la Musica Catalunya, built at the height of the Art Nouveau movement 1905-08. The concert hall features dayglow-coloured tiles on the outside:

(Photo via The Nicest Pictures)

 
But is much more sophisticated - though no less colourful - on the inside:

(Photo via Jiuguang Wang)

 A few years later, in 1912, Architect Josep Graner i Prat came along and built an apartment building officially called Casa Fajol (Buckwheat House). For six stories it's about as plain-Jane as buildings come. Then, bursting out of the roof, is a multi-coloured butterfly as wide as the building itself:

Not surprisingly, the apartment is now commonly referred to as Casa Papallona, or Butterfly House.

 Some of you will recall that a couple of posts ago (No.18), I showcased what I called "The Craziest Building in Valencia, Spain." It was certainly the most colourful. The architect, Juan Francisco Guardiola, had created only one other building in a similar mode, Casa Xina (China House) which he built in 1929 for his brother in Barcelona.
 
When Heather and I were in the Catalan capital a few weeks ago, we were determined to track down and photograph the building no matter how long it took to research its whereabouts and travel across the city. As it turned out, it took exactly six minutes - one to Google its location, and five to walk the one block from the apartment we had rented weeks before we even knew where the Casa was located. A very convenient coincidence. It was hard to miss:

Barcelona's love affair with colour didn't end with the death of these great architects - creative minds who stretched Art Nouveau to its extreme limits and then went a little bit further. Today, however, it's largely being carried out by international architects like Japanese Pritzker prize winner Toyo Ito. Ito's amorphous red hotel tower and it's adjacent office tower with a wavy red torso in the middle (known as the Toyo Ito Towers) make for an unusual coupling on the Barcelona skyline:

(Photo via Wurfel)

But then, "unusual" is what Barcelona architecture has always been about.

19. The Most Fantastic Doorway in Paris

One thing about the French is that they certainly enjoy their share of the avant-garde. In fact, I'd say Paris was at the leading edge of avant-garde were it not for the fact that avant-garde already means "leading edge". Or something like that.

One building, 29 Avenue Rappe, is even certified avant-garde. Designed by the great Art Nouveau architect Jules Lavirotte and built by an all-star cast of France's best ceramicists, door makers and framers, the apartment was given an award for the best facade in Paris in 1901:

While folks line up for the Eiffel Tower, a five-minute walk away you can have 29 Avenue Rapp all to yourself - just you and this unique showcase of French decorative arts. It may not give you an unparalleled view of Paris, but what you'll see will certainly be unlike anything else in the city of light.

Like the flamboyant doorway that puts the WOW in the WOWchitecture: 

While I stood in front of it, a friendly middle-aged Parisian man sauntered over to make sure I understood the truly masculine nature of the building. It was hard to miss. I had already spotted the testes carved out of the top of the magnificent doors. But my friend also pointed out the phallus descending from them, as well as the lizard-shaped door handle:

Still, the ceramic door-surround had some distinctly feminine touches to it. Like the head of a woman, said to be Lavirotte's wife, at the crest of the arch, adorned with the head and fur of some poor fox. Or the delicate, nude and rather young-looking images of Adam and Eve, a little higher up. And, indeed, the flowerpots decorating most of the windows:

Then again, the stone blocks making up most of the building gave a rugged masculine feel to them, as did the arches and oxen heads that appeared to support the wrought-iron balconies:



Lavirotte was by no means a one-hit wonder, nor were all of his buildings whimsical. His beautiful 3 Avenue Rapp, just down the block, contains many classical Art Nouveau elements: a wonderfully colourful round turret; sinewy, green wrought iron; ceramic figures, coloured bricks; and beautiful balconies. Not to mention a six-storey high tromp l'oeil trellis that appears to be three-dimensional:

Still, if you like your Paris icons to be tall and famous, check out the Lavirotte-designed Parkette, Rapp Square, and look through his black wrought-iron gate:

You'll feel the visit was worth it. As for me, I'll take the little-known gem called 29 Avenue Rapp over that other hyper-extended phallic symbol any day of the week. And while you're at Lavirotte's exuberant building, don't forget to drop into the patisserie across the street. If the buildings haven't yet made you go "WOW", their tarte au citron surely will.