I. M. Pei pairs Islamic tradition with monumental Modernism in the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar, for an opulent collection of art and artifacts.
Unlike architecture, which requires solidity to provide shelter over time regardless of style, landscaped gardens are ephemeral by nature. They may possess a degree of flamboyancy and fantasy expressive of the philosophical tone of their times and their creators without concerns for function. This is particularly true among the rolling hills of southwest Scotland, where in Portrack, just north of Dumfries near the English border, Charles Jencks, the American theorist, architect, and (increasingly) landscape architect, and his late wife, Maggie Keswick, created a 30-acre garden on a family estate that engages both the mind and the senses. Known as the
After landing at the dock and walking through the parklike serenity of this walled island, you finally catch a view of the cinema, a pavilion with the same oval rondeur, says the artist, as the great Fenice Theater. Though it functions as a theater showing documentary films and holds an audience of 35 to 40 on its stepped rows of square seats, the pavilion retains a special intimacy and scale that make viewers feel they are entering an architectural model itself. On the outside, Putrih assembled a seemingly random (though actually precise) criss-cross installation of rusted trusswork bolted into place.
