‘The death-knell of visionary architecture in Russia had already been sounded when Lenin's commissioner for enlightenment, Anatoly Lunacharsky, announced, “The people also have a right to colonnades.”’
In January 1973, on a morning of Stygian gloom, I called on Konstantin Melnikov, the architect, at his house on Krivoarbatsky Lane in Moscow. I had already been in Moscow a couple of weeks trying to ferret out survivors from the heady days of the leftist art movement of the early twenties. I had, fo…
Nothing to see here!
What made him do what he did? Could it have all been for an ice cream bar, really? Will any of us ever know?
What made him do what he did? Could it have all been for an ice cream bar, really? Will any of us ever know?
What made him do what he did? Could it have all been for an ice cream bar, really? Will any of us ever know?
What made him do what he did? Could it have all been for an ice cream bar, really? Will any of us ever know? What made him do what he did? Could it have all been for an ice cream bar, really? Will any of us ever know?
‘2 January 1971, Hotel du Sahel, Niamey, Niger. The usual horror of air travel.‘
‘“Ha!” said the old gentleman. “I see you have The Eye. I too have The Eye. We shall be friends.”’
‘The island of Chiloé is celebrated for its black storms and black soil, its thickets of fuchsia and bamboo, its Jesuit churches and the golden hands of its woodcarvers.’
‘In Alice Springs – a grid of scorching streets where men in long white socks were forever getting in and out of Land Cruisers – I met a Russian who was mapping the sacred sites of the Aboriginals.’
‘I saw cuts, burns, broken limbs, heart attacks, and then, what's inside the human body.’
