Heavy adobe walls with projecting timbers
Architecture,  Monochrome Madness,  Photographic techniques,  Themed galleries

Gallery: seeing buildings in black and white

January 5, 2024 / 38 Comments

We create our buildings and then they create us. Likewise, we construct our circle of friends and our communities and then they construct us.

Frank Lloyd Wright

Some time ago I devoted a whole post to some of the buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright in the Chicago area. Those shots were in colour, but I also enjoy photographing architecture in black and white, especially more modern architecture.

So here for the Monochrome Madness challenge is a selection of architectural images, including a couple of Lloyd Wright’s buildings. Most are relatively new (that is, twentieth or twenty first century), but a few are older. And most are from my travels, but a couple were taken closer to home in London and Liverpool. All have been edited with my go-to software for monochrome, Nik Silver Efex.

Heavy adobe walls with projecting timbers

San Francisco de Asis Church, Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico

The church, which also features above, was built to resist unwanted attacks from aggressive tribes such as the local Apaches. The tamped-earth buttresses were further added to in order to strengthen the walls when threatened by floods and erosion. San Francisco de Asis has stood for over 250 years (having been built around 1772) and is still an active church.

Straw roof with ornate ridge pole and gable

Kiyomizu-dera temple, Kyoto

Roof detail of the main hall or Hondo of the Buddhist Kiyomizu-dera temple, Kyoto. The temple is best known for its wooden stage that juts out from this hondo, thirteen metres above the hillside. But I was more drawn to the intricate details, such as this ridge pole.

Traditional Japanese interior with paper screens

In Yoshijima-ke, a merchant house in Takayama, Japan

The house was built in 1907 to be both home and factory for the Yoshijima family, well-to-do brewers of sake.

Looking up at a vast glass and metal strut roof

Kyoto station, Japan

Kyoto station was opened in 1997 to coincide with the city’s 1,200th anniversary. The style is very futuristic, designed by Hiroshi Hara. There was significant opposition to the design from those who felt it didn’t reflect the city’s history and large number of heritage buildings, including Kiyomizu-dera of course.

Large metallic cylinders next to modern apartment blocks

Umeda Ventilation Towers by Togo Murano, Osaka, 1963

Tall round skyscrapers and lower buildings designed like flowers

Modern architecture in Pyongyang, North Korea

Housing blocks in an area known as Ryomyong New Town. The Tulip Restaurant in the foreground was designed to look its namesake flowers.

Slim tower with a metal cross at the top reflected in windows

Reflection of the Catedral Metropolitana, Santiago, Chile

The cathedral was built over a long period, from the late 18th to early 20th centuries.

Detail of an Art Deco building on S. Jackson St in the Pioneer Square area of Seattle

Originally built as two separate buildings, 115 & 119 S Jackson were joined in 1929 and given one of the neighbourhood’s few Art Deco facades. Once a plumbing workshop, it has been converted into a restaurant on the ground floor and what are described as ‘micro lofts’ (tiny apartments) above.

Carved relief with swirls and straight lines
Detail of a spire-like roof with triangular windows

The Chrysler Building, NYC

More Art Deco, this time in New York. This was the world’s tallest building when it was completed in 1930, an honour it held for less than a year until surpassed by the Empire State Building. Its crown, shown here, is composed of seven radiating terraced arches, clad in steel with a radiating sunburst pattern, reminiscent of the spokes of a wheel, reflecting the building’s original occupant, the Chrysler Corporation.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum, NYC

This is one of Wright’s later designs, built in the late 1950s.

Curved building with simple lines
Very slender window set in a concrete wall

A window in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple in Oak Park, Chicago

This is the oldest Wright building still in use for the same purpose for which it was built, and is inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. You can just make out the reflection in this narrow window of the much more traditional chapel opposite, belonging to the First United Church.

Looking up at a curved staircase with decorative metal banister

Staircase in the Rookery Building, Chicago

The banister and other details were designed by Frank Lloyd Wright as part of a major refurbishment of this 1886 office block.

Curved metal structure

Frank O. Gehry’s MoPoP (Museum of Popular Culture), Seattle

Gehry is said to have been influenced by ‘a smashed electric guitar’ in creating this rather astounding structure made up of 3,000 stainless steel and painted aluminium panels.

Fan shaped roof with struts

The roof of King’s Cross station, London

This roof was added as part of a 2012 overhaul of the station, vastly improving its facilities and appearance. The roof is covered with 1,012 glazed triangular panels at the perimeter and towards the funnel, but to provide necessary shading the rest of the roof is covered with aluminium cladding laid over acoustic panels. This makes station announcements clearer. The roof is regularly illuminated with coloured light to mark different occasions, for example poppy red for Remembrance Sunday.

The Shard reflected in a building on the opposite (north) bank of the River Thames, London

The Shard is the tallest building in the UK, at 309.6 metres (1,016 feet), and the seventh tallest in Europe. It was completed in 2012. The architect, Renzo Piano, was inspired by the spires of London. The name came, somewhat ironically, from the claim by English Heritage that the building would be ‘a shard of glass through the heart of historic London’.   

Reflection of a slender triangular skyscraper
Modern cathedral with lantern-like roof

The Roman Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King in Liverpool

This dates from the 1960s and is sometimes nicknamed ‘Paddy’s Wigwam’ by locals. The architect, Sir Frederick Gibberd, was given a brief to ensure that all 2,000 in the congregation would be able to see the altar, hence the circular design with the altar at the centre. The  lantern tower above it has stained glass windows and a crown of pinnacles.

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