The ABC of Architects: An Animated Flipbook of Famous Architects and Their Best-Known Buildings

As a new-ish par­ent, I’ve been inun­dat­ed with alpha­bet books from well-mean­ing friends and fam­i­ly, and I am most grate­ful for them all. But I’m espe­cial­ly glad for a set that uses images from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art to illus­trate each let­ter. My daugh­ter gets lost in the paint­ings, prints, etch­ings, etc., and you know what? So do I. It’s that rare meet­ing of adult high art and kid for­mat­ting that keeps us both engaged.

The above video, while not strict­ly for chil­dren, could cer­tain­ly work as well. A con­cept of the Argen­tine group Ombu Archi­tec­ture and graph­ic design­er Fed­eri­co Gon­za­lez, “The ABC of Archi­tects” is a vin­tage flip­book trib­ute to the last 100 years or so in inter­na­tion­al archi­tec­ture, set to a jaun­ty, gold­en-age-of-radio score by Eugene C. Rose and George Ruble (which you can down­load for free here).

With the kind of quaint globe-hop­ping (but with­out the passé racism) of a Tintin com­ic, “The ABC of Archi­tects” skips through its list of twen­ty-six revered names from almost as many countries–from Fin­ish Alvar Aal­to to Iraqi-British Zaha Hadid. There are many names I don’t know and many famil­iar favorites. I can imag­ine this appeal­ing to preschool­ers or seri­ous stu­dents, and for some of the same rea­sons. While the cre­ators express grief at hav­ing to leave out so many artists, “The ABC of Archi­tects” is noth­ing less than joy­ous and inspir­ing.

via Dooby­Brain

h/t Jim­my Askew

Relat­ed Con­tent

The His­to­ry of West­ern Archi­tec­ture: From Ancient Greece to Roco­co (A Free Online Course)

Ice Cube & Charles Eames Rev­el in L.A. Archi­tec­ture

Archi­tec­ture in Motion

Josh Jones is a writer, musi­cian, and muse­um-hop­ping father.