Former ArchDaily's Managing Editor. BA in Architecture from Newcastle University, and interested in how overlooked elements of architectural culture —from the media to competitions to procurement processes can alter the designs we end up with.
Mies van der Rohe's last constructed skyscraper, the IBM building in Chicago, recently underwent a significant transformation: the modernist office building is now a 316-room luxury hotel. An interesting post on the ArchitectureChicago Plus blog weighs in on the building's history and ponders: will Mies' minimalist aesthetic be compromised by its new lavish furnishings? Read it all here.
The Southbank Centre and Feilden Clegg Bradley have taken their designs back to the drawing board, deciding to delay their planning application in order to resolve the mounting issues surrounding the proposal.
The designs to update the brutalist cultural centre have divided people from the start; however, the tide of opinion seems to have definitively shifted away from the design due to a sustained campaign by skateboarders (who make use of the undercroft) and now criticism from the neighboring National Theatre and the UK design council CABE.
Read more about the controversy surrounding the Southbank Centre after the break...
Figures released last month by the National Endowment for the Arts offer telling insight into the architecture profession across the US, with a helpful breakdown of the representation of various demographic groups.
The data, collected between 2006-2010, reports the number of architects in each state and their race, gender, age and income. The data reveals which states have the highest/lowest income, the best/worst gender discrepancies, and also offer insights into the average age and races of architects, per state.
Read more about what the NEA statistics reveal after the break.
To mark the occasion of World Refugee Day on June 20th, the IKEA Foundation announced an important new collaboration with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the Refugee Housing Unit to design a new type of shelter which will replace the outdated tents currently in use in refugee camps worldwide.
As you'd expect from IKEA, the result is a flat-packed, modular design (ideal for cheaply transporting to refugee camps) that can be assembled in 4 hours. Though it is expected to cost about twice as much, it will last much longer than the tents, which must be replaced roughly every six months - a particularly important improvement, as the average family stays in a refugee camp for 12 years.
The design also carries a number of other advantages, such as increased space and privacy, better temperature control and enough solar energy to power a light in the evening. The design is currently being tested in Ethiopia before being deployed worldwide, however, this is not the end of IKEA's collaboration with UNHCR. These shelters are just the first part of a long-term collaboration which will hopefully provide healthcare and education - and ultimately a better quality of life for the world's refugees.
More coverage of architecture's involvement in refugee aid, after the break.
Text description provided by the architects. Over the years, furniture company Vitra has made a name for itself as one of the most architecturally-enlightened companies in the world, with their renowned campus featuring buildings by Nicholas Grimshaw, Frank Gehry, Alvaro Siza, Tadao Ando, Zaha Hadid, Herzog & de Meuron and SANAA.
Now, Vitra has announced a collaboration with Renzo Piano that will bridge the gap between their sought-after furniture and their bespoke campus. Diogene, a self contained minimal living space with a floor area of just 2.5 x 3.0 meters, is billed as "Vitra's smallest building - but largest product".
More about the design of Diogene after the break
On Wednesday Peter Clegg, senior partner at Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios and Chair of the RIBA Awards jury, announced that the Institute is currently holding discussions about introducing a 'test of time' award, reports the Architects' Journal.
Robert Venturi, the architectural figurehead who fought the cause for postmodernism, turns 88 today. Venturi, whose 1966 book 'Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture' coined the term "less is a bore" - to contradict Mies van der Rohe's famous "less is more" - is possibly the most influential of the theorists who worked to steer architecture away from the modernist ethos in which it had become so entrenched.
In Residence: Piero Lissoni on Nowness.com
The latest in NOWNESS' In Residence series features a look into the home of Piero Lissoni, co-founder of Italian design firm Lissoni Associati. Externally inspired by the way that children draw houses, the interior of the home is filled with what Lissoni calls a 'contamination' of different ideas and objects. Nevertheless it is stylish and a beautiful accompaniment to the spectacular rolling hills of the Tuscan countryside.
"Successful practices have launched in earlier recessions, and will do so in this one. It is wise, however, to be armed with as much knowledge as possible", concludes BD's most recent research paper "How to Start a Practice... and Keep it Running". The document, containing advice on every aspect of setting up a practice, from naming it to chasing late payments, aims to provide just that knowledge.
Read more about 'How to Start a Practice' (including how to get a 50% discount) after the break...
In a recent interview, Spiegel speaks candidly with three architects who have one thing in common: projects in Germany plagued by severe delays and spiralling costs. Christoph Ingenhoven is head of Ingenhoven Architects, designers of train station Stuttgart 21. Meinhard von Gerkan of Gerkan, Marg and Partners is responsible for the Berlin Brandenburg International Airport, and finally Pierre de Meuron represents Herzog & de Meuron, designers of Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie.
These projects are well known in Germany as much for their designs as for their construction costs, and Spiegel is not shy about getting to the bottom of these controversies. Of course, the architects themselves have their own ideas about the bad press (namely that they're being unjustly blamed). Meinhard von Gerkan, for example, says:
"It's a big mistake to voluntarily serve as a figurehead, because then everyone knows whom to target. We are these figureheads, not the clients and not the construction companies. And we are liable for everything."
More of these gems from the architects, after the break....
+ Pool, the ambitious project to float a public swimming pool in New York's East River, has recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund "Tile by Tile," what will be the largest crowdfunded civic project to date. Those who back the pool will be rewarded by having their name engraved on one of the pool's 70,000 tiles.
+ Pool will filter the river water to give users a clean, safe yet natural environment to swim in and provide space for all types of "swimmers, bathers and hanger-outers" in each of its four sections. The current campaign's primary aim is to fund an in-situ floating test lab which will, for the first time, prove the feasibility of filtering river water by testing various potential filtration systems.
Read more about the + Pool and the growing trend towards crowdfunding after the break...
Kevin Roche, the Pritzker-winning architect known for his innovative and sometimes unusual designs, turns 91 today. His firm Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates was once described by critic C. Ray Smith as "the most aesthetically daring and innovative American firm of architects now working".
In this interview by Hugo Oliveira, Álvaro Siza presents his ideas on the link between obsolescence and quality in architecture, and the role that a design's flexibility plays in this relationship. He argues that the convent is perhaps the best example of a typology which is both fit for purpose and very flexible, allowing myriad other uses when its lifespan as a convent has ended. He also laments the current tendency to design a building for a very short period of time - intended to last only as long as it is needed for its original function. He links this tendency back to the Futurists of the early 20th century, where the idea was that "each generation makes its own environment which is later destroyed", an idea he dismisses since "it also allows you to build badly because it only needs to last twenty years".
With the opening of his cloud-like gridded structure in Hyde Park last week, Sou Fujimoto became the youngest architect in the pantheon of Serpentine Gallery Pavilion designers. The pavilion is an annual commission for a temporary structure, always given to a well known architect who is yet to build in the UK. In previous years the commission has been awarded to Herzog & de Meuron with Ai Weiwei (2012), Peter Zumthor (2011), Jean Nouvel (2010), SANAA (2009), stretching back to the original pavilion designed by Zaha Hadid in 2000.
With such a prolific history of star designers over the past 13 years, Fujimoto's ethereal design has a lot to live up to. But despite these high expectations, architecture critics have been gushing over the new design. See a full round-up of opinions after the break...
In the latest episode of his 99% Invisible podcast, Roman Mars bravely takes on a very sensitive topic: the design of prisons which contain execution chambers or house prisoners in solitary confinement. More specifically, the podcast discusses whether architects have a moral duty to decline these commissions and whether, as a profession, architecture should have a code of ethics which prevents registered architects from participating in such designs.
He compares architecture to the medical profession, where the American Medical Association imposes an ethical code on its members which all but forbids them from taking part in execution by lethal injection, based on medicine's general aim of preservation, rather than destruction of life. The American Institute of Architect's ethical code is both generic and meager in comparison: “Members should uphold human rights in all their professional endeavors.”
"The greatest American architect of all time", Frank Lloyd Wright, was born 146 years ago today. One of the all-time architectural greats, his work has now been inspiring generations of architects for over a century.
"Our research integrates computational form-finding strategies with biologically inspired fabrication", claims the 'about' page of MIT Media Lab's Mediated Matter Group. Though this may sound like run-of-the-mill architectural boasting, you are unlikely to find any more exemplary combination of scientific research, digital design and biomimetic construction than their recently completed Silk Pavilion.
The saga of the Southbank Centre redevelopment in London heated up recently, after the scheme for the new 'Festival Wing' was formally submitted to Lambeth's planning department. The scheme, which has been well received by some of the architecture community, including the centre's original architects Norman Engleback and Dennis Crompton, has run afoul of the skateboarding community, which opposes the plan to infill the undercroft that has been their home for almost 40 years.
After a petition to save the skatepark garnered over 40,000 signatures, the skating community has mobilized once again to object to the planning application en masse. The campaign to save the skatepark has even garnered the attention of skateboarding legend Tony Hawk, who wrote to the Southbank Centre's director of partnership and policy Mike McCart to explain that:
“It’s truly an historic feature of London street culture, and is as well known to skateboarders around the world as Big Ben or Buckingham Palace. Honestly.”
