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In Conversation With Jack Self and Shumi Bose, Editors of the 'Real Review'

Last month a Kickstarter campaign launched by the Real Estate Architecture Laboratory (REAL) reached its funding target: the Real Review, an independent bi-monthly magazine which intends to "revive the review as a writing form" to a general readership within the architectural sphere, will soon be a reality. ArchDaily sat down with editors Jack Self and Shumi Bose to discuss how the project came into being and what this—the flagship publication of REAL—will look like when its first issue is published in early 2016.

Norman Foster on Urbanism, Emerging Economies and Airport Design

In an exclusive half-hour interview with Lord Norman Foster, Monocle's editor-in-chief Tyler Brûlé discusses matters of urban planning and "big-thinking emerging economies" with "one of the world’s most innovative and revered architects." Foster, who turned eighty years of age this year, has been the recipient of some of the world's most prestigious architecture awards – from the Pritzker Prize, the Stirling Prize, the AIA Gold Medal and the Prince of Asturias Award (Spain). Over the years, Foster's practice have become world-renowned experts in high-density transit design (namely, airports) – a focus of Brûlé's questioning.

Iwan Baan in Conversation with Jonathan Glancey

Iwan Baan was twelve years old when he received his first camera and, "within a week, [he] had traded it in for a better one." He is one of the most well-known and highly sought after architectural photographers in the world, recognised for shooting cities from above and for always highlighting people (occupation) in his images. In a short interview with Jonathan Glancey Baan is the first to state that he "doesn't know much about architecture" — something which has not inhibited his ability to produce some of the most successful photographs of the built world, and how we design, construct and occupy it.

Monocle 24 Report from the CityLab Summit

For this edition of The Urbanist, Monocle 24's weekly "guide to making better cities," the team report from the two-day CityLab summit, which "gathered the world’s top mayors and urban leaders for a series of chats on how to to make our cities a better place." They explore the vision for London’s transport infrastructure, discover how Rio de Janeiro is gearing up its digital strategy ahead of the 2016 Olympic Games, and find out how to create a smart city through data. On top of that, they chat to millennials in Washington and "sit down for a very honest chat with the mayor of Athens."

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Conference: 'Research on Display: The Architecture Exhibition as Model for Knowledge Production'

The Jaap Bakema Study Centre's second annual conference, entitled Research on Display: The Architecture Exhibition as Model for Knowledge Production, will begin next month in Delft and Rotterdam (The Netherlands). Featuring presentations and discussions from members of universities around the world—including Ghent, Valencia, London, Warsaw, Paris, Michigan, Yale, Oslo and Zürich—the two-day programme seeks to examine what it means to curate architectural research.

Installation at London's Southbank Centre Opens Archive to the Public

The Southbank Centre—a large complex of Grade One listed, Modernist cultural venues on the banks of the River Thames—are poised to refurbish three of their most loved spaces: the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Purcell Room and the Hayward Gallery. As part of this transformation, London-based practice Jonathan Tuckey Design (JTD) have been commissioned to create a new 'Archive Studio' set within the foyer of the Royal Festival Hall, all part and parcel of the Southbank Centre’s desire to open up access to their collections and archives. JTD's free-standing, self-supporting structure is "an open framework which makes the scale the archival process apparent to visitors, held together by polished brass nuts and bolts and clad in perforated hardboard."

Florence's Museum of the Opera del Duomo set to Reopen to the Public

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The 'Pietà' Room. Image © Antonio Quattrone

The new Florentine museum of the Opera del Duomo, affiliated to the city's cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, is set to reopen its doors to the public next week following years of restoration and reconstruction. 6000 square metres of exhibition space, designed by Adolfo Natalini and Guicciardini & Magni architetti, will house the largest collection of Florentine medieval and Renaissance sculpture in the world, including pieces by Donatello, Michelangelo (the Florentine Pietà), Andrea Pisano, Lorenzo Ghiberti (Gates of Paradise), and Luca della Robbia. It will also exhibit fifteen 14th century statues and almost seventy fragments from the cathedral's original medieval façade.

Read Monsignor Timothy Verdon's, Director of the Opera, narrative of the new spaces after the break.

Eames Retrospective Opens at London's Barbican

A much anticipated retrospective—The World of Charles and Ray Eames—opens today at London's Barbican Centre. The show, curated by Catherine Ince and designed by 6a architects, surveys the careers of Charles (1907-1978) and Ray (1912-1988), and the extraordinary body of work prodced by the Eames Office: a ‘laboratory’, active for over four decades, in which the Eameses, their collaborators and staff produced "an array of pioneering and influential work – from architecture, furniture, graphic and product design, to painting, drawing, film, sculpture, photography, multi-media installation and exhibitions, as well as new models for education."

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Daniel Libeskind Discusses "Building Memory"

In this edition of Section D, Monocle 24's weekly review of design, architecture and craft, David Plaisant speaks to Daniel Libeskind about the art and architecture of memory, with particular focus on his designs for his Ground Zero Masterplan and memorial in New York City. The show also discusses plans to transform John F. Kennedy airport's iconic TWA Terminal, and head to Singapore to meet the team at Ministry of Design.

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"It's Just the Beginning" — 'Real Review' Kickstarter Campaign Hits Milestone

A Kickstarter campaign recently launched by Jack Self and Shumi Bose of the Real Estate Architecture Laboratory (REAL) has reached its funding target in only twenty days. Produced by an independent team of editors and designers, this bi-monthly magazine intends to "revive the review as a writing form" to a general readership within the architectural sphere and its orbital subjects, with a particular focus on politics and economics. Their campaign has so far seen considerable support from the architectural community and beyond — testament to their 'no-ads policy' and dedication to paying their contributors.

In a statement to those who have pledged so far, the editors have said that "the Real Review will happen, and it is directly and completely due to your commitment, your vision and your generosity. We can’t thank you enough for getting us here!" They are now looking to surpass this crowdfunded milestone, with Kickstarter remaining the only way to subscribe.

So You Want to be an Urbanist?

For this edition of The Urbanist, Monocle 24's weekly "guide to making better cities," Tom Edwards asks: if you want to plan a city, where do you begin? This episode investigates a number of city-wide gestures which can contribute to a better urban environment, from the importance of a well-designed waterfront to what it means to have a strong 'digital strategy'.

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Monocle 24 Reports From Bilbao to Explore Issues Facing City Leaders

For this edition of The Urbanist, Monocle 24's weekly "guide to making better cities," the team visit BUILD: the Bilbao Urban Innovation and Leadership Dialogues. This event gathers civic leaders and philanthropists to a discourse about how cities are, and should be, run. In this two-part broadcast from the conference itself, Monocle explore how Stuttgart have been accommodating an unprecedented number of refugees, how Poland is using transport infrastructure to revitalise the city of Łódź, how Pittsburgh is a poster-city for resilience, and why Atlanta wants its citizens to take charge of their city.

dRMM Submits Plans for a New Maggie's Centre in Oldham

London-based practice dRMM have submitted plans for a new Maggie's Centre in Oldham, a metropolitan area north east of Manchester. Maggie's, a UK charity famed for its cancer care centres, is also well known for commissioning world-renowned architects to design their spaces. This latest proposal will be sited within the grounds of the Royal Oldham Hospital, becoming the second centre of its kind in Greater Manchester following Foster + Partners' current project in central Manchester.

When the Strange Meets the Familiar: Saunders Architecture on Fogo Island

Fogo is a small, rocky outcrop off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, with a population of just over 2000 people. Its sub-arctic natural landscape of lakes, rivers and mountains is interspersed by eleven small settlements and has now become the scene for a collection of follies, studios and residences designed by Norwegian practice Saunders Architecture. Most recently, Fogo's rocky wilderness and contemporary architectural interest—reminiscent of the land around Todd Saunders' current home city of Bergen—has been captured in a one-hour documentary film directed by Marcia Connolly and Katherine Knight, entitled Strange & Familar: Architecture on Fogo Island.

A Utopian Dream Stood Still: Ricardo Bofill's Postmodern Parisian Housing Estate of Noisy-le-Grand

East of Paris, in Seine-Saint-Denis, sits a "Babel-like" housing estate. Its otherworldly atmosphere—existing somewhere between a 'new world' utopian dream and a postmodern, neoclassical housing estate—has set the scene for two Hollywood films including Brazil (1984) and, more recently, the upcoming second instalment of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay (2015). Parisian photographer Laurent Kronental's photo series, Souvenir d'un Futur (Memory of a Future), is an homage to the senior citizens of the French capital's Grand Ensemble region — not only in Noisy-le-Grand but across the Parisian banlieue. His photographs capture a number of places and their people which, in spite of their often megalomaniacal architectural settings, have been comparatively overlooked.

See Laurent Kronental's photo series—the result of four years of visits—after the break.

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Kickstarter Campaign Launches to Fund the Forthcoming 'Real Review'

The Real Estate Architecture Laboratory (REAL) have today announced a Kickstarter campaign in preparation for the launch of their flagship publication, the Real Review. Produced by an independent team of editors and designers, this bi-monthly magazine intends to "revive the review as a writing form" to a general readership within the architectural sphere and its orbital subjects.

The Real Review will be "a printed object of exceptional quality, featuring engaging texts by leading international commentators," alongside providing "a highly visible platform for emerging writers." Confirmed authors at this time include, among others, Assemble, Pier Vittorio Aureli (Dogma, AA), Reinier de Graaf (OMA), Sam Jacob (Sam Jacob Studio), and a rostra of journalists including the Financial Times' architecture critic Edwin Heathcote.

The Long(ish) Read: John Ruskin Considers 'The Seven Lamps of Architecture'

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Welcome to the third installment of The Long(ish) Read: an AD feature which uncovers texts written by notable essayists that resonate with contemporary architecture, interior architecture, urbanism or landscape design. In this extract from The Seven Lamps of Architecture, published in 1849 and considered to be John Ruskin's first complete book on architecture, his studies are distilled into seven moral principles. These "Lamps" were intended to guide architectural practice of the time, advocating a profound respect for the original fabric of existing buildings. The opening chapter—The Lamp of Sacrifice—attempts to "distinguish carefully between Architecture and Building," set against the backdrop of Ruskin's (often criticised) world-view on the discipline at large.

Five Films to Watch at the 2015 Architecture Film Festival in Rotterdam

It's only logical that Rotterdam, one of Europe's leading cities for architecture and architectural practice, has a biennial film festival. Since its inception in 2000, the city's homage to architectural cinema now claims to be the biggest architectural film festival in the world. Featuring over one hundred international documentaries, feature films and shorts—as well as debates, lectures and seminars—this year's festival plans to "provide a podium for discussing the city and future of spatial development." From cinematic journeys into the world of the illusive Böhm family to Zaha Hadid, Chinese ghost cities to London's Barbican estate, this year's programme circles around the theme of the Global Home.

With the eighth incarnation of the Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam (AFFR) opening next week (running from the 7th - 11th October 2015), we've selected our five top picks from this year's schedule.

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