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.
Beyond 2012 is a new website launched by the British Design Council to tell the story of how the London 2012 Olympic Games were designed. The site explores how the best British designers were brought in to create the products, fashion, graphics, digital design, and of course the architecture that made the 2012 games a fantastic worldwide spectacle. See the full website here.
The Architects' Journal recently published an article pitting five competing views of teaching sustainability against one another. The opinions come from a range of backgrounds, including engineers, tutors and landscape architects, and discuss how architecture students should be taught to design in a sustainable way - or if they should be taught this at all.
The competing opinions are telling in the issues that they highlight, demonstrating how complex the issue of sustainability has become, and how it fits into the wider context of architectural education.
Read the different reactions to the issue of sustainability in education after the break
The results of RIBA Journal's recent drawing competition, Eye Line, are in. Top of the pile was Tom Noonan's drawing "Reforestation of the Thames Estuary," part of his Master's Thesis project at the Bartlett School of Architecture; however, the range of styles and content mean that there's something for everyone in the top ten. Read the full article and see all the drawings here.
A video game in which you can design your own high-security prison (execution chambers and all) prompts CC Sullivan, in a thoughtful post on Smart Planet, to discuss the implications of architects designing prisons. You can read the full article here, and read ArchDaily's previous coverage on this issue, "The Architecture of Incarceration," here.
A recent profile in Architectural Record highlights the career of Peter Wynne Rees, the chief planner of the City of London: the famous 'square mile' which contains the major financial district of Greater London, as well as some of its great tourist attractions, such as St Paul's Cathedral.
The profile focuses on the new crop of skyscrapers which Rees has ushered in in his 27 years as chief planner, something which has been contentious for preservationists. When he came to the job in 1985, the City of London had just one skyscraper: Tower 42, built in 1980. With the success of the Gherkin in the early 2000s, the surrounding area has seen many more high profile skyscrapers, such as the Heron Tower, 122 Leadenhall Street (The Cheesegrater) and 20 Fenchurch Street (The Walkie-Talkie).
“Increasingly we experience cities mediated by digital technology — whether that's via smartphone maps, digital transit signage, or texting a friend that you've arrived at a destination. How our city is built to support residents, businesses, and visitors [...] is now part physical and part digital.”
John Tolva, the Chief Technology Officer for the City of Chicago, is on a mission: a mission to bring the physical and digital worlds into conversation.
To embed more and more digital information into the physical world, a growing number of digital specialists are beginning to embrace the worlds of architects, planners and urbanists. But, so far, it has not been a two way street to make the digital leap.
Find out why architects should be at the forefront of the digital/spatial overlap, after the break...
After a government report earlier this month found that the London Olympics had brought a £10-billion-boost to the UK's economy - effectively breaking even with the initial investment after just one year - the architectural community has begun to question whether the built legacy of the games will be worthwhile in the long run.
Guardian critic Olly Wainwright is scathing about the Olympic park, particularly the developments at the edge of the site: "At every junction of this roaring A-road sprouts a steroidal tower, each clad in ever more lurid colours, transforming the street into a gauntlet of competing ambitions. Looming over adjacent council estates, these brash totems are a monument to Olympian greed... Strip away all the festive colours, though, and you'll find that these are actually mean-minded silos of tightly packed one-bedroom flats, mostly sold overseas for buy-to-let."
Find out more about Wainwright's investigations, and other opinions of the Olympic legacy, after the break.
In an article by the Architects' Journal, Tony Fretton is quoted as saying there ought to be fewer architecture schools in the UK, with more difficult entry requirements and a higher failure rate. "There should be a shortage of architects in the UK," he says, "fewer bad architects, fewer good architects".
Citing Switzerland and the Netherlands as countries which do well with just 2 or 3 major architecture schools, he believes that architectural education should be concentrated into just a few schools in order to give students more access to the best tutors.
Read more about Fretton's proposal after the break
A recent study by the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY) concluded that by preserving 27.7% of buildings in Manhattan, “the city is landmarking away its economic future.” REBNY is challenging the Landmarks Preservation Commission, arguing it has too much power when it comes to planning decisions, and that by making business so difficult for developers it is stifling the growth of the city.
Yet not three days before releasing this study, president of REBNY Steve Spinola said in an interview with WNYC that “if you ask my members, they will tell you [the twelve years of Mayor Bloomberg's tenure] has been a great period of time for them”. The conclusion of WNYC is that the past decade has actually been a period of increased growth for developers, rather than a period of stagnation.
It would be easy to echo the opinion of Simeon Bankoff, executive director of the Historic Districts Council, who believes the actions of REBNY come down to greed, even comparing its members to Gordon Gekko, the anti-hero of the film Wall Street. But is greed really what’s behind this attack on the Landmarks Preservation Commission? Find out after the break.
On July 9th, 30,000 prison inmates across California took part in a hunger strike to show solidarity with those incarcerated in Pelican Bay State Prison, a 'Solitary Housing Unit' in which prisoners are incarcerated - some supposedly for years at a time - in solitary confinement.
Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR) and its founder Raphael Sperry have made it their mission to make sure that architects are not complicit in designing prisons, even going so far as to form a petition asking the AIA to forbid members from designing execution chambers, 'supermax' prison facilities or solitary confinement facilities, as part of their statement that “members should uphold human rights in all their professional endeavors.”
At ArchDaily we have already questioned whether it may actually be beneficial for architects to design prisons, rather than allowing them to be designed by less-trained people who could end up designing a space that is even less humane. Now, an article on Blouin Art Info seems to take a similar position: rather than retreating from the business of prison design altogether, architects should try to encourage prison design that facilitates rehabilitation rather than emphasizing punishment.
This discussion on Quora, entitled "which is the most well planned city in the world?" certainly got us thinking; not only because of the interesting and diverse answers to the question, but also because of the different reasons which were used to support these answers.
Currently the most popular answer seems to be Zurich, on account of its excellent (and obsessively punctual) public transport, organized waste disposal and numerous public drinking fountains. Other cities which are commended for their public transport and cleanliness are Singapore and Seoul. But other contributors seem to have a very different idea of what makes a well-planned city - read on to find out more.
The New London Awards, which recognize the best projects in London - both recently completed and on the drawing-board - were held at London's Guildhall on the 12th of July. Richard Rogers took the top prize of "New Londoner of the Year" in recognition of his life-long commitment to raising the quality of urbanism in the UK capital. The award coincides with his 80th birthday and a major retrospective at the Royal Academy.
See all the winners of the 17 different awards after the break.
In the latest twist in an ongoing saga, the skateboarders campaigning to save the undercroft of the Southbank Centre have succeeded in a bid to list the space as an Asset of Community Value under the Localism Act, as reported by Architects' Journal. The listing means that any planning decision would have to take the loss to the skating community into account. Read the full article here.
"I have a lot of big plans for the gallery, but every idea is an experiment; I don't necessarily want to enforce what it will be, but rather find out what it wants to be." This is how Thomas Ermacora described his vision of the Lime Wharf Gallery, a largely hidden series of spaces squeezed between Vyner Street and Regents Canal in the middle of Hackney's burgeoning creative quarter.
Ermacora hopes the gallery will become an "accelerator of change through culture", bringing arts, technology and social enterprise together for projects which generate optimism for the future. All of these traits made Lime Wharf Gallery the perfect space to present "Future Fitting." This evening of talks, orchestrated by Ermacora and Lucy Bullivant (editor of the new webzine Urbanista), focused on urban design that has the foresight and flexibility to deal with the needs of the future.
Read about the ideas presented at the Future Fitting event after the break...
This article on io9 counts down the worst architectural disasters in recorded history, from the failure of Yarmouth Bridge back in 1845 to the horrific collapse of Rana Plaza in Savar, Bangladesh this April - revealing the latter as the most catastrophic structural failure in history. Read the article here.
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.
