United Kingdom

This latest design by Architects for Invention, a development bid proposal for the Spelthorne Borough Council, presents a residential development in the United Kingdom with community at its heart. Situated along the Thames river, the structure unfolds itself toward the city, providing its tenants, and the public alike, with extraordinary views of the river.

In keeping with best practices, this update to the existing town aims to place the community at its center, inviting visitors to enjoy the space along with the residents. To accomplish this, the building employs an open scheme, physically encompassing the community to draw it in through easy points of access. Additionally, the building is meant to create a positive contribution to the local character of its setting while simultaneously acting as a central hub for the community through its placement. 

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Rethinking the Urban Landscape, a (free!) exhibition curated by The Building Centre and Landscape Institute, presents a case for a landscape-first approach to city design and regeneration. The show, which is on view at The Building Centre in London until end of February and then tours, focuses on six problematic areas - from environmental issues to financial planning - and shows international projects that, due to the early procurement of landscape architects, deliver unique solutions.

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Through January 31, The Building Centre is hosting Upright and Educated, a photographic exhibition documenting the work of UK charitable organization Article 25 in Burkina Faso. Captured by award-winning photographer Grant Smith, the images chart the construction and use of a school in Gourcy, in the country's north.

Founded in 2006, Article 25 worked with local builders, craftspeople, and fellow UK charity Giving Africa to construct Bethel Secondary School, allowing up to 1100 children access to enhanced education and vocational training facilities. Learn more about the project and view selected images from the exhibition after the break.

Modern times have seen the rise and proliferation of architectural media, allowing people to remotely experience spaces and buildings without ever physically entering them. As such, the importance of the architectural image has never been greater.

Opening on January 15 at London’s Sto Werkstatt and organized in conjunction with Arcaid Images, Building Images celebrates the "power and impact of photography on the way we sense and experience spaces." Described by Arcaid Images co-founder Lynne Bryant as having "long been the means of communicating architecture," photography is a medium that has grown inseparable from the notion and creation of the architectural image. Learn more and view selected images from the exhibition, after the break.

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LIKEarchitects' Christmas installation, Frozen Trees, has found a new home in London's Victory Park in East Village. Originally created by LIKEarchitects in 2011 and displayed on Lisbon's D. Pedro IV Square, the installation will now light up the holiday period in one of London's newest public spaces, on the site of the former Olympic Village, as its 1,296 Rationell Variera plastic bag dispensers from IKEA gently glow through the night.

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On the surface, Mies van der Rohe's minimalist linear designs have little in common with the kitsch of vernacular architecture in the German countryside. Enter Joachim Brohm, who rose to prominence in the 1980s as one of the first European architecture photographers to work in colour, and now in a current exhibition draws an unexpected parallel between van der Rohe's designs for the unrealized Krefeld Golf Club in Germany and the rudimentary constructions of vernacular post-war architecture.

In "Vernacular & Modern," the latest exhibition at London's Grimaldi Gavin gallery, two of Brohm's photo series are juxtaposed to create a new narrative on architectural context. In Typology 1979, Brohm documents a series of vernacular houses in Ruhr, Germany; while in Mies Model Study, Brohm enters the temporary installation of van der Rohe's unbuilt golf club through a life-size model. Together, the two series contrast the highly aestheticized minimalist world of Mies van der Rohe with highly functional buildings of necessity in the German countryside.

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Find the connection between vernacular and van der Rohe after the break

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