The Art Fund recently announced the six museums on the UK's 2014 Museum of the Year shortlist, its annual award for the outstanding museum of the year. The award celebrates every aspect of what makes a museum successful, but this year the list was highlighted by crucial work by architects, including renovations of the Tate Britain and the Ditchling Museum of Art & Craft, as well as the newly-constructed Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth. The winner from the six museums will receive a £100,000 prize, and will be announced on July 9th.
Read on after the break for the complete shortlist
Allan Crow may be, as he humbly puts it, just one of "two blokes that take photos." But Hufton+Crow, the photography studio founded by him and Nick Hufton ten years ago, has reached far more than humble success. The duo have shot some of the most talked-about architectural works of the last few years -from Zaha Hadid's Galaxy Soho to Steven Holl's Sliced Porosity Block to BIG's Danish Maritime Museum - and have been published in renowned websites and magazines around the world. Learn more about how Crow began his career as well as his favorite architecture, after the break.
In honor of those celebrating Easter Sunday, we’ve compiled a list of the most breathtaking places of worship from our Religious Architecture Pinterest board. From vast, open halls, to intimate places of prayer and contemplation, these works are sure to spark your appreciation for divine architecture. See them in all their glory, after the break...
RIBA has announced the first round of RIBA Regional Award winners, all of which will be considered for the RIBA national awards. From the list, Mecanoo's Library of Birmingham takes center stage, as the artisan-inspired structure received a number of awards, including the West Midlands Building of the Year and Emerging Architect. Check out the complete list, after the break...
In this article originally published by Metropolis Magazine as "Urban Hopes, Urban Dreams", Samuel Medina reviews a new book on the work of Steven Holl in China. Focusing on five major projects, the book places Holl's work in the wider context of his urbanistic influences - including ideas from his own early paper architecture that are just now resurfacing.
Steven Holl is the rare architect whose concepts are equally known as his buildings. Chalk that up to Holl’s prolific output, in both buildings and monographs, and his knack for branding his ideas. Urban Hopes: Made in China (Lars Müller, 2014), a condensed reader on Holl's latest work in China, is the latest in a stream of small books that have continually repackaged the architect's growing body of work.
Anchoring and Intertwining appeared in 1996 and expounded on architectural themes and spatial notions only partially evinced by his work up until that time. In both, the buildings were few and far between, scattered between pages imprinted with “paper architecture,” the primary outlet for Holl’s creative energies in the prior decades since his move to New York in 1976. These and more titles were followed up by Parallax in 2000, a blend of philosophical, scientific, and poetic references that invest the architecture with the aura of the Gesamtkunstwerk. Holl’s idea of “porosity” made its debut here, if prematurely, where it was applied rather literally to Simmons Hall at MIT and its sponge-like facade. It wasn’t until a few years later, when the architect first got his feet wet in China, that the concept would be baptised as a core tenet of 21st-century urban design. 2009’s Urbanisms advances as much, while further recapitulating the big ideas of the previous book installments.
Read on after the break for the review of Urban Hopes
The talented photographers of Hufton + Crow have shared with us their visual archive of Bjarke Ingels’ recently completed Danish Maritime Museum. Built within the crevasse of a dry dock in the historic surrounds of Helsingor’s Kronborg Castle, the subterranean museum is visible only as an imprint of a ship. By looping the museum around the dock's 60-year-old walls, Ingles was able to preserve the heritage structure while transforming it into a courtyard that provides daylight deep into the heart of the museum.
Experience the Danish Maritime Museum through a whole new lens, after the break...
Architects’ Journal has just released the shortlist for theirWomen in Architecture Awards, which aim to "raise the profile of women architects in a sector where women still face an alarming degree of discrimination."
Christine Murray, Editor of Architects’ Journal, commented:“I’m delighted to announce this year's shortlist, which includes the women behind the celebrated Library of Birmingham, the new Stonehenge development and the Giant's Causeway visitor centre. The awards celebrate design excellence and leadership — qualities needed to succeed as an architect — and especially among women, who are under-represented in the construction industry.”See the list, after the break.
If the discussions recently held at the Battle of Ideas are any indication, it seems that we in the architecture community are living a certain crisis of confidence.
Not one new utopian vision has been presented in the past 30 years, lamented Theodore Dounas; all these pop-ups popping up are just evidence, said Pedro Bismarck and Alastair Donald, of architecture's fearful reluctance to tackle complex problems or act as a legitimate agent for change at all; and then there’s the problem, voiced by Rory Olcayto, of architects being bullied by their clients into executing questionable agendas.
The Hasselt Court of Justice will be one of the two high-rise buildings that are part of the restructured former railway station. The site will include a park, public buildings, offices, hotels and urban residential blocks. Designed by J. Mayer H. Architects, along with a2o architecten and LensºAss architecten, the courthouse references in the design process refer both to the image of the “tree”, the hazelnut trees in the City of Hasselt’s coat of arms, and steel structures in the once industrial- and Art Nouveau-influenced area.
Hufton+Crow have shared with us these amazing photos of the project. More after the break.
The 2013 RIBA Stirling Prize has been won by Witherford Watson Mann for Astley Castle (Nuneaton, Warwickshire). The winner was just announced at a ceremony at London's Central Saint Martins, a building designed by last year's winner Stanton Williams. Astley Castle was also voted as BBC readers' favourite earlier this week. Jury-member Stephen Hodder stated that "engaging with the building was such a surprise for [the jury]," and described it as an "unassuming" building with great "rigour."
The RIBA has announced three projects—two located in Asia and one in the United States—for the shortlist of the RIBA’s Lubetkin Prize. Named for Berthold Lubetkin, a Georgian-born architect, the prize celebrates the work of RIBA members building outside of the UK. Zaha Hadid’s Galaxy Soho, Grimshaw’s Via Verde and Wilkinson Eyre’s Cooled Conservatories will face off for the honor; the winner of this year’s Lubetkin Prize will be announced (along with the winner of the prestigious Stirling Prize) on September 26th in London.
"The 2013 RIBA Lubetkin Prize shortlist features three exceptionally innovative projects that meet three very different urban challenges. From the blueprint for New York affordable housing and the creation of an impressive new shopping district in central Beijing to Singapore’s new sustainable gardens, these are all extremely clever solutions. These cutting-edge schemes show the leading role that architects play in delivering visionary new thinking about urban issues, and illustrate why UK creative talent has such recognition around the world."
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