Venturi Scott-Brown’s National Gallery Sainsbury Wing extension (1991) was born into a precarious no-man’s land between the warring camps of neo-Modernists and traditionalists who had been tussling over the direction of Britain’s cities for much of the prior decade. The site of the extension had come to be one of the most symbolic battlefields in British architecture since a campaign to halt its redevelopment with a Hi-Tech scheme by Ahrends Burton Koralek had led to that project’s refusal at planning in 1984.
The Ritterman Building. Image courtesy of bpr architects.
For bpr architects, BIM Level 2 is becoming business as usual. This medium-sized, employee-owned firm based in the UK focuses on how good design can add value to a client’s vision. Led by Directors Paul Beaty-Pownall and Steve Cowell, the firm specializes in three core sectors: higher education, rail stations, and regeneration.
via flickr user vanchett licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. ImageThe Eden Project, Cornwall
Grimshaw can claim their horticultural Eden Project in Devon, South West England as being among their most iconic works. Nestled in a disused quarry, simultaneously acting as an embedded landscape feature and an alien spacecraft holding precious specimens and plants, the scheme has been celebrated as a successful modern interpretation of Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome concept.
20 Ambleside Avenue, London / Pace Jefford Moore Architects. Image via Building Design
They say that bad publicity is good publicity. Nevertheless, late August is a time for baited breath among UK architects, as the readers of Building Design generate the shortlist for Britain’s "ugliest" building. Beauty is certainly in the eye of the beholder and judgment towards these unpopular designs shouldn't necessarily be generalized. However, this competition opens up important dialogues about architectural aesthetics and public reception of new projects.
Schmidt Hammer Lassen has won an invited competition for the design of the Marine Knowledge Hub in Liverpool, United Kingdom. The 70,000-square-foot (6,400-square-meter) scheme, intended for marine engineering research, survival training, workspace, and events, seeks to elevate the status of both Liverpool and the United Kingdom in the maritime research industry.
The scheme forms part of the Wirral Waters regeneration project, a £4.5 billion masterplan, which represented the largest planning application ever submitted in the UK in 2009.
https://www.archdaily.com/895534/schmidt-hammer-lassen-reuse-historic-tower-for-maritime-knowledge-hub-in-liverpoolNiall Patrick Walsh
Since 1996, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has hosted awards for exemplary buildings across the UK by RIBA Chartered Architects and RIBA International Fellows. This year, 93 projects were shortlisted out of 203 entries for the 2018 RIBA London Awards; including designs by Foster + Partners, Hawkins\Brown, Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, and Make Architects. Each project will be visited by one of five London juries during the month of April. Winners will be announced at the award ceremony on May 15th at the RIBA headquarters at 66 Portland Place, London.
Scroll down to see a complete list of the shortlisted architectural works.
Sir Peter Cook and Gavin Robotham’s CRAB Studio has revealed the design of a new Innovation Studio being constructed at the Arts University Bournemouth in Poole, England.
A conceptual successor to the blue Drawing Studio completed by CRAB on the university campus in 2016, the Innovation Studio will serve a larger program – a space for small start-ups led by recent graduates to develop with support from business experts within the university and from across the globe.
Left, The Architectural Association on Bedford Square, London. Photograph by wikimedia user Jeremysm. Image is in the public domain. Right, Eva Franch i Gilabert. Photo by Stefan Ruiz
The AA School Community, consisting of students, staff and Council members, selected Franch i Gilabert from a shortlist of 3 candidates by a majority vote of 67%, the highest percentage received in a contested election since 1990. Over 1,000 total ballots were cast.
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A vision of the future Regent Street. Image via Walkable London
Zaha Hadid Architects has revealed a proposal for the pedestrianization of their home city, London, that would gradually transform the city into an interconnected system of walkable roads.
Named Walkable London, the research proposal has identified the arteries and areas of the city that would most benefit from pedestrianization. The transformation would be implemented over three phases: primary avenues, secondary avenues, and finally, entire districts. Notable avenues marked for alteration include Upper Street, Oxford Street and Regent Street.
Henning Larsen Architects has revealed plans for a £400 million development that will transform the waterfront of Belfast. At 16 acres, the master plan constitutes the Northern Irish capital’s largest single ground-up development in recent history.
Just four months after winning the 2017 Stirling Prize, the UK’s top honor for architecture, dRMM’s Hastings Pier is now up for sale, as the charity that owned and operated the structure was declared insolvent for failing to reach self-funding status.
A Bridge Over Troubled Water An Architectural Competition
As part of our 2017/18 research theme discussing the infrastructural implications of the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union, the school has launched an international architecture competition for a fixed link connecting France with the UK.
The Architectural Association on Bedford Square, London. Photograph by wikimedia user Jeremysm. Image is in the public domain.
The Architectural Association has announced a shortlist of 3 candidates in the running to become the new AA Director, who will lead the direction of one of the world's foremost architecture schools and institutions.
Facebook is closing in on a deal to create a new London headquarters, and will be bringing along the design talents of Frank Gehry, according to reports from The Times and Architects’ Journal.
Described as a “growth space” that will allow the company to expand their European presence, the new headquarters would span four buildings in King’s Cross Central – the same part of the city where Google is building its own 11-story “groundscraper” campus designed by BIG and Heatherwick Studios.
Herzog & de Meuron’s design for the new flagship building of the Royal College of Art’s Battersea campus has been granted planning approval by Wandsworth Council. Unveiled last fall, the £108 million building will mark an “important step” in the evolution of the RCA into a STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics)-focused postgraduate university.
Lord Norman Foster speaking at the Royal Fine Art Commission Trust’s annual lecture in Manchester last year. Image Courtesy of Royal Fine Art Commission Trust
Lord Norman Foster has been named the next President of the UK’s Royal Fine Art Commission Trust, an independent charity aimed at promoting “visual awareness and public appreciation of high-quality design” within the United Kingdom.
Chaired by one of architecture’s foremost patrons, Lord Peter Palumbo, the organization was established in 1987 as a complement to the Royal Fine Art Commission (since absorbed into the UK Design Council), the Government’s advisor on matters affecting public amenity and aesthetics in England and Wales.
As reported by the Star, the structure has been purchased by Kuala Lumpur-based Ilham Gallery, who are now searching for a permanent site of the pavilion in Malaysia.
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