The Architectural Review articles from April 2007

The Architectural Review archives from April 2007

Refining the world of work.(the design and construction of office towers)
April 1, 2007... Leon Krier famously remarked that the problem about office towers was not their height, but the number of floors. He suggested that it would be fine to create skyscrapers of almost any height, provided the number of storeys was exactly the same...

Stockholm syndrome: a major international competition to create an extension to Asplund's City Library in Stockholm has produced six finalists who will go on to develop their proposals. Swedish critic Rasmus Waern considers the merits of the schemes.(view)
April 1, 2007... What makes the City Library in Stockholm so special is the architectural concentration. Within the box that Erik Gunnar Asplund created in 1928 is a world of its own. Just like a book. The distinguished geometry gives it a rare self-confidence....

Liverpool vision: new architecture is presaging Liverpool's 2008 role as European city of culture.(view)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... A pair of linked towers close to Liverpool's historic waterfront has brought a new sophistication to the city's office and residential architecture. Architects Allford Hall Monaghan Morris have designed the scheme for a private developer, with...

RIBA weather forecast.(Royal Institute of British Architects)
April 1, 2007... Following last year (AR May 2006), the President of the RIBA, Jack Pringle, once again hosted a crit for recipients of the RIBA President's Medals. Each year, in parallel with the presentation of the Royal Gold Medal, three student medals are...

Peter Cook: on a trip to snowbound Winnipeg, Peter Cook unearths delights beyond the radar of the conventional architectural circuit.(Viewpoint essay)
April 1, 2007... It was an Indian restaurant, as a matter of fact, where I can remember a very off-the-cuff Peter Eisenman, commenting on a piece of gossip that (let's say) Charlie had moved to (let's say) Zagreb. 'Is there a scene in Zagreb?' he asked....

Designing interactions: what can architecture learn from the computing sector, and how might it influence the way architects think about offices and the city, asks Francis Duffy.(Viewpoint essay)
April 1, 2007... Sometimes it takes a new comparison to throw light on an old problem. Can the design of the computer be compared with the design of buildings? The computer industry has shamelessly borrowed quite enough terms from architecture in its relatively...

Utopia regained: these bold government offices help the American workplace to reconnect with a sense of civitas.
April 1, 2007... Shaped by a seemingly relentless quest for efficiency, the workplace in the United States was perhaps first most effectively defined in the design developed by Frank Lloyd Wright and his client, Darwin Martin, for the Larkin Administration...

Daring Kildare: Heneghan Peng's first completed building combines the rational and the radical.
April 1, 2007... Heneghan Peng are not well known for their built work. Instead the practice is more widely acknowledged for its celebrated victory in the 2003 Grand Egyptian Museum competition (GEM) that brought it out of obscurity and into international...

Civil service in cork: ABK display good manners extending cork's City Hall.
April 1, 2007... In comparison to its equivalent in Kildare, this new civic office building, by the Dublin branch of ABK, is far more constrained in its setting. Working on a tight site, sandwiched between the existing 1930s City Hall and a collection of...

The mirrorball cracked: this standard spec office block on a Seoul business park is transformed by a shimmering, prismatic, mirror-glass skin.(Pramerica and architects Barkow Leibinger's Digital Media City)
April 1, 2007... Business parks the world over have many things in common, notably banality. In most cases, the architectural results of this form of commercial entrepreneurship are dire, with any traces of individuality ruthlessly obliterated. Unimaginative...

Skilful cornering: unusually for its type, this speculative office block in Nuremberg connects with both its site and the life of the city.(szyszkowitz-kowalski )
April 1, 2007... Commissioned to design a new corporate building, the nineteenth- or early twentieth-century architect would expect to receive a detailed brief listing the required places within it and an idea of their appropriate hierarchical disposition. From...

Green gauge: these civic offices in Melbourne provide a radical new paradigm for green buildings.
April 1, 2007... If the direst warnings about climate change come to pass, then Australia will be at the sharper end of things. The continent's geography and climate make it especially vulnerable to the effects of the predicted eco-cataclysm and should global...

British high tech-nique: while many tall buildings seek to impose new forms on the city with radical new shapes, 122 Leadenhall Street has rationally negotiated its place, adding the best part of a million square feet gross with true style and finesse.(process)(Richard Rogers Partnership Ltd.)
April 1, 2007... There is... as can be seen from a glance of the plan... [a] matter of factness about the way in which they add and subtract components... they still have the delight and the initiative of the inventive schoolboy. The dare. The chance. So...

Light work: following on from his thoughts in Peter Davey's valedictory issue, in which contributors were invited to speculate on the future, services engineer Max Fordham considers lighting in the workplace and how it is evolving to meet the challenges of environmental responsibility.(technical)
April 1, 2007... The need for natural light will make buildings thinner so that the light can penetrate from the windows. The use of glass in all buildings has to become more rational. Horizontal rooflights provide two and a half times more light than...

The art of alchemy: simple materials are magically transformed in these offices for a film company in Santa Monica.(interior design)(Pugh + Scarpa)
April 1, 2007... Though most adults spend around half their waking hours in some form of workplace, many companies seem to regard an environment that offers space, light, privacy, or even a desk with a return, as tantamount to corporate suicide. These days,...

Specifier's information.(Hacel Lighting's new showroom)(Wrightstyle's new fire resistant glass)(Reed Harris's partnership with Graniti Fiandre S.p.A.)
April 1, 2007... Hacel Lighting Hacel Lighting, a leading UK manufacturer of retail, commercial and architectural lighting, will open their second showroom at Rexel Senate Brentwood on 28 March. The showroom will feature a large selection of Hacel's...

New York, New York.("New York 2000: Architecture and Urbanism Between the Bicentennial and the Millennium")(Book review)
April 1, 2007... NEW YORK 2000: ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM BETWEEN THE BICENTENNIAL AND THE MILLENNIUM By Robert A.M. Stern, David Fishman, Jacob Tilove. New York: The Monacelli Press. 2006. $100, [pounds sterling]65 As a New Yorker, I admit that our...

Good offices.("Space to Work: New Office Design")(Brief article)(Book review)
April 1, 2007... SPACE TO WORK: NEW OFFICE DESIGN By Jeremy Myerson and Philip Ross. London: Laurence King, 2006. [pounds sterling]35 hardback Two sparky authors (Myerson is Director of Innovation at the Royal College of Art, Ross is both chief...

Out of the shadows.("Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future")(Brief article)(Book review)
April 1, 2007... EERO SAARINEN: SHAPING THE FUTURE Edited by Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen and Donald Albrecht. New Haven: Yale University Press. 2006. $65 Eero Saarinen (1910-61) was arguably the greatest and most underrated postwar American architect after...

Ulster says yes.("Modern Ulster Architecture")(Book review)
April 1, 2007... MODERN ULSTER ARCHITECTURE Edited by Karen Latimer. Belfast: Ulster Architectural Heritage Society. 2006. [pounds sterling]30 hardback, [pounds sterling]20 paperback Many might presume that a book entitled Modern Ulster Architecture...

The Khmer Empire, Cities and Sanctuaries from the 5th to the 13th Century.(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... Central sanctuary at the eleventh-century Khmer temple complex of Phimai, marking the first appearance of the distinctive pineapple-shaped tower employed so memorably at Angkor Wat. From The Khmer Empire, Cities and Sanctuaries from the 5th to...

East meets north: Alvar Aalto's endlessly inventive career is seen through the eyes of Japanese architect Shigeru Ban in a major new exhibition at London's Barbican.
April 1, 2007... 'We should be agreed', urged Alvar Aalto in 1935, 'upon the fact that objects that properly can be given the label rational often suffer from a noticeable lack of human qualities.' It is this aspect of the great Finn--the humanist who rebelled...

Sap rising, spring in the air, Sutherland Lyall looks for signs of cyber life.(browser)(Column)
April 1, 2007... Making out You might think that a url such as www.makarchitects.co.uk refers to the new UK practice make staffed (initially at least) by refugees from the Foster office. I nearly said Norman Foster but you now have to pay an enormous...

Diary.(architectural models exhibitions)(Calendar)
April 1, 2007... AR'S CHOICE OF INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITIONS AND EVENTS FRANCE JARMUND VIGSNAES ARCHITECTS, OSLO: LOST IN NATURE La Galerie d'Architecture, Paris 20 April-19 May Part of Norwegian architects Jarmund Vignaes' exhibition...

Delight: MoreySmith optimise and rationalise a forgotten space.(refurbishes office for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... In a similar vein to their previous work for EMI (AR August 2003), MoreySmith have recently completed this office refurbishment in central London. This time working for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, the team, led by Linda Morey Smith, has...