The Architectural Review articles from August 2004

The Architectural Review archives from August 2004

Two Germanys, one Architecture.(View)(Two German Architectures)
August 1, 2004... German reunification did not mark the end of the Cold War for the former citizens of the West German Federal Republic and East German Democratic Republic. Their prejudiced ideological view of each other lingered on. It has taken 15 years for...

... On the third day, they rose again.(View)
August 1, 2004... Despite the subtle biblical association, there was nothing morbid about this year's Festival of Speed sculpture at Goodwood. In recognition of Rolls Royce's centenary, Malcolm Campbell's Bluebird car (1935) and K4 boat (an exacting replica of...

What goes up, must come down.(View)(Panel Discussion)
August 1, 2004... In a recent debate, Groundlines v Skylines, hosted by London-based land planning consultants. Lovejoy, 90 key industry members met to discuss the relationship between the City of London's skyline and its often forgotten groundlines. Despite...

The architect's universe.(View)
August 1, 2004... An ambitious exhibition on the work of Danish architect Jorn Utzon has opened at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, providing the first major retrospective of the career of this reticent giant of Modernism. Utzon's collaboration with this...

Cityscape AR Awards.(View)(Architectural Review)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2004... The Architectural Review is joining Cityscape of Dubai to promote the inaugural Cityscape Architectural Review Awards. The awards are for excellence in architecture in the developing world and are for both finished buildings and uncompleted...

R Mutt & its offspring.(Browser)(www.understandingduchamp.com)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2004... Quite apart from his pervasive influence on the world of gallery art, for a lot of architects of a certain generation, Marcel Duchamp is the significant figure of the modern era. He is not so much a form-giver as the Great Exemplar of how to...

Icons and biennales.(Browser)(www.labiennale.org)(www.alliesandmorrison.co.uk)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2004... Mother of them all, the Venice Biennale starts 7 September and closes 7 November. This year's architecture theme, curated by Kurt W. Forster, is Metaporph which is to say, 'the transformation of urban landscapes, city outskirts and niches as a...

One for the dominees.(Browser)(Francis Loeb library)(http://memory.loc.govammem/ward97/mhsdhtml/aladhome.html )(Brief Article)
August 1, 2004... Harvard's Francis Loeb library has this great collection of 2800 slides--actually they are lantern slides so don't expect full glowing colour--of American buildings and landscapes built between 1850 and 1920. It's at the rather cumbersome...

BBC footage ... more mileage.(Browser)(movie library)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2004... The BBC has opened up its vast movie library, all 300 000 hours of footage going back 70 years. You have to pay for clips if you are using them in presentations but you can look at them by registering and downloading the latest version (v 7) of...

Whatever happened to Paolo?(Browser)(www.arcosanti.org)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2004... Thirty years since it started you might have hoped for Arcosanti to have achieved its intense and monumental goals. But life isn't always quite like that and Paolo Soleri's visionary arcology has still a way to go--if the site's slightly...

... on the Night.(Browser)(www.geocities.com/SoHo/1469/flw.html)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2004... There should be a special place in webmasters' Hell for the person who decided on The All-Wright Site as a name for an FLW tribute site at www.geocities.com/SoHo/1469/flw.html. And for continuing the Taliesin workshop-style obsequiousness: 'Mr...

Cruel irony of Israel situation.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 1, 2004... SIR: I would like to applaud your decision to publish Abe Hayeem's letter regarding the UNESCO World Heritage Status of Tel Aviv (AR July 2004). Mr Hayeem's very emotive letter may be seen by some as being exaggerated, partisan and...

Photo opportunity.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 1, 2004... SIR: With the editorship of 'the world's most prestigious and respected international architectural magazine' about to change--and with Graham Morrison's recent and timely criticism of 'icon architecture' (opening speech at the AJ/Bovis Awards,...

Small but strong.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 1, 2004... SIR: Many thanks for your Portugal issue (July). One of the exciting things about The Architectural Review is the way in which it brings relatively unknown and unpublished architects to world attention. Yes, of course we had all heard of Siza...

Diary.
August 1, 2004... AR'S CHOICE OF CURRENT INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITIONS AND EVENTS For an expanded and constantly updated list, go to our website: www.arplus.com/exhibitions CANADA ARCHITECTS' BOOKS Until 26 September CCA, Montreal History...

Clerkenwell's moo-vers and shakers host London's first architecture biennale.(View from Clerkenwell)
August 1, 2004... June was a busy month for London's architectural community. Not least due to the staging of the eighth annual Architecture Week, but also because of two new initiatives: the Architecture Foundation's Big Summer, under the direction of Rowan...

Spectrum of talent: this year's AR Awards for Excellence at Spectrum show how good design can enliven and improve office life.(Design Review)(Architecture and Requirements Office)
August 1, 2004... The annual AR Awards for Excellence have become a regular fixture of Spectrum, the international furniture and interior design fair held at London's Commonwealth Institute in May. This year's show yielded another intriguing and diverse crop of...

Material assets: huge opportunities are offered by an increasing range of materials but their essential sensuous importance remains.(Comment)
August 1, 2004... From time to time, materials and materiality are of little overt importance in architecture. In the second half of the eighteenth century, for example, architects' drawings rarely indicated materials to be used (though they were presumably...

Snow bound: in the high backbone of Japan, rusted steel super-strong skin resists winter loads and thermal stresses.
August 1, 2004... The Niigata Prefecture is to the east of Japan's big island Honshu, and runs from the sea to the high central backbone of the country. In the mountains, up to five and a half metres of winter snow can settle, literally submerging buildings and...

Cultural hub: materials control and maximum prefabrication are keys to this new urban centre near Helsinki.
August 1, 2004... Pekka Helin and his associates triumphed over budgetary and planning constraints to create an exemplary public library, music conservatory, and chamber music hall in the Alberga district of Espoo, a satellite city of Helsinki. The linked...

The nice and the good: as a type, libraries may be in flux, but OMA's bold new building for Seattle is a quantum leap of architectural and municipal ambition.(Object Management Architecture)
August 1, 2004... In Iris Murdoch's novel, The Nice and the Good, the two qualities are not to be mistaken for one another. To be nice may, in fact, thwart the good. In the same spirit, the recently-completed Seattle Central Library is not nice. Instead, a stern...

Dignity in death: imaginative understanding of materials makes this tomb a fitting set for rites of passage.(Cover Story)
August 1, 2004... Spain, like Italy, maintains a most distinguished tradition of tomb-building, but in many places it is becoming eroded by what Manuel Clavel Rojo calls a 'kitch-esque style', with a language composed of PVC door and window frames and bathroom...

Warped wrapper: this new arts centre in Lille is an imaginative exploration of form and materials.
August 1, 2004... From a declining industrial town in the coal belt of northern France to this year's European Capital of Culture (along with Genoa), Lille has done much to reinvent itself. In the early '90s, the routing of the high-speed (TGV) train line from...

Woven in Worb: Gottfried Semper's odd theories about textiles and building are imaginatively reinterpreted in stainless steel.(Smarch,)
August 1, 2004... The famously efficient and elegant Swiss railway system is continually being renewed, and regularly holds competitions to ensure that the design quality of new buildings remains high. Smarch, a firm set up by Beat Mathys and Ursula Stucheli,...

Massive art-stack: Herzog & de Meuron's latest box of tricks on the outskirts of Basel.
August 1, 2004... The Swiss it seems love boxes. Big ones, small ones, glass, stone: boxes as isolated objects, beautifully detailed externally with delightful internal spaces. Without formal convention or decorative motif indicating each box's given function,...

Bow belles: in the heart of London's East End, Matthew Lloyd Architects' installation has helped raise St Paul's Church from the dead.(Interior Design)
August 1, 2004... Since appearing alongside his architectural peers in the Architecture Foundation's 1994 exhibition New British Architecture, Matthew Lloyd's career has developed in a relatively quiet manner. His partnership (with architect/wife Patricia...

Curvaceous corrugated: Endo continues his exploration of bent corrugated metal in a domestic application.(AR House)
August 1, 2004... In the last few years, Shuhei Endo's experiments with galvanized corrugated steel have become world-renowned. He realized that the very cheap material, commonly used only in industrial and agricultural buildings, could have many more...

Terpsichore and the architects: 'I have a deep sense of my body's architecture ... the skeleton', said choreographer Trisha Brown in her prelude to the Royal Academy Forum which brought the worlds of dance and architecture together. In these pages Jeremy Melvin summarizes contributions, from a classicist, two architects, three choreographers and artist David Ward.(Royal Academy of Arts)
August 1, 2004... CHRISTIANS DON'T DANCE [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Simon Goldhill Dance had a particular significance in Ancient Greece. Its subsequent history in Western culture is grounded in the Christian response to the Greek world, from the early...

Material evidence--Rob Gregory reviews recent innovations.(Materials)
August 1, 2004... 501 CORIAN As recently demonstrated by designer Dody Nash in an installation in London's Royal Festival Hall. Corian continues to offer designers freedom to innovate with new forms. Listening Shells (above) were a series of audio...

Specifier's information.(business briefs)
August 1, 2004... Velfac Velfac glazing has been installed in one of Europe's largest mixed-use developments: Whitehall Quay, Leeds. The Velfac aluminium and wood composite window system is used exclusively in the residential element, that comprises 193...

Pounds of pretty paper.(Reviews)(Book Review)
August 1, 2004... PHAIDON ATLAS OF CONTEMPORARY WORLD ARCHITECTURE London: Phaidon, 2004. [pounds sterling]100 Like so many departments of contemporary culture, architectural publishing has begun to embrace shock and awe. Rem Koolhaas's weighty but...

Scharoun snip.(Reviews)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
August 1, 2004... HANS SCHAROUN 1893-1972: OUTSIDER OF MODERNISM By Eberhard Syring & Jorg C. Kirschenmann. Koln: Taschen. 2004. [pounds sterling]4.99 How on earth Taschen do it is unclear, but this attractive 96 page book sells for under five pounds,...

Yibaneh!(Reviews)(Book Review)
August 1, 2004... JEWISH IDENTITY IN CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE Edited by Angeli Sachs and Edward van Voolen. Munich, Berlin, London, New York: Prestel. 2004. [pounds sterling]45 The Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam is presenting this summer an...

Three planet levels.(Reviews)(Review)
August 1, 2004... THE EGAN REVIEW: SKILLS FOR SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES By Peter Egan, London: RIBA Enterprises. 2004. [pounds sterling]20 Elsewhere, I have seen disparaging comment on 'the shambolic nature of the report (expanded to cover everything in...

The Vanguard Landscapes and Gardens of Martha Schwartz.(Reviews)
August 1, 2004... Jacob Javits Plaza, New York by Martha Schwartz. As a leader of the American land art school, her work is celebrated in The Vanguard Landscapes and Gardens of Martha Schwartz, ed Tim Richardson, Thames & Hudson, London, 2004, [pounds...

St Paul's: The Cathedral Church of London 1602-2004.(Reviews)(Architectural books)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2004... Wren's geometric stair in south-west tower, St Paul's Cathedral. Geometric stairs are puzzling structurally (loads are carried to the ground not only by walls, but by each tread bearing on the one below). Here, the treads were inserted in the...

Elegant minimalism combined with modern technology allow Hal Ingberg to create a great surprise in the middle of the woods by literally reflecting on the multi-dimensionality of nature.(Delight)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2004... In the fifth annual international garden festival held in the Reford Gardens in the Gaspe region of Quebec in 2003, there was a magical moment in the middle of the forest. Hal Ingberg made an equilateral triangle of semi-reflective green glass...