The Architectural Review articles from August 2005

The Architectural Review archives from August 2005

Koolhaas and cultural contradiction.(view)
August 1, 2005... Speaking in London at the Royal Society of Arts last month, Rem Koolhaas gave an excoriating analysis of the condition of architects in a consumerist global economy, citing his own description of it as a 'poisonous mixture of megalomania and...

The Beetle has landed.(view)
August 1, 2005... Star architects don't always run away with the prizes. Frankfurt architect Christoph Mackler has just been chosen to design a new [euro]900 million Terminal 3 (over Foster and Partners and von Gerkan, Marg) in a three phase international...

Chill factor.(Architectural services)
August 1, 2005... A rare example of an architectural competition for a small building making national headlines in the UK is this design by Hugh Broughton Architects for a new research station in Antarctica. The building is the sixth in a series commissioned by...

Submission looms for AR Awards.(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... The AR Awards for Emerging Architecture are entering their seventh cycle. Inaugurated in 1999, the awards are intended to bring wider international recognition to a talented generation of architects and designers under 45. Supported by Buro...

World Architecture Congress.(view)
August 1, 2005... A varied group of international architects and urbanists will speak at the World Architecture Congress, which takes place in Dubai at the Cityscape exhibition/awards/conference event on 17-18 September. Stefan Behnisch, Jan Gehl, Will Alsop and...

Recognition for the AR.(view)(Architectural Review )(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... The Architectural Review has won the highly-acclaimed Pierre Vago CICA (International Committee of Architectural Critics) Award 2005 for international magazines and journals, announced at the UIA in Istanbul in July. Also at the UIA, Peter...

New order.
August 1, 2005... Robin Snell's experience is unquestionable, despite his relatively modest output since leaving Michael Hopkins almost ten years ago. Having sharpened his teeth on the awe-inspiring Schlumberger phase one before becoming project architect on...

Outrage.(architectural services)
August 1, 2005... Haydarpasa Railway Station in Istanbul stands on the Asian waterfront in the district of Kadikoy. It is a grand and imposing Neo-Classical building and the terminus for train journeys from Anatolia and Asia beyond. Designed by Otto Ritter and...

London goes Olympic.
August 1, 2005... The London bombings in July cast a shadow over the remarkable news that the city, and in particular its east side, would be the host for the 2012 Olympic Games. Since the British bid started a year after other competitors (political...

Beyond the cult of the object: compelling though the object buildings may be, architecture must reconnect with history, place and humanity.
August 1, 2005... When did the architecture that commands most attention, in the media or unmissable on the street, hit rock bottom? Most might plump for the 1980s when Post Modernism, Prince Charles and planners, who equated pediments and pilasters with...

Monument for a miniaturist: a new museum dedicated to Paul Klee swells seductively into the Swiss landscape.(Cover Story)
August 1, 2005... The arcaded streets of the old town of Berne, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, have acquired a counterpart in the pedestrian concourse that links the three volumes of the Zentrum Paul Klee, Renzo Piano's latest showcase for art. An undulating...

Delirious Porto: Porto's new concert hall is a conspicuous urban presence that proclaims its otherness, but has inventive moments.
August 1, 2005... So, finally, Delirious Rotterdam comes to Porto; another city ticked off, another destination label pasted on the well-travelled OMA valise. With delicious irony, the new Casa da Musica was inaugurated by a Lou Reed concert, drawing...

Extending eclecticism: Herzog & de Meuron bring a new sense of animation and dynamism to a historic Midwest cultural institution.
August 1, 2005... Faced with the task of expanding the Walker Art Center, designed by Edward Larabee Barnes and completed in 1971, Herzog & de Meuron have both respected the old and flamboyantly identified the new. Established in the late nineteenth century and...

Effortless artistry: this new campus gallery in Cork is full of delicious contradictions, yet it wears its complexity lightly.
August 1, 2005... Adolf Loos once said that he was proud that his (and by implication other great) buildings could not be understood in photographs. It is a pity that he was later caught retouching a publication of his works, but the point remains that the best...

Art in action: a famed Californian design school remodels industrial buildings to engage the public.
August 1, 2005... Pasadena, once shrugged off as the home of little old ladies in tennis shoes, can fairly claim to be the most interesting component of the LA metropolis. The California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech) is advancing the frontiers of science,...

Art bunker: buried in a hillside, this museum is a tantalising journey into different aspects of art.
August 1, 2005... Tadao Ando's involvement with Naoshima Island dates back to the late 1980s, when he first designed a museum for contemporary art, conceived as a series of typically ascetic containers partially submerged underground so as to impinge as lightly...

Forms, follies, functions.(architectural services)
August 1, 2005... While London's Tate Modern has the Unilever series, the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park has its pavilion, taking place on the summer calendar alongside Glastonbury and Wimbledon. This year, Portuguese architects (and friends) Alvaro Siza and...

Mind over matter: Richard Serra's Bilbao Guggenheim sculptures both respond to and challenge their context.
August 1, 2005... It was always going to be a showdown between architecture and art, but which would hit the ground first? The Guggenheim Bilbao has kept its legend well--a Herculean feat of impossible architecture saves the city and becomes the benchmark for...

View point: Niall McLaughlin's house conversion and addition respect and enrich their coastal environment.
August 1, 2005... The architect for this project, Niall McLaughlin, was given the challenge of producing a building that would match the striking beauty of its site, at Clonakilty, County Cork, on the west coast of Ireland. In their project description, the...

Value: culture and commerce; Led by Richard MacCormac, the RA Forum set out to unpick architecture's relationship with value, culture and commerce, concluding with a discussion of one manifestation of values within architecture, the icon.(Royal Academy of Arts)
August 1, 2005... Architecture seems caught in a trap between culture and commerce, or between its ability to express diverse and complex values, and the obligations it carries to create value, as Dickon Robinson puts it. However awkward and frustrating, these...

A new hotel in Madrid takes the boutique designer concept to cavalier extremes.(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... We're all familiar with what happens when boutique hotel entrepreneur meets megalomaniac designer, but why stick with one tired signature architect when you can have 12 different ones all vying for your attention? In what has to be one of the...

Specifier's information.
August 1, 2005... Victorian Woodworks Bannatyne's Casino is the north-east's newest casino venture. Faced with the challenge of selecting a flooring solution that created the right ambience, reclaimed maple woodblock from timber flooring specialist...

Concrete poetry.(Book Review)
August 1, 2005... LE CORBUSIER ARCHITECT OF BOOKS 1912-1965 By Catherine de Smet. Wettingen: Lars Muller. 2005. [euro]35 CORBUSIER'S CONCRETE--CHALLENGES OF CONSERVING MODERN HERITAGE Edited by Kiran Joshi. Chandigarh: Chandigarh Perspectives. 2005....

The I-word.(Book Review)
August 1, 2005... THE ICONIC BUILDING: THE POWER OF ENIGMA By Charles Jencks. Frances Lincoln. 2005. [pounds sterling]19.99 THE EDIFICE COMPLEX By Deyan Sudjic. Penguin/Allen Lane. 2005. [pounds sterling]20 THE LAST ICONS By Miles...

Theoretical sweep.(Book Review)
August 1, 2005... MODERN ARCHITECTURAL THEORY: A HISTORICAL SURVEY 1673-1968 By Harry Francis Mallgrave. England: Cambridge University Press. 2005 [pounds sterling]70 Mallgrave's achievement in trying to sum up the development of architectural theory...

Intersections.(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... Braiding hair on Bree Street, Johannesburg, one of a series of photographs of contemporary South African life by David Goldblatt from Intersections, Prestel, London, 2005, [pounds sterling]35. Goldblatt has an acute eye for the nuances and...

UIA in Istanbul.
August 1, 2005... To whoops of delight in the packed auditorium of the Istanbul Convention Centre, Peter Eisenman lazily unbuttoned his shirt to reveal the distinctive red and orange strip of Galatasaray, Istanbul's favourite football team. We could only be at a...

Good wood.
August 1, 2005... The exhibition From Wood to Architecture at The Museum of Finnish Architecture presents 17 recent buildings in Finland, many by young Finnish architects unknown in the international architectural arena. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ...

Changing rooms.(browser)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... I don't especially dispute the spin doctor claim that Melbourne-based international practice Denton Corker Marshall is 'one of the world's most successful firm of architects' or the fact that it has a new website designed by local graphics...

News from New York.(browser)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... The Architects Newspaper is an apparently excellent fortnightly print tabloid which has more than 8000 New York architect and designer subscribers. This means, the paper argues quite reasonably, that it has a readership of around 20 000. Its...

Today we collect ads.(browser)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... One thing I really do not understand about the archpaper website is the fact that four of the five ads down the right-hand side are for UK enterprises. Hold on. This is a New York site. Needless to say the RIBA bookshop has everything listed in...

Furry dice.(browser)
August 1, 2005... Gizmodo is the online gadget guide at www.gizmodo.com. 'So much in love with shiny new toys, it's unnatural', preens the sidebar. Recently its contents included a see-through potty, a self-playing guitar and the $100 A Pod PC system case which...

Diceman.(browser)
August 1, 2005... Francois Roche's R & Sie site is at http://www.new-territories.com/roche%20defant2.htm or at least I think it is the practice's site. In terms of content and design it is a real ragbag. Definitely not a model for the smart, young, thrusting...

Blogged by building.(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... There is a fine practical distinction between websites and blogs. So fine, in fact, that the casual observer needs to be told. Which is why you get urls such as newsblog and greatideasblog and reallyboringblog. The technical difference is that...

Webb master.(letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 1, 2005... SIR: Our compliments on the insightful article regarding Bruce Goff's work by Michael Webb. He captured Goff's designs as they were meant to be, and it is a tribute to his work that it is still being recognised. Our firm, Elliott +...

Diary.
August 1, 2005... AR'S CHOICE OF INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITIONS AND EVENTS DENMARK HENRI MATISSE REBORN--1941-54 Until 4 December Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek Exhibition covering Matisse's flourishing late work, based on his...

Delight.(Architectural services)
August 1, 2005... IN THE GROUNDS OF A CALIFORNIANVILLA, ARTISTS AND WRITERS CAN GET DOWN TO SERIOUS CREATIVITY. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Named after the popular Spanish writer Garcia Ordonez de...