The Architectural Review articles from August 2006

The Architectural Review archives from August 2006

Understanding architectural consequences.(view)
August 1, 2006... Why do buildings look the way they do? What informs their size, materials and impact? What causes architecture to change from one era to another? There are conventional answers to these questions: the architect took account of site, programme...

Well tempered in Singapore.(view)
August 1, 2006... Will Alsop's first major project in Asia, a dramatic redevelopment of the river front district of Clarke Quay in Singapore, is drawing tourists and locals back to the historic waterfront. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Following a steady...

Lubetkin Prize.(view)(for best architectural work)(Noero Wolff Architects, Griffiths Rankin Cook Architects, Behnisch Architekten )
August 1, 2006... The Royal Institute of British Architects launched an award this year (supported by the AR) for the best work of architecture by an institute member outside the EU. Named the Lubetkin Prize after Berthold Lubetkin, perhaps the UK's most famous...

Much more than just hot air.(view)
August 1, 2006... Last month saw the opening of the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2006, continuing the tradition initiated in 2000 by Serpentine Director, Julia Peyton-Jones. The sixth pavilion in the series, designed by Rem Koolhaas and Cecil Balmond with Arup,...

Peter Cook.(view)(Design City Melbourne)(Book review)
August 1, 2006... Leon van Schaik's new book* is provocatively titled Design City Melbourne and as soon as you get inside it, the provocation makes itself quite clear: he reminds us that Graz was 'hot' in the 1970s, Barcelona in the 1980s, the Dutch Randstadt in...

Climate of change: the vernacular lessons of buildings in hot latitudes can help shape an ecologically responsive architecture.(comment)
August 1, 2006... Before the Modern Movement's white heat of technology and egalitarian impulses liberated architectural form, buildings were, as they had been for centuries, shaped by more fundamental concerns such as place and climate. Rooted in Northern...

Mexican treehouse: in an evolving neighbourhood, this office block makes a strong but nuanced urban statement.
August 1, 2006... High-rise buildings are often so similar to each other, almost identical no matter where in the world they exist, that it is especially rewarding to visit a high-rise of such originality and true character as the Torre Cube, recently completed...

Layer cake: in a city dominated by Calatrava's formal extravagance, Chipperfield brings a moment of calm to Valencia's choppy waters.(Santiago Calatrava)(David Chipperfield)
August 1, 2006... Until recently, the Spanish city of Valencia was dominated by a number of large white edifices of the wedding cake variety, designed by local hero Santiago Calatrava. Now, with the completion of David Chipperfield's hospitality building for the...

Suburban oasis: This new community centre in a suburb of Phoenix rejuvenates an existing park.(Wendell Burnette)
August 1, 2006... Typical of the booming American suburbs that emerged after the Second World War, Maryvale, on the west edge of Phoenix, was one of the USA's first postwar masterplanned communities. Along with Levittown in New York, it had a profound impact on...

Tropical mission: new offices for the British Council in Lagos both respond to and challenge local conditions.( )
August 1, 2006... Enduring and impressively global, the British Council is that rare thing, a reassuring constant in a changing world. From its modest beginnings in 1934, it now takes its evangelical mission of cultural relations and education to 110 countries....

Shore patrol: This beach house explores traditional vernacular means of tempering climate.
August 1, 2006... This latest in a series of elegant, minimal, object houses by Sean Godsell is a further speculation on the potential of an Australian vernacular that relates more explicitly to Asian regionalism than European historicism. Spare of form and clad...

Sliding doors: get into the groove ... with Tezuka architects.
August 1, 2006... Tezuka have done great things with sliding doors. The Engawa House (AR September 2005) demonstrated not only the practical benefits of removing one side of a home to exploit the relationship between inside and out along the length of a narrow...

Southern comfort: the story of the making of Newbern's fire station marks a subtle shift in Rural Studio's social and architectural mission.(process)
August 1, 2006... Now with around 60 buildings to its credit, the Rural Studio is gradually outgrowing its origins as a band of enthusiastic provocateurs and evolving into what might be described as a more focused, professional outfit. With the untimely death of...

Art house: Kuma brings order and coherence to Masanari Murai's studio museum.(interior design)(Kengo Kuma)
August 1, 2006... A giant ink stone, old TVs, wooden spoons of various sizes, and an original sculpture by Salvador Dali are among an eclectic hoard of antique furniture and work materials that have been carefully resurrected at the Murai Masanari Art Museum....

Stairway to heaven: Thomas Heatherwick stuns Manhattan with his new store for Longchamp.
August 1, 2006... To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, it all began with a handbag. In 2003 the perpetually inventive Thomas Heatherwick was invited by French conglomerate Longchamp, patrician purveyor of luxury accessories, to design a handbag. He duly obliged with the...

Snakes and ladders: while small houses are big in Japan, Atelier Bow-Wow's new home pushes the capacity of the micro plot.(house)
August 1, 2006... When seeking a site for their own home and office, Atelier Bow-Wow found this tricky flag-shaped site, in Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo. Cheaper than most due to the planning limitations, they set about organising spaces one above the other, without...

Exterior envelope: From crafted copper to glass and terracotta--the latest leading edge developments in products for cladding and external envelope are expertly surveyed.(product review)
August 1, 2006... 500 THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT 'Structuran' glass ceramic (above and right) is a revolutionary new material with the characters of glass and natural stone, and can be used in a wide range of applications: facade rainscreens, kitchen and bar...

Specifier's information.
August 1, 2006... Corus Colorcoat Prisma[R] offers a technically and aesthetically superior pre-finished steel product over PVDF (Pvf2), supported by Confidex[R] Guarantee of up to 25 years only available from Corus. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] *...

Asplund--at last.(Gunnar Asplund)(Book review)
August 1, 2006... GUNNAR ASPLUND By Peter Blundell Jones. London: Phaidon. 2006. [pounds sterling]45 ([pounds sterling]36 special offer) This book does much to redress the lack of attention given to Gunnar Asplund who, following his death in 1940, was...

The good, the bad and the ugly.(Recombinant Urbanism: Conceptual Modeling in Architecture, Urban Design and City Theory)(Book review)
August 1, 2006... RECOMBINANT URBANISM: CONCEPTUAL MODELLING IN ARCHITECTURE, URBAN DESIGN, AND CITY THEORY By David Grahame Shane. Chichester: Wiley-Academy. 2005. [pounds sterling]26.99 This book will repay work from the reader because it represents a...

Climate consensus.(Climate Design)(Book review)
August 1, 2006... CLIMATE DESIGN By Gerhard Hausladen, Michael de Saldanha, Petra Liedl, Christina Sager. Basel: Birkhauser. 2005. [euro]59.90 This book is a very thorough review of the current consensus of all the issues which affect the adaptations...

Fine finnish.(Finland)(Book review)
August 1, 2006... FINLAND By Roger Connah. London: Reaktion Books. 2005. [pounds sterling]16.95 Finland has had a reputation for fine modern architecture for over a century. Roger Connah's latest book on the subject sets out to explain why, during the...

Metropolitan World Atlas.
August 1, 2006... This guide to air traffic densities appears in the excellent Metropolitan World Atlas, produced by Arjen van Susteren and Dutch publisher 010. Serving as an appetiser to the Venice Biennale on cities taking place next month, the 'atlas' is a...

Anglo German alliance: A new show of Sauerbruch Hutton's oeuvre has opened in Munich.
August 1, 2006... Sauerbruch Hutton, perhaps the most successful contemporary Anglo/German architectural partnership, is currently staging an extraordinary exhibition in the Bavarian capital where two of the practice's most prominent buildings, the Brandhorst...

Turkish potential delight.(browser)(www.archmuseum.org)(Brief article)
August 1, 2006... Most irritating opening page this month has to go to the architecture museum at www.archmuseum.org. It's not that it's not a case of pretty and clever use of text graphics and it's not that it doesn't have a 'Skip intro' button, it is just...

Violence and a last resort.(browser)(Brief article)
August 1, 2006... I always assume that architects, whose website text size is not alterable by users, labour under the delusion that they thereby retain control of things. A kinder explanation is that they feel shy about asking their website designers to stop...

So close to their chests.(browser)(www.richard-bauer.com)(Brief article)
August 1, 2006... Here's an intriguing site from that indefatigable site-searcher, Eric Morehouse. It is the website of richard+bauer. Regular readers will know this column's predilection for the Miesian aphorism 'less is more' when applied to websites though...

Flying down to Rio.(browser)(www.espectro.arq.br)(Brief article)
August 1, 2006... I tried out www.espectro.arq.br to see why eight Brazilian architects/designers decided to do a collective site. One answer seems to be that they haven't yet done a lot and maybe there seemed to be economies of scale. I'm not so sure this was a...

Diary.(Brief article)(Calendar)
August 1, 2006... AR'S CHOICE OF INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITIONS AND EVENTS AUSTRIA CANTILEVER CHAIRS:ARCHITECTURAL MANIFESTO AND MATERIAL EXPERIMENT MAK, Austrian Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna Until 29 October More than eighty years of innovative...

Delight.(Brief article)
August 1, 2006... This year's London Architecture Biennale (the second) was a huge success, generating 75000 visitors to exhibitions, lectures, and installations from Borough Market south of the Thames, on a route north taking in Smithfield and Clerkenwell, and...