The Architectural Review articles from August 2007

The Architectural Review archives from August 2007

Spanning cultural difference.(Viewpoint essay)
August 1, 2007... One of the drawbacks of globalisation is the tendency towards homogenisation--in that witty post-modernist phrase, 'the same difference everywhere'. This issue of The Architectural Review focuses on Japan, a country with a culture which has...

Life's a beach: Thomas Heatherwick kicks off the English summer with a trip to the seaside.(Viewpoint essay)
August 1, 2007... The English seaside has always been characterised by a through-gritted-teeth kind of jollity. But now that you can fly to Riga for [pounds sterling]9.99, the attractions of pebbly beaches, rotting piers and kiss-me-quick are rapidly fading folk...

New LiFE for concrete bunker.
August 1, 2007... Anyone arriving in St Nazaire after dark might wonder what is causing the alien glow on the roof of a monumental structure on the western side of the port. It is the geodesic dome salvaged from Berlin's Tempelhof Airport and reassembled to...

Spanish ceramics competition.(Viewpoint essay)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... ASCER, the Ceramic Manufacturers' Association of Spain, is calling for entries for the sixth annual Tile of Spain Awards for Architecture and Interior Design. The awards recognise architectural and interior design projects that reflect the...

AR on the move.(view)(Architectural Review)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... The AR office is moving on 23 August (see Delight, AR July 1999, p98). Our new address will be The Architectural Review, Emap, Greater London House, Hampstead Road, London NW1 7EJ. New telephone numbers will be published on our website...

Colin St John Wilson (1922-2007).(Obituary)
August 1, 2007... Fifteen years ago, in his introduction to Architectural Reflections: Studies in the philosophy and practice of architecture, Colin St John Wilson, who died, aged 85, on 14 May, wrote, 'What is at stake is the obligation to seek in things and in...

Peter Cook: in alpine Innsbruck, Peter Cook detects the mythological hand of Bloomsbury academe.(Innsbruck University)(Viewpoint essay)
August 1, 2007... Innsbruck University is a funny place to be for a child of the North Sea flatlands who feels more comfortable among winding streets and slow moving rivers: when the surrounding mountains are bearing down on you. A funny place that is...

Back to basics: exploring old ideas in new ways, Japan's architects move toward an architecture of the future primitive.
August 1, 2007... Gabriele Vorreiter, writing in her introduction to the November 1987 issue of the AR, concluded by saying that Japanese architecture defies definition. Occupying middle ground between substance and the insubstantial, where traditionalism,...

Learning curve: running circles around other schools, Fuji kindergarten is leading the way.
August 1, 2007... The client's brief for this kindergarten was a simple one-liner: to provide a roof house for 500 children. Having visited Tezuka Architects' Roof House in Hadano (AR October 2001) and having discussed the balance of practicality and delight...

Cubic commune: Ryue Nishizawa challenges conventional attitudes to multiple residence development.
August 1, 2007... Visiting this project two years after completion is critical to how thoroughly it can be judged. Previously published images of empty white interiors, pristine external surfaces and a scrubby landscape, created a wholly inaccurate...

Reading matter: reduced to bare essentials, Ito's latest building encapsulates his changing attitude to the emerging grid.(Tama Art University)(Toyo Ito)(Cover story)
August 1, 2007... When asked to design a library on a site adjacent to the new entrance of Tama Art University, Toyo Ito first envisaged burying the building beneath a sculpture garden. In contrast to the imposing concrete masses that surround it, he wanted to...

Rock solid: the work of Sou Fujimoto gains strength and maturity.
August 1, 2007... Sou Fujimoto first appeared in the AR in late 2005 with two projects featured in the Awards for Emerging Architecture (AR December 2005). The following year he was one of three prizewinners with his Children's Treatment Centre in Hokkaido,...

Bending light: TNA mimic nature to stay out of the shadows.
August 1, 2007... In the Himonya district of central Tokyo, TNA has recently completed this curiously curvaceous house, their fourth domestic project since leaving the office of Takaharu + Yui Tezuka to establish TNA in 2004. With four distinctive houses under...

21_21 Design Sight ... as much a celebration of Japan's construction industry, as its featured designers.
August 1, 2007... 21_21 Design Sight is directed by three of Japan's most prominent designers, Issey Miyake (clothes), Taku Satoh (graphics) and Naoto Fukasawa (products), who have come together to promote the significance of design. With extensive exhibition...

Organic embrace: the fluid geometry of this new crematorium evokes a sense of peace and serenity.(Toyo Ito)
August 1, 2007... It's a gross simplification to suggest that Toyo Ito is following Frank Gehry's lead in embracing the computer and his feminine side, and morphing from sharp angles to sensuous curves. And yet it's tempting to trace the parallels in his shift...

Going spare: KDa adapt a disused bowling alley to create a vibrant internal landscape of novelty.(interior design)(Klein Dytham architecture)
August 1, 2007... Creative re-use may not be an architectural discipline commonly associated with Japanese architecture. As styles pass, and as commercial buildings rise and fall, discarded like disposable packaging, when corporate businesses want to centralise...

Seismic Swatch: a new retail and office tower in Ginza exploits cutting edge structural design to cope with seismic loading.(technical)
August 1, 2007... In downtown Ginza, a place dedicated to high end retail excess (think a Japanese version of Fifth Avenue crossed with Bond Street), Shigeru Ban was commissioned to design a mixed retail and office tower for watch manufacturer Swatch (AR January...

Specifier's information.
August 1, 2007... Corus Two gargantuan warehouses, built for client St Paul Developments, have been clad using two premium pre-finished steel products from Corus. Architects RPS Burks Green specified both Colorcoat[R] HPS200 and Colorcoat Prisma[R] for the...

Moses reappraised.(Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York)(Book review)
August 1, 2007... ROBERT MOSES AND THE MODERN CITY: THETRANSFORMATION OF NEWYORK Edited by Hilary Ballon and Kenneth T. Jackson. London: W. W. Norton. 2007. [pounds sterling]30 Years after the 1939 New York World's Fair was over, people were still...

Scratch and sniff.(Hubbub: Filth, Noise, and Stench in England, 1600-1770)(Book review)
August 1, 2007... HUBBUB: FILTH, NOISE AND STENCH IN ENGLAND By Emily Cockayne. London: Yale University Press. 2007. [pounds sterling]25 Emily Cockayne sets out to discover 'what made city dwellers uncomfortable in the seventeenth and eighteenth...

Curve of the earth.(From Cameroon to Paris: Mousgoum Architecture In and Out of Africa)(Book review)
August 1, 2007... FROM CAMEROON TO PARIS: MOUSGOUM ARCHITECTURE IN AND OUT OF AFRICA By Steven Nelson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2007. [pounds sterling]31.50 'The hut, it is true, resembles no other; but it is not only strange it is...

Austrian idiosyncrasy.(When Buildings Speak: Architecture as Language in the Habsburg Empire and Its Aftermath, 1867-1933 )(Book review)
August 1, 2007... WHEN BUILDINGS SPEAK: ARCHITECTURE AS LANGUAGE IN THE HABSBURG EMPIRE AND ITS AFTERMATH, 1867-1933 By Anthony Alofsin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2006. $65 When architects think about Austria it will be Vienna in the days of...

Systems analysis.(Building: 3,000 Years of Design, Engineering and Construction )(Book review)
August 1, 2007... BUILDING: 3000 YEARS OF DESIGN, ENGINEERING AND CONSTRUCTION By Bill Addis. London: Phaidon. 2007. [pounds sterling]45 This is a veritable tome--a history book that is admirable in its depth and breadth of reference and research, not by...

From Calatrava Complete Works 1979-2007.(Brief article)(Book review)
August 1, 2007... Not an out-take from a kinky movie, but a swimming pool made of plastic sheeting and suspended from cables in the august setting of the professors' lounge at ETH in Zurich. From Calatrava Complete Works 1979-2007, by Philip Jodidio, Cologne:...

Zaha's progress.(reviews)(Zaha Hadid)
August 1, 2007... London's Design Museum tracks Zaha Hadid's long hard journey into the architectural stratosphere. For someone so globally feted, there is still a whiff of the prophet without honour about Zaha Hadid. Though London has provided the...

The silly numbers game.(browser)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... When architectural blogistes start running league tables about each other it must be time to close down the whole internet and start again. Especially when other blog people take such bollocks ranking seriously and when you know that they are...

Best of blogs.(browser)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... So what is so special about BLDGBLOG? It's at http://bldgblog.blogspot.com. First of all it's not all that much about architecture in the pretty-pictures sense. For example when I took a look at it, there was a piece about the biological...

He blogs, she blogs.(browser)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... Other sites in van Raaij's list include www.tropolism.com which has an intriguing student insight 'Robert A. M. Stern Is Almost Alright'. There is http://subtopia.blogspot.com--nice to see that old word, invented in the '50s by Oz architectural...

Click, clack, clock.(browser)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... On the other hand there are so many po-faced, stiff shirt architectural websites out there you don't mind a bit of silliness. There's this Paris architectural practice with a home page with a sort of Rorschach blot and the name, Peripheriques,...

OOO-er.(browser)
August 1, 2007... A couple of years ago I mentioned The Gutter whose subtitle runs 'Ill-mannered commentary on the architectural arts'. As a palliative to the general architectural love-in above, may I direct you to its pages at http://gutter.curbed.com....

You never win.(browser)
August 1, 2007... And after all the above stuff about the folly of blog Oscars, I take a visit to Plataforma Arquitectura at www.plataformaarquitectura.cl. Only to find this section: Top 10 de la Arquitectura Emergente Espanola. Sutherland Lyall is at...

Diary.(Diary entry)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... AR'S CHOICE OF INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITIONS AND EVENTS NETHERLANDS JEAN PROUVE Netherlands Architecture Institute, Maastricht Until 2 September One of the greatest designers of the twentieth century, Jean Prouve created a...

Delight: while others go hi-res, Klein Dytham architecture do the opposite, merging electro-retro with Ginza glitz for clothing company Uniqlo.(Fast Retailing Company Ltd.)(Brief article)
August 1, 2007... Uniqlo has built its brand providing basic clothing at reasonable prices. Similarly KDa's approach to Uniqlo Ginza was to pursue a simple and basic design solution. In Tokyo's brightly lit shopping streets, facades commonly incorporate state of...