The Architectural Review articles from December 2005

The Architectural Review archives from December 2005

Architecture, cost and politics.
December 1, 2005... The decision to award the Stirling Prize (the premier UK architectural award) to the late Enric Miralles' Scottish Parliament complex in Edinburgh provoked a predictable controversy. Wasn't it just like architects to vote for a building that...

Prophetical Prouve.
December 1, 2005... 'Never design anything that cannot be made' declared Jean Prouve, and two travelling exhibitions on the work of the great engineer demonstrate his commitment to the principle. The first, Three Nomadic Structures, was organised by historian...

Vintage Himmelblau.
December 1, 2005... The imposing Munich Academy of Fine Art, which lies next to the Bavarian Triumphal Arch, is now complemented by a colossal (and long awaited) new extension. Coop Himmelb(l)au have succeeded in packing in an impressive building volume, almost as...

Taniguchi wins Praemium Imperiale.(Yoshio Taniguchi)(Praemium Imperiale Award )(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Yoshio Taniguchi has won the Praemium Imperiale Award for Architecture, one of a series of awards for artistic achievement made annually by the Japanese. Art Association (but rarely to a Japanese national). Born in 1937, Taniguchi studied at...

Masterplanning the European City.(Architectural Review annual conference)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... 'Masterplanning and the European City' will be the subject of the fifth Architectural Review annual conference. Sponsored by EDAW, the international planning consultancy, it will take place on 21 February 2006, at the RIBA in London. For...

AR Awards exhibition and talks.(AR Awards )(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... As part of this year's AR Awards for Emerging Architecture programme, the RIBA in London is to stage an exhibition of winning entries and a series of lectures, sponsored by Buro Happold. The exhibition opens on 7 December and full details of...

What could be more seasonal than this monster sparkling snowflake suspended above the streets of midtown Manhattan.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... What could be more seasonal than this monster sparkling snowflake suspended above the streets of midtown Manhattan. Designed by German lighting wunderkind Ingo Maurer, its vital statistics are impressive. Measuring more than 5m in diameter and...

Halcyon haze.
December 1, 2005... The Imperial Clock, by Kittie Jones, Dong Han, Fiona Pender, Luke McClelland and Greg Robertson, was the unanimous winner of this year's RMJM Award for Art and Architecture; an annual award scheme that challenges students from Edinburgh College...

The Mitsubishi Estate Group.(view)(contract given to Hopkins Architects to design landmark office)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... The Mitsubishi Estate Group has commissioned Hopkins Architects to design a landmark office, retail and restaurant development, marking a new phase for the practice. The Shin-Marunouchi Building will have an estimated project budget of nearly...

Peter Cook; The need for architectural experimentation: hunch, crunch and scrambled-egg concepts play an important role in architecture.
December 1, 2005... As a new boy to the world of the columnist, I can't knock the fine old institution of the magazine as a key vehicle of architectural ideas, can I? Nor can I deny that more minutes of television time, more queues to open houses, more credibility...

Emerging Architecture: the AR's annual survey of youthful global architectural activity manifests great diversity and invention.
December 1, 2005... Now in their seventh successive year, the AR Awards for Emerging Architecture continue to consolidate their position as the world's leading awards programme for younger architects. Conceived partly as a gentle riposte to the often overhyped...

Space framed: sophisticated structural design informed a gymnasium building in Tomochi, Japan, symbolising its region.
December 1, 2005... The judges were immediately attracted to the apparently free-form structural mesh that produces this small gymnasium building in a town in Kumamoto Prefecture whose chief industry is forestry--the building had to make use of timber as a symbol...

The artist within: from pigsty to showroom, this little historic structure is cleverly reborn.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... The wit and economy of thinking that informed this design pleased the judges; it is exemplified in the punning description of what has been achieved, turning a pigsty (Saustall) into a showroom (Schaustall). The tumble-down 1780 structure had...

Light spirit: fusing the secular and metaphysical, this oratory on a campus is a modern response to the numinous.
December 1, 2005... The combining of sacred and secular in a complex of buildings is a familiar architectural programme, and one that encourages a creative combination of the functional and the spiritual. In this instance, the judges were impressed by the calmness...

Elementary education: Li Xiaodong revisits established architectural typologies when placing this contemporary group of buildings within a sensitive UNESCO World Heritage site.
December 1, 2005... With the unrivalled rate of development in China, there is a genuine concern (admittedly from foreign observers) that Chinese architects are yet to find a coherent contemporary architectural identity. Traditionally, China has had a rich...

Roll with it: a new footbridge animates Paddington's still waters.
December 1, 2005... Good design is not just about good ideas, rolling with it, going with the creative flow; it is also about good execution. Great design comes when both factors combine. Individuals who repeatedly come up with new tactics, those who try to...

Dining terrace: this restaurant in Portugal's rugged north responds to and celebrates its wild setting.
December 1, 2005... Graduates of Porto's architectural school and in practice in the city since 1990, Antonio Portugal & Manuel Maria Reis are in the vanguard of an emerging generation of Portuguese architects. Their modest, tactful work epitomises what critics...

Informal order: with just three formal variables, this sinuous new settlement works with site and brief.
December 1, 2005... This project was a popular choice, with many intricate spatial qualities and bearing more than a passing resemblance to Sea Ranch--Charles Moore's celebrated 1960s Californian cliff-top settlement, that has since become a model of ordered...

Flying Finns: Helsinki's Olympic Stadium is dignified and enhanced by a bold new grandstand roof.
December 1, 2005... Originally completed in 1938, the famous Helsinki Olympic Stadium was built to attract the summer Games, which eventually came to Finland in 1952. Designed by Yrjo Lindegen and Toivo Jantti, the building's svelte Modernist lines evoked an era...

Bridging the gap: hand built by volunteers, this new structure in China bridges more than a physical gap.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... In the Gansu province of north-west China, the Po River separates the humble village of Maosi into two parts. This has a significant effect on its inhabitants, especially during floods. Crossing the river is an essential ritual of daily life,...

Sheppard's delight: in the beautiful Cornish setting, Sustrans' mission to make the landscape accessible is perfectly served by a new bridge.
December 1, 2005... Sustrans is the UK's leading sustainable transport charity, promoting a vision to see the world adopt methods of transport that benefit the health of individuals and the state of the environment. To date they have been extremely successful with...

Radical chic: this imaginative new housing in Trondheim attempts to build on a radical civic spirit.
December 1, 2005... This housing in Trondheim, Norway's third largest city, is an imaginative response to the vibrancy and enterprise of the local alternative lifestyle movement. Svartlamoen began life in the eighteenth century as a working-class neighbourhood...

Straight and narrow: even without the curves, Shuhei Endo continues to experiment with corrugated metal.
December 1, 2005... The work of the Shuhei Endo Architecture Institute is very familiar to the AR, and as such with some members of the Jury. While there were reservations that the angular use of profiled metal sheeting in this their latest work was less refined...

Clifftop monolith: poised on a cliff, this simple concrete house boldly confronts nature and the elements.
December 1, 2005... Encompassing deserts and glaciers in an intoxicating, longitudinal sweep. Chile's mad geography has been a crucible for a particular kind of Modernism informed by abstraction, climate and nature. Many of the younger generation of South American...

Flight of imagination: an air traffic control tower is elevated into a city landmark through the use of light and images.
December 1, 2005... Generally dictated by function and with an invariable physical prominence, air traffic control towers tend not to be the most lyrical of structures. This new tower at Vienna's main Schwechat airport is an admirable exception, and its efforts at...

Northern exposure: in Norway's remote north, this research centre responds to challenging conditions.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Even by Scandinavian standards, the Svalbard archipelago is challengingly remote. Over 600km north of the Norwegian mainland, the islands' glacier-scored landscape is frozen solid to a depth of 500m and temperatures plummet to -50 deg C in...

Arboreal arbour: deep in a forest, this pavilion helps to reinvigorate community life.
December 1, 2005... The evangelising premise of the Rural Studio is now well known, yet Sam Mockbee's brilliant brainchild of extending the study and practice of architecture into a socially responsible context continues to flourish, even after his death (AR...

First blood: this blood collection centre, the largest in India, aims to demystify and humanise the process of blood donation.
December 1, 2005... Providing services for blood collection, storage and research, Prathama Blood Centre in Ahmedabad, regional capital of Gujarat, attracted the jurors' attention as an example of a large and quite complex building in the developing world....

Balinese bamboo: this hotel restaurant in a Bali tourist resort explores vernacular forms and materials.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Jakarta-based Budi Pradono is a young Indonesian architect who has worked in Australia and Japan (with Kengo Kuma) and studied at Rotterdam's Berlage Institute. Paradoxically, this cosmopolitan trajectory has led him back to his roots, as...

Shifting tides: the designers of this New York restaurant sought acoustic softness and spatial intimacy.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Fit-out is a curious architectural medium. Often temporary, materially thin, and stylistically over-egged, it is the more muted and restrained interiors that usually attract recognition. It came as somewhat of a surprise, therefore, that this...

Divided views: when is a room not a room? The Jury is still out ...(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... T house--by Sou Fujimoto--was a highly contested choice. The house, which is essentially a single volume space, provides accommodation for a family of four and also serves as a space within which to display the owner's private collection of...

Hanging about: portable refuge, or portable prison? The decision is yours ...(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... The architect's design statement reads thus: Conceived as an interior space for self-reflection, Dream House proposes a relationship between an urban tree and an interactive sensitive piece, which transforms the natural element into an...

Swiss assurance: this large-scale housing complex reinvigorates a dull building type.
December 1, 2005... The challenges of large-scale public housing still tend to confound most architects, so it was encouraging to see this assured example from young Swiss practice Pool Architekten. Compared with most of the projects shown here it represents a...

Box fresh: inspired by the richness of Senegalese textiles, this little fabric clad box seduced the Jury.
December 1, 2005... The second of two projects by Barcelona-based ex.studio was possibly the most eye-catching and unusual of all the premiated submissions. This witty, humorous response to the visual richness of Senegalese culture elicited a warm glow from the...

Specifier's information.
December 1, 2005... Armourcoat Armourcoat Surface Finishes have announced the introduction of new colour palettes for the entire Selector range of polished plaster finishes. The Stunning new range of colours has been developed in consultation with architects...

Saarinen reappraised.(Eero Saarinen )(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... EERO SAARINEN By Jayne Merkel. London Phaidon Press. 2005. [pounds sterling]45 A good book on the work of Eero Saarinen is overdue, and while the appetite for mid-century Modernism seems insatiable, this prolific Americanised son of a...

Eternal Kahn.(Louis I Kahn )(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... LOUIS I. KAHN By Robert McCarter. London: Phaldon Press. 2005. [pounds sterling]49.95 It is now over thirty years since the death of Louis Kahn and the time is ripe for a comprehensive critical reassessment of his work. In many...

Modernist monument.
December 1, 2005... VAN NELLE, MONUMENT IN PROGRESS Rotterdam: De Hef. 2005. [euro]72.50 Gropius's Bauhaus, Le Corhusier's Project for the League of Nations and Brinkman and Van der Vlugt's Van Nelle factory were the Grand Projects of the late 1920s. We...

Vaulting ambition.(Concrete Vaulted Construction in Imperial Rome : Innovations in Context )(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... CONCRETE VAULTED CONSTRUCTION IN IMPERIAL ROME: INNOVATIONS IN CONTEXT By Lynne C. Lancaster. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2005. [pounds sterling]55 This substantial work pulls together research and analysis of vaulted...

Natural History.(Treehouses)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 1, 2005... Treehouses have existed since early man used them for safety and as observation platforms. They evolved into places of delight offering respite from daily life, from where you could contemplate nature. Pliny and Elder, in his Natural History,...

Deep waters.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... A perverse passion for the English language always makes me suspicious: when people use that word 'critical' as an adjective to qualify the phrase 'architectural theory'. You muse on the nature of uncritical architectural theory, to which of...

Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow.
December 1, 2005... I don't know what you think of slide shows on websites. Sure, they belong to an architectural tradition as old as Ektachrome--or maybe the magic lantern. But my experience is that architects are so attached to their magna opera that they dwell...

Vanity, vanity.
December 1, 2005... A subscription to World Architecture News.com at http://worldarchitecturenews.com costs [euro]120 a year ([pounds sterling]81+VAT for us locals). For that you might expect a newsroom of hacks busily tracking down news and preparing features....

Diary.(Calendar)
December 1, 2005... AR'S CHOICE OF INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITIONS AND EVENTS AUSTRIA EGON SCHIELE Albertina, Vienna Until 15 January 2006 Over 170 works by Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele from his beginnings at the Wiener Akademie to...

Delight.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Entitled Balloon Caught, this ingenious urban installation by Tokyo-based architects Satoshi Matsuoka and Yuki Tamura was the outcome of an initiative to re-think and re-animate public space in Vancouver. Participants were asked to explore the...