The Architectural Review articles from December 2008

The Architectural Review archives from December 2008

Landscape makes its mark.(view)
December 1, 2008... THE INAUGURAL WORLD ARCHITECTURE FESTIVAL BROUGHT ARCHITECTS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD TO BARCELONA IN OCTOBER TO ATTEND OR PARTICIPATE IN A DIVERSE ARRAY OF SEMINARS, EXHIBITIONS AND PRESENTATIONS CELEBRATING ARCHITECTURE IN THE TWENTY-FIRST...

First ' World Building of the Year'.(view)(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... This competition-winning building for Universita Luigi Bocconi, the leading Italian business school, took pride of place at the inaugural World Architecture Festival held in Barcelona at the end of October. Designed by Dublin-based Grafton...

Festival of talent.(World Architecture Festival )
December 1, 2008... Nearly 2000 people attended the first World Architecture Festival in Barcelona for three days at the end of October. Organised by Emap, owner of The Architectural Review, it is intended that the event become annual. It included the world's...

Peter Cook: suitably refreshed after international events in Frankfurt and Barcelona.(view)
December 1, 2008... Gradually a small crowd trickled into the very square-shaped room that Oswald Mathias Ungers bequeathed to the DAM-Frankfurt's Deutsches Architektur Museum which, despite its grand title, has now become quite a friendly almost 'local' venue....

Now we are 10-a decade of emerging architecture: to mark the 10th cycle of the AR awards, the programme's founder Peter Davey looks back at a decade of youthful exuberance, and sees great hope for the future, as skill and humanity are rekindled by a new generation of architects.
December 1, 2008... Are there too many architectural awards? Even 10 years ago, the question was pressing, but it was then that we decided that a new award should be added to the list. Though there were exhibitions with titles like '40 Under 40', young architects...

Nature framed: a hotel in Spain absorbs and responds to its complex natural surroundings.
December 1, 2008... The programme must, at first sight, have been a daunting one: create a high quality hotel of design distinction in a location whose characteristics include extreme temperatures, constant wind, and swirling dust of the Bardenas desert. On the...

Out of the ordinary: a Bangladeshi self-help programme is reaping rewards.
December 1, 2008... Two years ago Anna Heringer won an AR Emerging Architecture Award for a hand-built school in Bangladesh. The spirit of that programme continues, and this latest example shows an extension of ambition, still working in Rudrapur. ...

In transit: this bespoke building can be dismantled and moved.
December 1, 2008... Occupied by two old houses which could have been demolished, the site for this new computer company building in Santiago, Chile, was zoned under local planning regulations for a 12-storey replacement building. There were also financial...

Mountain View: city living and car parking get an inventive twist in Copenhagen.(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... Located in Copenhagen's evolving Orestad district, this lively scheme imaginatively conflates two separate briefs for 80 flats and 480 parking spaces into a dense, urban topography. The simple expedient of placing the dwellings on top of the...

Point to point: some 305 columns create a new type of universal interior.
December 1, 2008... The Kaito Workshop by Junya Ishigami, extends the architect's curiosity in testing the limits of slenderness. In previous work he experimented with structural equilibrium with projects such as his pre-cambered steel table that reaches...

Nordic windbreak: a tourist pitstop in the Norwegian landscape is subtle, sensitive and robust.(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... Since the mid '90s, the Norwegian government has been developing a programme of National Tourist Routes, road trips of particular scenic impact that thread their way around the country's spectacular landscape. Roads have been improved and...

Bunking off: as the latest in a series of self-build projects, M.E.S.H. 7 accommodates a growing family.(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... M.E.S.H. 7 is a mobile eco second home to sleep seven. Dreamed up by Amir Sanei while waiting in a hospital corridor for the birth of his fifth child, thoughts turned quickly to the family's next self-build summer installation. With the need to...

Life cycle: three architects create unique live ride homes.
December 1, 2008... Demonstrating the common ability that Japanese architects have to create startlingly original formal and spatial responses to difficult sites, this could have been another example of a neatly planned private house. Instead, this eight-unit...

Cool Cocoon: this sleek, spiralling form gives office life a new dimension.(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... Located on a wooded site on the outskirts of Zurich, the Cocoon building defies and reconfigures the mundane conventions of the typical office building. Rather than an orthogonal block, it is a svelte ellipse, wrapped in a delicate veil of fine...

Coastal hideaway: too good to be true? Studio Mumbai's paradise found.(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... Occasionally there was a concern among the jury that they could all too easily be enticed by small buildings that were simply 'too beautiful'. Or, indeed, by seductive sites that were just too good to be true. In some ways this project ticked...

Turkish topography: an arrestingly angular addition to Antalya's seafront.(Antalya, Turkey)(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... Lying on Turkey's southern Mediterranean coast, the ancient city of Antalya has evolved into a major tourist destination, with its ever enterprising municipality constantly thinking up new ways to attract visitors. Conceived as a slightly...

Weird science: the 1000m splash: a new take on public bathing.(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... More than one member of the jury thought that this project was vile. To some the only question it posed was 'why would anyone want to sunbathe in a tangle of intestinal entrails'. Eventually, however, once the project's real meaning was more...

Budding bamboo: demonstrating bamboo's versatility.(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... The potential of bamboo as a building material is lyrically demonstrated in this project for a bar and community centre in southern Vietnam. More commonly used in vernacular structures, bamboo is an abundant local material, with impeccable...

Phototropism: TNA learning from nature, as this house yields to the light.(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... Commended last year for Ring House (AR December 2007), TNA return with Mosaic House, another noteworthy project previously featured in the AR in August 2007. As one of 30 Japanese houses entered this year. TNA's latest project was finally...

Chinese puzzle box: a house in Nanjing has a pleasing spatial intricacy.(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... Though at first glance this might appear to be yet another clinically austere Japanese house, it is in fact in China, in the eastern city of Nanjing. Architect Zhang Lei looks as though he has picked up some Tokyo moves - the formal abstraction...

Corten contortion: the humble public convenience gets a stylish reworking.(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... Premiated in 2006 for an extraordinary bridge made from steel reinforcing rods (AR December 2006), the Austin-based partnership of Miro Rivera reprises the theme of transforming a functional material into a poetic addition to the landscape....

Spot lights: a secret basement makes space for two bedrooms and a piano room.(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... Initially this house had a beguiling effect on the jury. With some of the internal photographs confusing rather than clarifying the building's unique spatial composition, this is a classic instance of where plans and sections make for essential...

Green gauge: a low energy mixed-used scheme is tackled with great verve.(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... Following on from a series of imaginative and ecologically conscious civic offices, the Irish partnership of Bucholz McEvoy has moved up a gear in scale and ambition with the completion of Elm Park, a mixed-use scheme on a site off Dublin's...

Herringbone home: cutting across the grain gives this house a distinctive quality.(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... The site strategy for this house drew more interest from jury members than its distinctive use of parquet flooring. These two moves, however, seem to be linked, as the house sits diagonally across its rectangular site. With two single-storey...

Water temple: this industrial installation has a stark, monolithic presence.(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... Venice and water enjoy a historic symbiosis, so this project for a water purification plant on Sant'Erasmo Island in the northern part of the lagoon has a special local resonance, even though the water is nowhere to be seen. The building...

Fjord ahoy: a three-layer house has stunning fjord views.(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... Designed for a young couple with two children, this house was built on a relatively cheap suburban plot that had no direct view of the nearby Trondheim Fjord. Thinking outside of the box, however (more specifically above it), the architects...

Ashes to ashes: two gateway pavilions help define Potters' Fields Park on London's thriving south bank.
December 1, 2008... Potters' Fields Park is one of only a few green spaces on London's south bank, situated opposite the Tower of London, in-between Tower Bridge and City Hall. The brief was to design a pair of gateway pavilions as entrances to the Park: Parkside,...

Market monopoly: market stalls, inspired by the board game.(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... Inspired by a Monopoly house, the Kiosk M. Poli is for temporary street markets. As with Monopoly, the notion is not just to have one isolated property, but instead to amass as many as possible, to create a more profitable townscape. The vision...

Up periscope: a simple bent tube forms an ideal lavatory cubicle.(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... The humble public convenience gets yet another makeover, this time at the hands of Chinese firm DnA for a park in Jinhua City. Intended as a showcase for the talents of local and foreign superstars, the Architecture Park was curated by artist...

Water world: Patricia Urquiola celebrates the sybaritic pleasures of the bathroom.
December 1, 2008... It's October, and in a warehouse on the outskirts of Udine, Spanish designer Patricia Urquiola is restlessly pacing around, putting the finishing touches to the room sets displaying her new range of bathroom furniture and fittings. Stylists,...

Getting Out More: Light, Air and Openness - Modern Architecture Between the Wars.(Book review)
December 1, 2008... LIGHT, AIR AND OPENNESS - MODERN ARCHITECTURE BETWEEN THE WARS By Paul Overy, London: Thames & Hudson. 2008. [pounds sterling]24.95 The Modern Movement in architecture is now so deeply buried under 70 years of interpretation and...

Chronicling the Personage: The English Parsonage in the Early Nineteenth Century.(Book review)
December 1, 2008... By Timothy Brittain-Catlin with new photography by Martin Charles. Reading: Spire Books in association with English Heritage. 2008. [pounds sterling]30 Parsonages have until now been somewhat neglected as a subject to be trawled by...

Beauty Pleasure and Contrast: Michelangelo, Drawings, and the Invention of Architecture.(Book review)
December 1, 2008... MICHELANGELO, DRAWINGS, AND THE INVENTION OF ARCHITECTURE By Cammy Brothers. New Haven & London: Yale University Press. 2008. [pounds sterling]35 With ravishing illustrations of Michelangelo's drawings, many in colour, and of his...

Mori Poll: Toshiko Mori Architect.(Book review)
December 1, 2008... TOSHIKO MORI ARCHITECT By Matilda McQuaid. The Monacelli Press. 2008. [pounds sterling]27.50 This book should not be judged by its cover. The thick grey card certainly offers a clue--yet it is one that proves to be strangely...

Stockbroker Tudor.(Cartoon)
December 1, 2008... Stockbroker Tudor, one of osbert Lancaster's scathing lampoons of architectural 'style'. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Concealed Barbs: in satirising the follies of architecture, Osbert Lancaster had no equal.
December 1, 2008... When cartoonists draw buildings that are in the news, such as the 'Gherkin' or the 'Bird's Nest', they invariably get the form and details wrong, a symptom of the general ignorance about matters architectural. I remember showing an idea for a...

Browser: Sutherland Lyall hangs up his stockings and does some Yuletide surfing.
December 1, 2008... Lost in translation I've just read Fletcher Priest's ground-breaking brochure. Beautifully illustrated by Oliver Kugler, it's a terrific short book about process. Not a catalogue of Fletcher Priest buildings. There's not one FP building in...

Delight.(zoos)(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... HONOURABLE MENTION ORANG-UTAN ENCLOSURE, PERTH, AUSTRALIA ARCHITICT IREDALE PEDERSEN HOOK ARCHITECTS Named after an Indonesian phrase meaning 'man of the forest', orang-utans are the largest of the tree-dwelling great apes and one of our...