The Architectural Review articles from February 2003

The Architectural Review archives from February 2003

Is there a future for ground zero? (View).
February 1, 2003... Following the terrorist attack of September 11 2001, resulting in the collapse of the World Trade Center's Twin Towers, architects and critics world-wide, along with the local leaseholder and planners, voiced immediate concerns about future...

Chipper in Frankfurt. (View).(Chipperfield, David)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... David Chipperfield has been chosen to extend and restore the Palmengarten Gesellschaftshaus in Frankfurt am Main after a two-stage competition. The project won because of its sensitive treatment of the historic fabric and its creation of a new...

AR's conference. (View).(Architectural Review)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... The Architectural Review will hold a conference on Greening the European City at the RIBA in London on 19 March. We face a world ecological crisis of unprecedented proportions in which cities and their buildings are eating up the planet's...

ARplus adds to mag. (View).(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... The Architectural Review's own specialized website http://www.arplus.com greatly adds to information provided in the magazine. Besides reproducing selected features from the paper product, the site has up-to-date world-wide news on...

AR+D exhibition + lectures at RIBA. (View).(Royal Institute of British Architects )(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... The winning and commended schemes of the latest ar+d awards (AR December 2002) will be on show at the RIBA in London from 24 February to 29 March. The awards, organized by The Architectural Review and the Danish design company d line with...

Browser: Sutherland Lyall nimbly swings through the forests of architectural cyberspace. (View).
February 1, 2003... Dean down, more to come This month's architect's site is that of the legendary and amiable Bernard Tschumi at /http://www.tschumi.com. Following his transformation of Columbia's graduate school of architecture 'into an international model...

Letters.
February 1, 2003... PROGENY OF CYBER ANORAKS? SIR: Your January issue contained two buildings that seem to be 'all the rage': the Yokohama Port Terminal by Foreign Office Architects, and the Imperial War Museum of the North (what a dreadful name) by Daniel...

View from Shanghai: Darryl Chen's Shanghai is more a process than a static cityscape: an explosion of object buildings is tempered by new infrastructure, parks and conservation. (View).
February 1, 2003... Shanghai presents a unique almost control-model kind of urban subject matter among world metropolises. It is a city which after experiencing incredible economic prosperity through the turn of the nineteenth century froze its free market...

Tunnel vision: a landscaped path from the city of Prague to the castle takes visitors along the verdant deer moat and through a new tunnel under the Powder Bridge. (Design Review).
February 1, 2003... The tunnel, by AP Atelier, connects the lower and upper parts of the deer moat at the foot of Prague Castle. This park is considered a national treasure and the tunnel is part of a larger plan, originally proposed by Vaclav Havel, to encourage...

Light on matter. (Comment).
February 1, 2003... Without light, the world would seem almost formless. From the first architects have reinterpreted the luminance of the heavens. Added to this awesome task is the challenge of imaginatively providing artificial illumination. Are we up to it? ...

Water and light: a new musem dedicated to the relics and techniques of ancient Japanese water engineering is a series of soaring spaces that lyrically synthesize water and light.
February 1, 2003... The Japanese are mad for museums, erecting elaborate structures to celebrate sand, sunsets, bridges (this last a playful recreation of Palladio's unrealized design for the Rialto in Venice) and just about everything else that can be put within...

Dante's drive-in: the inventive use of materials and graphics enlivens the interior of this new provincial mediatheque, creating a dramatic inner realm.(Dante Allighieri)
February 1, 2003... The library of Troyes houses one of the four most important book and print collections in France, including a book on Petrarch containing handwritten notations by Dante, and St Bernard's own bible. The town's history often ran in parallel with...

Secondary form: honed to respond to intense Catalonian light and to a rural landscape, this school fosters the development of individuals into being adult members of a community.
February 1, 2003... Schools are the places in which we grow from being protected members of families to citizens, semi-autonomous people in society. So the principal spatial problem for school designers is to generate a hierarchy of spaces that range from shelter...

Art in process: the Palais de Tokyo, a showpiece of the 1938 Paris exposition, has been re-opened after years of inactivity and decay. It is again a dynamic exhibition venue, but in a way that would never have been imagined 60 years ago.
February 1, 2003... The state-funded conversion of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris has involved, primarily, the reawakening of a building that had lain dormant to the public for thirty years. It has also been about the creation of a new context for contemporary art....

Roman revival: in Frascati, to the south of Rome, the seventeenth-century stables of a famous villa have been converted with great sensitivity into an archaeological museum.
February 1, 2003... The Villa Aldobrandini and its spectacular water gardens at Frascati were constructed in 1601-11, during the Counter Reformation, by Carlo Maderno, architect of St Peter's facade, and Giovanni Fontana. The villa, built as a summer residence for...

Light reading: a library which draws on the light of the north to create a major contribution to both civic life and scholarship.
February 1, 2003... Sweden is developing an enviable record for producing fine public libraries, just at a time when they are being shut down, or at least gravely starved of funds, in other Western countries. The one at Harnosand, on the east coast, about halfway...

The new paradigm in architecture. (Theory).
February 1, 2003... Charles Jencks suggests culture is transforming itself from the simple certainties of Modernism to a much more complex interpretation of reality based on biology, mathematics and cosmology. Architecture is responding. A change of heart, a...

Czech in: a Prague hotel testifies to the architects' pleasure in spare use of materials, and their respect for craft traditions.
February 1, 2003... Andel's is a hotel in Prague, with an interior designed with opulent severity by Jestico + Whiles. The building is part of a larger mixed development built in the city's Smichov district. Once run-down, the area is being regenerated and the...

Fifth amendment: the restaurant on the famous fifth floor of a London department store has been remodelled and shaped for the twenty-first century.(5th Floor renovation)
February 1, 2003... It is ten years since Julyan Wickham transformed the Fifth Floor of the Harvey Nichols department store in Knightsbridge (AR July 1993). His design of a cafe and indoor marketplace under a rippling polycarbonate roof elaborated, with his own...

Solid and void: a masterly exercise in interpenetration of spaces allied with a sensuous understanding of solid materiality.
February 1, 2003... The F-2 house near Mexico City, by Adria + Broid + Rojkind, is L-shaped and fitted into the right angle of a wedge-shaped site. It is shielded from neighbouring eyes by garden walls of rough basalt and concrete and looks over a lightly wooded...

Modular lighting instruments. (Product Review Lighting).
February 1, 2003... Modular has introduced a winter collection of new luminaires. Thub is a recessed or ceiling-mounted fixture housed in a curved organic shell of opal polycarbonate that sheds a diffused light, giving the impression the ceiling emits light...

Se'lux lighting. (Product Review Lighting).
February 1, 2003... Trimless is a recessed lighting module which allows the luminaire to lie completely flush with the wall or ceiling, creating a clean edge detail. The range can be recessed into roof spaces or fitted into walls. They can be equipped with low...

Resolute. (Product Review Lighting).
February 1, 2003... Designed by Douglas Varey, the Cloud 3 Pendant is part of Resolute's Clouds collection, luminaires based on flexible satin-finished aluminium hardware. The Clouds range is made of hand blown glass and comes in four shades and three colours;...

Woodhouse. (Product Review Lighting).
February 1, 2003... A slender 8m high luminaire. Light Stack, has been developed for Regents Place. London. The top section is an acrylic tube which has an internal refraction system with sealed mirrored ends. Coloured filters, fitted within the light projector,...

Martin. (Product Review Lighting).(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... The School of Lighting Design, housed in a refurbished building in a historic area of Lyons. France is the first educational institution for lighting design and lighting technique. The new school is the site of one of the first installations in...

Ansorg. (Product Review Lighting).
February 1, 2003... A new footbridge, designed by Schlaich, Bergermann & Partner, directs travellers from the railway station to the town centre of Bad Horn berg. Germany. A flight of stairs gives access to the footbridge, which is suspended by cables from a...

Spectral. (Product Review Lighting).
February 1, 2003... Three Spectral products -- Frameless, Zet and Balance -- have been awarded the iF Design Award 2003. Frameless is a family of ceiling luminaires with virtually imperceptible aluminium edge profiles -- the visible edge is reduced to one...

Lutron. (Product Review Lighting).
February 1, 2003... Grafik Integrale is a lighting control system designed for small offices, conference rooms, lecture theatres and home cinemas. It is designed to operate various lighting loads -- such as low voltage transformer, neon, cold cathode and...

Tre Ci Luce. (Product Review Lighting).
February 1, 2003... Wave is a wall or ceiling-mounted luminaire for indirect or diffused lighting. The extruded and injection-moulded aluminium body has an anodised finish and chromed details. A fully adjustable lamp diffuser allows the light pattern to be...

Trilux lenze. (Product Review Lighting).
February 1, 2003... Astron is a new series of elegant wing-like luminaires suitable for a wide range of applications. They can be wall-mounted for general lighting of foyers and corridors; they can also be suspended for task lighting in workplaces. Each luminaire...

Siteco. (Product Review Lighting).
February 1, 2003... The new SQ aluminum street light combines a robust cast aluminium enclosure with innovative lighting technology. The radially faceted optic ensures a high degree of even illumination even when poles are set relatively wide apart. It can be...

Foscarini. (Product Review Lighting).(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... Blob, by Karim Rashid. is a shining island' floor lamp of white or coloured satin polypropylene. In its smaller version (460mm long and 130mm high) the floor lamp can double as a table, wall or ceiling lamp. In the larger version (1330mm long...

Rigidal. (Specifier's Information).(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... The Convention Centre and Concourse building, Dubai is covered with a Rigidal Ziplok 400 mill-finish aluminium roof with standing seams. The sheets of aluminium, up to 85m in length, are rolled directly onto the roof to create a continuous...

HansenGlass. (Specifier's Information).(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... The A2 building on Edinburgh's latest business development, Edinburgh Park, is fitted with 2000[m.sup.2] of HansenGlass architectural, insulating and safety glazing products. Thermocool[TM] Luxguard and K products were used in facade and lift...

Mabeg. (Specifier's Information).
February 1, 2003... The design and development of waiting areas in airports is an exciting challenge for manufacturer Mabeg. Sessa Two is a range of seating with clean lines and distinctive detail, designed by Manuel Scholl, Its appeal is due to the combination of...

Alcan. (Specifier's Information).
February 1, 2003... Discovery Place, Southwood, Farnborough, designed by Rolfe Judd, is one of three three-storey buildings clad on all elevations with a total of 4500[m.sup.2] of Alcan's J57S anodising quality aluminium. J57S has a warranty of reproducible and...

Dulux Trade. (Specifier's Information).
February 1, 2003... Redecoration of 11 houses at South Petherton, Somerset, offered an unusual challenge to Dulux Trade. The timber-framed houses were on stilts and the exposed nature of the site had made them susceptible to rot and decay. Dulux Trade recommended...

Vetrotech Saint-Gobain. (Specifier's Information).
February 1, 2003... A Cardiff restaurant has been fitted with Vetrotech Saint-Gobains SGG Swissflam-N2, a multi-laminated fire resistant, fully insulated glass with 30 minutes of integrity and insulation. The restaurant, Signor Valentino, has a large glass...

Kawneer. (Specifier's Information).
February 1, 2003... Kawneer has launched 451 PT, a cost-effective thermally efficient dual colour framing system for windows at ground and first floors. The system was designed with the Consortium for Local Authority Special Projects (CLASP) specifically for...

Chilstone. (Specifier's Information).
February 1, 2003... A classical temple with Doric Columns forms the focal point at the end of a long vista at Battlestone Hill, part of the Royal Horticultural Gardens at Wisley, Surrey. The temple is one of a number of Classical designs produced by Chilstone...

Surface Architecture. (More Than Skin Deep).(Book Review)
February 1, 2003... By David Leatherbarrow and Mohsen Mostafavi. London: MIT Press, 2002. [pounds sterling]26.50 Leatherbarrow and Mostafavi's Surface Architecture takes as its premise the contemporary conflict between architectural production methods and...

Leonardo's Laptop: Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies. (Where the Wonder?).(Book Review)
February 1, 2003... By Ben Shneiderman. London: MIT Press. 2002. [pounds sterling]16.50 When I was a student in the 1950s I fixed my drawing paper to my board with drawing pins -- draughting tape had not been invented -- and I drew with either a newly...

Back From Utopia: The Challenge of the Modern Movement. (Modernismus Redivivus).(Book Review)
February 1, 2003... Edited by Hubert-Jan Henket and Hilde Heynen. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers. 2002. [euro]37.50 The editors of this large, glossy, floppy book wrote to a number of leading people in the architectural world and asked them for their thoughts on...

All American: Innovation in American Architecture. (US Arises).(Book Review)
February 1, 2003... By Brian Carter and Annette LeCuyer. London: Thames & Hudson, 2002. [pounds sterling]24.95 Flanked by two pertinent, if unduly short essays entitled 'The Critical Edge' and 'Altered States', this is a compendium of independent American...

Prefab. (When the Future?).(Book Review)
February 1, 2003... By Allison Arieff and Bryan Burkhart. Utah: Gibbs Smith. Publisher. 2002. $39.95 For decades we have been told that the future of housing lies with prefabrication. But the future never comes. However, to a certain extent, almost all...

Delight: deep inside a prehistorically ancient crater in the Arizona desert, artist James Turrell has created a complex series of chambers and tunnels to watch the sky and experience light.
February 1, 2003... For the last 30 years, American artist James Turrell has been at work in the Arizona desert, creating 'instruments for light' in the raw, scoured landscape. Millenni ago. a vent ripped open below what is now central Arizona, pushing up molten...