The Architectural Review articles from February 2008

The Architectural Review archives from February 2008

Environmentalism is collective.(view)
February 1, 2008... Since the 1960s, concerns about the environment have become increasingly significant politically, in relation to the natural world, buildings and cities. The concerns themselves have modified over time: we did not know 40 years ago about the...

Academy of life: with over 1.7 million native plants on its roof, the Academy of Sciences comes to life.(view)
February 1, 2008... Construction work is complete on Renzo Piano's California Academy of Sciences. As featured in the AR preview issue (AR April 2005), the scheme was necessary as key parts of the existing complex had been closed following the Loma Prieta...

The long road to freedom: an international competition signals hope for Gdansk's flawed shipyard masterplan.(view)
February 1, 2008... Solidarity has a powerful resonance. Harmony, unity, likemindedness, accord, however you define it, it expresses the determination of any fight against adversity. In Gdansk, resonance is palpable, expressed by the robust Three Crosses Monument...

Emerald green.(view)
February 1, 2008... Irish partnership Bucholz McEvoy have form when it comes to designing elegant, ecologically aware buildings. Their Limerick County offices for instance (AR May 2004) and call centre in Galway (AR July 2005) were both examples of thoughtful...

Erratum.(Correction notice)
February 1, 2008... Photographs of Ecoboulevard, Madrid (AR December, pp36-39, except picture 4) were by Roland Halbe, not Emilio P. Doiztua as stated.

Peter Cook: springtime in Paris and the burgeoning shoots of the Ecole Speciale d'Architecture.(view)
February 1, 2008... You cannot fail to succumb to its delightful setting--the long wall onto the Boulevard Raspail, Nouvel's Fondation Cartier opposite, and a brave piece of slotted-angle and exposed-pipe architecture from the '60s that contains studios alongside....

Making sense of the new green agenda.(comment)
February 1, 2008... It is clear that we are reacting too slowly to the world around us and critically endemic problems are not being addressed. These are important times, in which our choices will crucially influence how we evolve. Will our societies be fractured...

Cubist casbah: social housing on the edge of Madrid is transformed into a modern eco casbah.
February 1, 2008... The competition-winning social housing project that Morphosis completed in December of last year offers a dramatic contrast to the bland brick towers of middle-class apartments that surround it. A gleaming white complex of cubist blocks, patios...

Art in the park: a new urban park provides a green lung for Seattle and reconnects city and waterfront.(City overview)
February 1, 2008... Though the city of Seattle has a spectacular location overlooking Elliott Bay and Puget Sound, its waterfront is defined by a jumble of leftover spaces, elevated highways, rail lines and the continual presence of heavy traffic. However, recent...

Craft skills: a new art museum for Grand Rapids soberly extols environmental concerns.(City overview)
February 1, 2008... The area around Grand Rapids, Michigan, was settled by Dutch Calvinists and the tradition of frugality and craft is still alive in this centre of American furniture production. Steelcase, which collaborated with Frank Lloyd Wright, is based...

Room of silence: Peter Hubner's latest building demonstrates how the process of participation can generate an architecture enriched by both the human condition and a clear sense of ecological responsiveness.(process)
February 1, 2008... The AR has followed Peter Hubner's work for over 20 years, and it has been distinctive in three ways: an increasingly green agenda related to materials and climatic control, a technical inventiveness of a rather improvisatory kind, and a...

Ford focused: reworking Albert Kahn's assembly building, Mountain Hardwear, SunPower and Vetrazzo take over where Ford left off.(process)
February 1, 2008... At over 400m long, Albert Kahn's Ford Assembly Building in Richmond, California broke new ground when it was built in 1931. Situated on the northern shore of San Francisco Bay, it commands dramatic views of the city's distinctive skyline....

L'homme vert: though environmental awareness is a recent phenomenon, it has deeper and perhaps surprising roots in the Modern Movement, especially in the work of Le Corbusier.(history)
February 1, 2008... The agenda of the Modern Movement is commonly seen as intrinsically unsustainable--it promoted mass production and consumption, the motor car, rapid obsolescence, and the use of high-energy-content materials such as glass, steel and concrete....

Dubai rethink: Nikken Sekkei is working on energy-efficient ideas at the scale of the city and (overleaf) the individual building.(urbanism)(City overview)
February 1, 2008... Given climate change, intensive urbanisation and oil price inflation, it is not surprising that the attention of architects and masterplanners continues to turn to environmentally friendly cities. The latest multi-disciplinary proposition comes...

Globalisation and architecture: the challenges of globalisation are relentlessly shaping architecture's relationship with society and culture.(theory)
February 1, 2008... Architecture has only a small part to play in the affairs of man. It does, nonetheless, bring together much that is important for society at large: shelter, social function, technology, art, economics, politics, science and more. Consequently,...

Purple rain: Block Architecture allow the rain to hold things up in the V & A.(interior design)
February 1, 2008... Infrequent visitors are excused for having dusty memories of the Victoria and Albert Museum, with its imposing spaces and artefacts exhibited in typical salon style. As the legacy of the Great Exhibition, the V & A describes itself as the...

Home education: as the focus of Jon Broome's recent self-build book, his own home has much to teach.(ar house)
February 1, 2008... There is something reassuringly down to earth about the manner and approach of south London architect Jon Broome. While diehard environmentalists should be avoided at drinks parties, for fear of having your spirits dampened under gloomy...

Specifier's information.
February 1, 2008... Bisley Bisley, the UK's largest manufacturer of steel based office storage, is the first to be using the British Contract Furnishing & Design Association (BCFA) Carbon Footprint Calculator to calculate the carbon footprint of its range of...

The joy of hexagons.(Book review)
February 1, 2008... HONEYCOMB TUBE ARCHITECTURE By HTA Association. Tokyo: Shinkenchiku-sha. 2007. $58 This book is close-packed, full of ideas, approaches, ambitions, all of which are loosely organised around the use of hexagonal frame structural...

Green gauge.(Book review)
February 1, 2008... THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMAGINATION: TECHNICS AND POETICS OF THE ARCHITECTURAL ENVIRONMENTAL ENVIRONMENT By Dean Hawkes. London: Routledge. 2008. [pounds sterling]28 For those of us who allow the environmental flow of heat, light and air in...

Technical nous.(Book review)
February 1, 2008... JEAN RONDELET: THE ARCHITECT AS TECHNICIAN By Robin Middleton and Marie-Noelle Baudouin-Matuszek. London: Yale University Press. 2007. [pounds sterling]50 It used to be puzzling when student essays referred to the windows of the...

Thinkers for architects.(Book review)
February 1, 2008... DELEUZE & GUATTARI FOR ARCHITECTS By Andrew Ballantyne HEIDEGGER FOR ARCHITECTS By Adam Sharr IRIGAY FOR ARCHITECTS By Peg Rawes. Thinkers for Architects series editor: Adam Sharr Abingdon: Routledge. 2007. [pounds...

Richard England Architect as Artist.(Brief article)(Book review)
February 1, 2008... Before the magic of CAD, people used to have to actually draw things by hand, and the architect's sketchbook was one way of keeping your craft skills honed. The vigour of such quick, hand to eye recording is captured in Richard England...

We'll always have Paris: 30 years on, Richard Rogers comes home to the Pompidou Centre.(reviews)
February 1, 2008... Paris currently belongs to Richard Rogers--or, mindful of the succession plan, Rogers Stirk Harbour as we must now learn to call them. Yet within this newly constituted supergroup, there can be no doubt as to the identity of the lead singer....

Preservation order.(browser)
February 1, 2008... I forgot to do the annual Browser Awards last month. All right I didn't know we did them either. But I must pay my annual homage to Eric Morehouse and his unfailingly intriguing, weekly architectural website feeds which he calls Webcandy. You...

Frozen music.(browser)
February 1, 2008... Given the way architects trot out that old Friedrich von Schelling saw about architecture being frozen music, you'd think you'd hear a lot more sound on websites. But no, that old Calvinistwhite-walls-less-is-more-fit-for-purpose conditioning...

Twice or half?(browser)(Brief article)
February 1, 2008... Harvard Design Magazine at www.gsd.harvard.edu/research/publications/hdm, is a bi-annual publication whose subscription costs locals about 16 quid and us over here maybe [pounds sterling]30. I think bi-annual means twice a year. If it means...

Writing on the wall.(browser)
February 1, 2008... And finally a Webcandy site from Eric Morehouse. It's that of Minneapolis-based artist Christopher Paul Baker's Urban Screens, shown at last year's AIGA design conference in Denver http://tinyurl.com/2nfhos. What he did was nighttime computer...

Diary.(Diary entry)
February 1, 2008... AR'S CHOICE OF INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITIONS FROM WWW.ARPLUS.COM GERMANY HANS ARP--FRITZ WINTER. DIALOGUE WITHOUT MEETING Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich 14.2.08-12.5.08 The exhibition sets out to examine the impact of Arp by...

Delight.(architecture of Automobiles Citroen S.A.)(Brief article)
February 1, 2008... The new Paris showcase building for Citroen, at 42 Champs Elysees, is as unexpected as it is refreshing. This replacement for Andre Citroen's original 1920s building is designed by Manuelle Gautrand, a rising star in the Paris architectural...