The Architectural Review articles from January 2004

The Architectural Review archives from January 2004

Koolhaas curated.(View)
January 1, 2004... KOOLHAAS CELEBRATIONS IN BERLIN AND LONDON; SCHLAICH + BERGERMANN SHOW POWERS OF GERMAN PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERING AT DEUTSCHES ARCHITEKTUR MUSEUM IN FRANKFURT; PRIZES AWARDED FOR AR+D; AR'S EUROPEAN INTERVENTION CONFERENCE; BLOBBERY IN...

Engineering excellence.(View)
January 1, 2004... Contrary to popular architectural opinion, structural engineers are not all stuck in mud calculating how many I-beams it takes to cross a motorway. Ove Arup showed how creative and modest engineers could be, designing lightweight structures,...

All change?(View)(architectural services )
January 1, 2004... To mark their 40th anniversary, the London based architectural practice Arup Associates recently co-hosted a series of lectures in collaboration with the Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts. Entitled Future Context, the series...

Intervening in the European City.(View)(Architectural Review to hold conference)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... The AR will hold a conference on Intervening in the European City on 16 March. Almost all European architects work in or among old buildings and our conference Intervening in the European City will examine some of the most creative...

Sutherland Lyall fearlessly hacks his way through the cyber thicket.(Browser)
January 1, 2004... Sites of the south Art4D is South East Asia's answer to Blueprint. It's interesting in throwing up one of the problems faced by print magazines in this era of compulsory websites and web-only webzines. Actually Art4D is published in...

Diary.(Brief Article)(Calendar)
January 1, 2004... AR'S CHOICE OF CURRENT INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITIONS For an expanded and constantly updated list, go to our website: www.arplus.com/exhibitions FRANCE NON-STANDARD ARCHITECTURES Until 1 March Centre Pompidou, Paris The...

Ignorance is strength.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2004... SIR: This ominous, grave statement in 1984 by George Orwell whose 100th anniversary of his birth we celebrated last year--can also be applied to us involved in planning and building in our terrestrial space. We are living in times, when really...

Blob comparison.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2004... SIR: Why the revulsion and snide remarks against the Future Systems' Selfridges store in Outrage (AR October) but praise for the Kunsthaus in Graz by Peter Cook and Colin Fournier (AR December)? You say Birmingham has 'latched onto Blobismus,...

Reviewing the past.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2004... SIR: I have a collection of issues of The Architectural Review running from 1954 to 1982--not entirely complete. Architecture d'Aujourd'hui 1974 to 1979. Lastly, AD 1964 to 1979 (missing '75 and '76). Offers please. Yours etc ANDREE...

Errata.(Correction Notice)
January 1, 2004... In the View from Quito (AR November, p30), the reference to Alcjandro Nunez should have read Andres Nunez Nikitin. In the article on Valencia Market (AR September, p67) the following credit was omitted: Phase 1 refubishment and civil works...

Kizhi Island in the wilds of northern Russia houses a remarkable open-air assemblage of historic vernacular timber buildings.(View from Kizhi Island)
January 1, 2004... Majestically they rise up on the small island of Kizhi; an architectural ensemble of timber churches gracefully crowned by an array of cupolas, adorned with aspen shingles. For centuries, if not millennia, the small, outstretched Kizhi Island...

Sitting pretty: this spiky pavilion in the landscape is a highly ingenious exploration of form and materials.(Design Review)
January 1, 2004... Something rather peculiar has landed in an Essex field. Designed by Thomas Heatherwick, this space-age pin cushion is a modern interpretation of a 'sitooterie' (derived from the Scots meaning a 'small summer house'--literally a place in which...

Earthly powers: building with earth-based materials was one of the very first human pursuits, but like all materials, the architectural evolution of stone, brick and concrete continues to be shaped by changing technological, economic and social factors, which now include pressing issues of sustainability.(Comment)
January 1, 2004... Building with earth-based materials such as stone, brick and concrete dates back to the beginning of human civilization. Prehistoric tribes experimented with the first sun-dried bricks or adobe, mixing mud with straw into manageable building...

Cave of knowledge: reinterpreting Iberian archetypes, this new library in a Madrid suburb employs reinforced brick to great effect.(Iberian architecture )
January 1, 2004... Iberian architecture is, historically, distinguished by its employment of masonry to create heavy, thick-walled, largely imperforate volumes, reflecting the effects of climate and the availability of materials and building skills. An emerging...

Pushing the envelope: this new art museum in St Louis is conceived as a flexible shell for experiment that reaches out to its surroundings.
January 1, 2004... Meet me in St Louis, Louis, meet me at the Fair', sang Judy Garland, and the city is celebrating the centenary of that high point in its fortunes, even as it struggles--like so many others in the Midwest--to regenerate its battered core....

Kinetic monolith: Steven Holl's student residences at MIT are contained in a giant monolithic block that is dramatically perforated and disrupted.
January 1, 2004... An interplay of opposites has been characteristic of Steven Holl's architecture since his emergence on the New York design scene now a quarter of a century ago. Balancing or intermingling solid and void, opaque and transparent, the rational and...

Layers of meaning: this addition to a local public library in Waterford adds a distinguishably new layer to the town's urban archaeology.
January 1, 2004... Historically, the architecture of Ireland reflects its cultural evolution with successive, discontinuous layers laid over each other, giving rise to stylistic tensions and unusual patterns of development. The dominant building material is...

Archaeological find: this museum in Sarrebourg is a series of neutral, hermetic containers for a diverse range of artefacts, from Gallo-Roman relics to Chagall drawings.
January 1, 2004... Despite the richness and diversity of its historical and archaeological collections, the town of Sarrebourg, in north-east France, never had a proper means of showing them off. The surrounding region of the Sarre valley, near the German border...

Chapel of ease: this private chapel on a Portuguese country estate is an elementally powerful synthesis of stone and light.
January 1, 2004... Santo Ovidio Estate lies in the rolling countryside near Douro in northern Portugal. The estate's lands were originally quite expansive, but now only a working vineyard remains, together with assorted agricultural buildings, including the...

Ancient and modern: while the physical and spatial fluidity of concrete is no new thing, computer modelling techniques and advances in chemical science are allowing the humble concrete mould to produce exciting new forms of expression.(Process)
January 1, 2004... While the work of Zaha Hadid may rarely be associated with classical antiquity, believe it or not there is a link between Hadrian's Pantheon in Rome and Hadid's latest project currently on site in central Germany. Despite being separated by...

Gloriousmud: building with mud is one of the oldest architectural traditions and is still practised with remarkable results in parts of West Africa, though there are fears that such skills will eventually be lost for ever. Here, James Morris presents a photographic survey of some astonishing examples of religious and domestic buildings.(Place)(Cover Story)
January 1, 2004... Too often, when people in the West think of traditional African architecture, they perceive nothing more than a mud hut; a primitive vernacular half remembered from a Tarzan film. But why this ignorance of half a continent's heritage? Possibly...

Nature talking with nature.(landscape gardening)
January 1, 2004... Charles Jencks has always believed in the importance of symbolism in garden art. Here, he explains how he has used gardens to interpret humanity's place in nature and the cosmos. Many of the illustrations are from the Scottish garden created at...

Es on the Esquiline: a new hotel is intended to help revitalize one of the seedier areas of central Rome.(Interior Design)(Es Hotel)
January 1, 2004... The Es Hotel in Rome is up on the Esquiline Hill across the street from the southern flank of the magnificent Termini station--a quarter from which tourists normally wish to flee as soon as possible, even when they arrive by train. Yet with the...

Skin job: wrapped in a lightweight, chequerboard skin, this LA house maximizes a tight site.(House)
January 1, 2004... When architects house themselves, the opportunity to cut loose is constrained by the need to live in what they've created and the desire to put their talents on show. Lorcan O'Herlihy has mastered many precipitous lots in LA (AR October 1996),...

Meaning, mapping and making of landscape.(Royal Academy Forum)
January 1, 2004... Landscape has long been a source of inspiration. RA Forum invited art historian Malcolm Andrews, author of Measuring America Andro Linklater, artists Simon Callery and Hamish Fulton, film-maker Patrick Keiller and architect Farshid Moussavi to...

Stone and ceramics: Rob Gregory slides his way across the latest innovations in ceramics and stone.(Product Review)
January 1, 2004... See the new ar.products section on www.arplus.om 501 DASAG Dasag's range of natural asphalt tiles continues a 100-year tradition that has seen finely ground bituminous limestone pressed into durable and elegant tiles. With the...

John Sydney.(Specifier's Information)
January 1, 2004... Following the launch of their new JS2 design, John Sydney has announced a record 12 months for sales with over 26 per cent growth year on year. The company has underpinned its increasing sales in 2003 with significant investment in the John...

DuPont.(Specifier's Information)
January 1, 2004... In the newly renovated Kindergarten St. Hildegard in Dachau, Germany, a laminated glass balustrade has recently been installed incorporating 'Seeds of the Future', a composition in DuPont[TM] Sentry Glas[R] Expressions[TM] decorative laminated...

Avanti Systems.(Specifier's Information)(Ken Cordaroy to focus on expanding export business)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Avanti Systems, the UK's largest independent producer of office partitioning systems, has recently put into place a fresh worldwide sales strategy. A new division has been set up for the purpose of managing overseas projects headed by Ken...

Potter & Soar.(Specifier's Information)
January 1, 2004... Three contrasting woven wire mesh patterns from Potter & Soar will be used to create interesting and unusual suspended ceilings within the public areas of a new development in New York. Potter & Soar was able to offer the wide choice of mesh...

Macemain + Amstad.(Specifier's Information)
January 1, 2004... Macemain + Amstad have recently completed a walkway and waiting room as part of the new [pounds sterling]32 million Fastway project. The new interchange at Gatwick Airport's South Terminal includes a 55m walkway modified from Macemain +...

SPC.(Specifier's Information)
January 1, 2004... SPC has introduced an improved version of its Thermatile radiant ceiling panel. The Thermatile Plus is an efficient radiant heating system that can be used invisibly or as an architectural feature. Simple to install, the panels liberate...

DEVI.(Specifier's Information)
January 1, 2004... The pioneering system of electrical underfloor heating from DEVI has been installed in a 106-flat development in Birmingham, central England, deviflex DTIP-10 cables were fitted beneath the cherry veneer floor of the flats, with devimat heating...

Philips Lighting.(Specifier's Information)
January 1, 2004... Philips Lighting's LightMaster 100 control system has been installed in British Telecommunications offices near Watford. With 44 individual lighting areas, the system offers a variety of functions, including a monitoring option which allows BT...

Inspiring materiality: Materials, Form and Architecture.(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... MATERIALS, FORM AND ARCHITECTURE By Richard Weston. London: Laurence King. 2003. [pounds sterling]35 I remember a NASA scientist telling me of his surprise that architects' starting point is that of materials as they are. In his world...

Unsustainable urbanism: The Urban Design Handbook.(Reviews)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... THE URBAN DESIGN HANDBOOK By Urban Design Associates. London: W. W. Norton & Company. 2003. [pounds sterling]29.95 The US urban design practice, Urban Design Associates, was founded in 1964, when a group of young architects was funded...

Heroic and sublime; Britain's Historic Railway Buildings: an Oxford Gazetteer of Structures and Sites.(Reviews)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... BRITAIN'S HISTORIC RAILWAY BUILDINGS: AN OXFORD GAZETTEER OF STRUCTURES AND SITES By Gordon Biddle. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2003. [pounds sterling]60 Given the depressing, defeatist history of Britain's railways over the last...

How beauteous: Brave New Houses.(Reviews)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... BRAVE NEW HOUSES By Michael Webb, New York: Rizzoli, 2003. $39.95 (paperback), $55 (hardback) There was once a time in Southern California when 'Brave New Houses' would have meant residential design that was both socially and...

Mythical Murcutt; Glenn Murcutt: Buildings + Projects 1962-2003.(Reviews)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... GLENN MURCUTT: BUILDINGS + PROJECTS 1962-2003 By Francoise Fromonot. London: Thames & Hudson. 2003. [pounds sterling]39.95 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Francoise Fromonot begins her book with the staggering fact that during his 30 years...

Carlo Scarpa changed a war-ruined fifteenth-century palazzo in Palermo into a magical and surprising treasure house, in which, sadly, not all of his inventions can be enjoyed today.(Delight)
January 1, 2004... A short walk from Mura delle Cattive (literally, the wall of nasty women), which is the last remnant of the old coastal Kalsa wall in the Sicilian city of Palermo, stands the Palazzo Abatellis. During the 1940s. Allied bombing of Palermo's port...