The Architectural Review articles from January 2006

The Architectural Review archives from January 2006

The language of architecture.
January 1, 2006... We devote much of this issue to the architectural diagram, that sometimes mysterious representation of the designer's inner thoughts, which rarely attracts much attention unless it is the delightful back-of-the-envelope sketch so beloved of a...

Roman remains: Rome's long-awaited and vigorously debated new Ara Pacis Museum by Richard Meier is nearing completion.
January 1, 2006... After 11 years in the making, Richard Meier's Ara Pacis Museum is finally set to open in the spring of this year. The first major work of contemporary architecture in Rome's designated Historic Centre, it is a significant building that has...

Steven Holl has won an international competition to design a new Centre of the Arts in the Danish town of Herning, central Jutland.(view)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... Steven Holl has won an international competition to design a new Centre of the Arts in the Danish town of Herning, central Jutland. His winning proposal unites the town's three main cultural institutions; the Kunstmuseum (mainstream art), the...

View from Krakow.
January 1, 2006... Every hour, a trumpet call resounds around central Krakow. Just as it is about to reach its climax the music dies, commemorating a trumpeter who, in the middle of the thirteenth century, blew enough of his warning to alert the citizens of the...

Maltese myths.(meetings of Architectural services)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... A conference on architectural history entitled 'The Founding Myths of Architecture' was recently held in the splendid late sixteenth-century Auberge de Provence in Valletta, capital of Malta. The programme gave considerable scope for personal...

Pakistan earthquake.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... Last October, a 7.6 magnitude earthquake rocked the region surrounding Kashmir, in northern Pakistan. Three major cities were completely destroyed: Muzaffarabad, Mansehra, Balakot and hundreds of villages are still unreachable by rescue teams....

AR launches first US conference.
January 1, 2006... The first US conference organised by The Architectural Review will take place in Manhattan on 30 and 31 March. It is sponsored by Buro Happold and supported by EDAW. The subject will be the experience of European architects working in the US,...

Outrage.
January 1, 2006... The Routemaster is dead, and so, by definition, is the London bus. On 9 December, the very last of the red double-deckers to be designed and built in London, by and for Londoners, plied its final journey over Westminster Bridge and into...

Peter Cook: which architects are top of the pops on the lecture circuit? And what makes for a good speaker?
January 1, 2006... For a long time I have wondered why we all assume that a man or woman who has visual or formal talents can talk about this in front of an audience, somehow transmitting the connections between ideas and gambits, curious leaps of inspiration or...

Design essence: David Dunster, who co-edited this issue of the AR, introduces its theme, the diagram. In the pages that follow, architects describe the role of diagrams in their own work, and examples they admire by others.
January 1, 2006... What do we mean by a diagram? Two quotations--any building should be described by three or four lines says Stefan Behnisch; a century ago Daniel Burnham is alleged to have said that only a noble diagram can capture men's minds. (1) Such a...

Stefan Behnisch.(pictorial works)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... In general, diagrams and sketches explain and highlight a design idea quite well; if done properly, they get well to the point. Like caricatures, they will focus on the general idea. There is a verbal equivalent to this that will, if done...

Toyo Ito.
January 1, 2006... A diagram (in this case the Sendai mediatheque) is located somewhere between a concept and a plan. Or, in other words, it is a visualisation of a concept, still remaining abstract. TOYO ITO, TOYO ITO & ASSOCIATES [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ...

Peter Ahrends.
January 1, 2006... Diagrams are an essential part of our work, focusing on the enquiry, exploration and search for meanings that underlie each concept. These concepts and, eventually, the built forms are a reflection of this mode of expression: a searching...

Donald Bates.
January 1, 2006... This diagram grew out of a search for the notation of new types of spatial ordering--in opposition to systems based on the grid, the axis, or geometric symmetries. It was produced by a purely graphic process, but with the task of implying a...

Antoine Predock.(impact of drawings)
January 1, 2006... Drawings [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Drawing is both a vehicle for understanding and a gestural act itself (in this case for Austin City Hall). Recording an experience via drawing embodies much more than an analytical intention. In fact, my...

Mike Russum.(usage of diagrams)
January 1, 2006... The role of the diagram is key to the development of designs within our office. Our work is developed through key design stages by hand drawing-which we can comfortably prepare quickly to cuttingly reveal the nub of the issue. We commence a...

Peter Wilson.
January 1, 2006... A few millennia ago the Egyptian hieroglyph for house was a horizontal box, the middle third of the lower side missing and below this a vertical line-a room, a door, a planometric diagram. In 1929 Le Corbusier proposed a museum (Le Musee...

Matthias Sauerbruch.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... Diagrams serve as communication tools; we make them in order to explain our design intentions to others (and ourselves). The design process is a journey that travels through territories of intuition and rationality. Quite often the diagram...

Massimiliano Fuksas.
January 1, 2006... My real obsession is landscapes, like Ayers Rock, the red mountain in Australia, the atolls in Polynesia, enormous dunes that form and dissolve in the deserts, Icebergs. I have always been fascinated by the beauty of the absence of form, the...

Kisho Kurokawa.(works of Kisho Kurokawa)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... To witness Kurokawa at work is to behold a minor ritual. Every new project receives his personal attention, with design sessions typically lasting a couple of hours. A secretary prepares paper, pencils and pens for the architect, who sits at an...

Zoltan Pali.
January 1, 2006... Everything is a diagram [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] There are several diagrams in every building: a programmatic one, a structural one, a mechanical one, a solar one; there are sectional diagrams, elevation diagrams, circulation diagrams...

Stanley Tigerman.
January 1, 2006... The (architectural) diagram is the first graphic representation of an architect's conceptual thoughts. If the diagram doesn't become fulfilled through development, it is difficult to begin again; demonstrating the power of the diagram. The...

Vittorio Gregotti.
January 1, 2006... When I consider a project, I almost always start to design with a pencil, because I believe that thought passes through the hand onto the sheet through successive approximations. I generally start with sections, horizontal and vertical, until...

Alberto Campo Baeza.
January 1, 2006... To see a World in a grain of sand, And a Heaven in a wild flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, And Eternity in an hour. How many times have I repeated this beautiful poem by William Blake to my students, trying to inculcate them...

John Miller.(architects)
January 1, 2006... The interpretation of what is meant by 'diagram' has varied ever since the Modern Movement got on its feet. The Diagram, the title for this issue of The Architectural Review, brings to mind a series of linked functions intended to remove the...

Ken Yeang.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... A fundamental aspect of green design is to balance the inorganic human-made built environment with the organic to derive an integrated and balanced eco-system that enhances biodiversity of the locality in a seamless integration of the...

Foreign office architects.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... A diagram is a material organisation that prescribes performance. It does not necessarily contain metric or geometric information. A diagram is able to absorb and embody increasing levels of complexity and information, without necessarily...

Lawrence Nield.(usage of arts)
January 1, 2006... In my design process, the diagram comes between the concept and the development of the architectural parti. The diagram is critical, setting out the operational order of the building. It defines the spatial arrangement of activities and is...

John Ronan.
January 1, 2006... I make a distinction between generated and interpreted diagrams. Generated diagrams clarify project intentions, and are reductive, isolating essential project issues for the purpose of clarifying and communicating critical ideas in short hand....

Fumihiko Maki.
January 1, 2006... Following a two-year journey in South-East Asia and the Middle East regions in 1958-1960, I published a book entitled Investigations in Collective Form describing and illustrating three approaches to collective form--compositional form, group...

Lines of inquiry: diagrams, in whatever visual form they take, represent a threshold moment in the creation of successful architecture, argues Alan Phillips.
January 1, 2006... 'First I think, then I draw my think.' Amanda K. Coomaraswamy (1877-1947) It is very difficult to think of complex things being expressed in simple terms without the use of diagrams. As an example we could take the nineteenth-century...

Bernard Tschumi.(services of architectural services)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... When confronted with an urbanistic program, an architect may either (a) design a masterly construction, an inspired architectural gesture (a composition); (b) take what exists, fill in the gaps, complete the text, scribble in the margins (a...

Specifier's information.(Merati)
January 1, 2006... Blanc de Bierges Blanc de Bierges handcrafted paving materials have stood up to the wear and tear of Sheffield's theatre and snooker crowds for 15 years without any need for repair. Now the products are to be used for a new phase of work....

Rob Gregory dons his clad rags and hits the town.
January 1, 2006... 501 HAVER & BOECKER This so-called ballgown facade in The Hague features 12 square metres of wire cloth from Haver Architectural Wire Cloth. Woven and tailored from stainless-steel wire cloth, the ballgown is part of the integrated...

Enduring status.
January 1, 2006... ALVAR AALTO By Nicholas Ray. London: Yale University Press. 2005. [pounds sterling]19.95 Over 50 years or so, Alvar Aalto realised around 200 buildings, some now recognised to be among the greatest of the twentieth century. Combined...

Disappearing act.(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... DISAPPEARING ARCHITECTURE: FROM REAL TO VIRTUAL TO QUANTUM Edited by Georg Flachbart, Peter Weibel. Basel: Birkhauser. 2005. [euro]39.90 After the heady days of the 1990s, it is now well established that the most fertile field for...

Bauhaus origins.(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... BEFORE THE BAUHAUS By John V. Maciuika. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2005. [pounds sterling]55 The very title of this book is an act of protest, underlining its claim that the Bauhaus did not spring independently into...

Material world.(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... MATERIAL CONNEXION. THE GLOBAL RESOURCE OF NEW AND INNOVATIVE MATERIALS FOR ARCHITECTS, ARTISTS AND DESIGNERS By George M. Beylerian and Andrew Dent. London: Thames & Hudson. 2005. [pounds sterling]36 Do you know that sweetcorn is...

The lure of Egypt.(Book Review)
January 1, 2006... THE EGYPTIAN REVIVAL: ANCIENT EGYPT AS THE INSPIRATION FOR DESIGN MOTIFS IN THE WEST By James Stevens Curl. Abingdon: Routledge. 2005. [pounds sterling]80 (paperback [pounds sterling]27.50) This is the second time that Curl's book on...

The Rose Window--Splendour and Symbol.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... North rose window of fourteenth-century Lyons Cathedral, its exquisite stained glass glorifying the Church Triumphant, from The Rose Window--Splendour and Symbol by Painton Cowen, London, Thames & Hudson, 2005, [pounds sterling]39.95. Both...

China.(works of Edward Burtynsky)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... The changing face of Shanghai, from China, Edward Burtynsky, Gottingen, Steidl, 2005, [pounds sterling]45. Burtynsky's tableaux of industrialisation in factories, shipyards and cities, have an Andreas Gursky-like quality, except this is the...

Majestic Jestico.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... Despite a barrage of gruesomely self-congratulatory PR (from the designers), I took a look at the new site of London architects Jestico + Whiles at www.jesticowhiles.co.uk. I have to declare an interest in that a year or so ago I did a...

Hedgehog and DeLorean.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... Blog by blog I'm getting drawn into the phenomenon. There is B******s to Architecture at http://b2architecture.blogspot.com/ which, unlike Death by Architecture (www.deathbyarch.com) is not a commercial site but a lone, anonymous, probably...

All of a dither.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... Union North's website at www.unionnorth.co.uk is exactly the kind of site likely to put off prospective clients. Not being a client I think I loved it. It starts off with a black screen, the practice name and an invitation to enter. You click...

Diary.
January 1, 2006... AR'S CHOICE OF INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITIONS AND EVENTS AUSTRIA ALEXANDR RODCHENKO: SPATIAL CONSTRUCTIONS MAK, Vienna Until 26 February Alexandr Rodchenko's geometrical works are well known, yet the originals no longer exist...

Delight.(Architectural services)
January 1, 2006... The first 'bubble diagram' of London appeared, astonishingly enough, in 1943 in the middle of the Second World War. Produced and drawn by Arthur Ling and D.K. Johnson, it was one of a comprehensive set of maps, diagrams and graphs which formed...