The Architectural Review articles from July 2004

The Architectural Review archives from July 2004

Archiprix arises.(View)(Dutch Archiprix Foundation)
July 1, 2004... Archiprix Awards are given for the world's best architectural graduation projects. Organized by the Dutch Archiprix Foundation, the international awards have grown out of a scheme initially limited to final-year students in the Netherlands....

Showing how Italy builds.(View)
July 1, 2004... The exhibition mounted by Mario Cucinella's practice, MCA, in Cremona, Italy in May was memorable and suggested new approaches to demonstrating architecture. It was held in the converted church of S Maria della Pieta, a big volume that allowed...

AR editor.
July 1, 2004... The world's most prestigious and respected international architectural magazine, first published in 1896, and now sold in 170 countries, needs a new editor. The present one is to retire. Candidates should be qualified in architecture to at...

ar+d 2004.(View)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2004... The ar+d awards for emerging architecture are intended to bring wider international recognition to a talented new generation of architects and designers under 45. Entries for this year's awards are now being called for. Inaugurated in...

Free speech in tall poppiesland.(Browser)
July 1, 2004... A couple of months ago whizzkid Melbourne architect Sean Godsell was apparently getting it from the local architectural institute for daring in the press to slag off 'Smart-arse architecture that shocks you once', referring, I gather, to some...

Manhattan mystery.(Browser)
July 1, 2004... I was going to be gentle about www.architecturemag.com until I noticed that it was not an amateur start-up but the product of the US arm of a mighty publishing empire, VNU and based in New York. Its mission is to 'deliver intelligent coverage...

Martin at the sharp end.(Browser)(Brief Article)(Column)
July 1, 2004... Architectural satirists aren't all that common which is nice for we Brits because we have them both: the national cartoonist treasure, Louis Hellman, and young (all right middle-aged) Ian Martin whose SPA site at www.spa.uk.net was originally...

What come round ...(Browser)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2004... Biennales are springing up everywhere. We had one in London last month, originally billed as the Clerkenwell Biennale. Clerkenwell, the London district on the north edge of the City and bang next door to Smithfield meat market, has become...

What John did next.(Browser)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2004... John Walker is promoter of Fourmilab, at www.fourmilab.ch. He was founder of Autodesk Inc and co-author of AutoCAD who (now presumably extremely rich) has relocated to a plateau 800m above sea level somewhere in Switzerland and runs this...

View.(Brief Article)
July 1, 2004... More significant perhaps than their influence on film scenography, the paintings of Edward Hopper (1882-1967) have much to teach about form, light, space and of our place as observers within the cities around us. Growing up at the turn of the...

No historic or social conscience?(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2004... SIR: There is no doubting the UNESCO World Heritage status of Tel Aviv as a major 'White City'--designed by Bauhaus-educated German-Jewish architects. The city was proudly declared by Benny Elon, Israel's Tourism Minister, 'one of the greatest...

Organ's elitist, narrow scope.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2004... The article on Intervening in Europe (conference review, AR April, p34) is at best pretentious and at its worst, indecipherable. For those of us in the category of 'layman', an explanation of the meaning of intervention would have been a...

Orange Slough of Despond?(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2004... SIR: Kevin Fleming (AR June 2004) protests too much [about my boredom with Orange County], though I understand that his position compels him to do so. Anyone who has had the misfortune to drive through Orange County as frequently as I have will...

Diary.(Brief Article)(Calendar)
July 1, 2004... AR'S CHOICE OF CURRENT INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITIONS AND EVENTS For an expanded and constantly updated list, go to our website: www.arplus.com/exhibitions BELGIUM ANIMALS IN ARCHITECTURE Until 17 October Musee...

View from Oporto.
July 1, 2004... Oporto is going to get its Guggenheim, in the shape of OMA's new Casa da Musica. There is an old Portuguese expression: 'Coimbra studies, Braga prays, Lisbon shows off and Oporto works'. Industrious Oporto is definitely having a...

RIBA Worldwide Awards 2004.
July 1, 2004... with over 4300 chartered members outside the UK, the Royal Institute of British Architects is a truly international body. It is fitting therefore that this year for the first time, the RIBA has added the RIBA Worldwide Awards to its annual...

Navigating a quiet revolution: Portugal's current generation of architects are inspired latter-day navigators and explorers of a shrinking world.(Comment)
July 1, 2004... Poised on the western periphery of Europe, Portugal has always been on the edge, looking outwards. Since its foundation in the twelfth century, the country's history has been marked by cycles of invasion, occupation exploration, emigration and...

Sports spectacle: carved into a mountainside, Braga's new stadium is a radical reinvention of the sports amphitheatre.
July 1, 2004... Europe's latter-day gladiators congregated in Portugal this summer to huff and puff their way through Euro 2004, the 12th quadrennial European soccer championships. Sporting spectacles have become the modern equivalent of Roman circuses in...

Sea and sky: this local maritime museum elegantly fuses the particular with the universal.
July 1, 2004... ARX Portugal is a collective of architects established in Lisbon in 1991 by brothers Jose and Nuno Mateus, both graduates of the city's Technical University. Through the experience of studying and working abroad (in Columbia and Houston, and...

Landscape of learning: this dramatic addition to a Lisbon campus makes a powerful formal statement.
July 1, 2004... Francisco and Manuel Aires Mateus are brothers who graduated in consecutive years from the architecture faculty of Lisbon's Technical University in the late 1980s. Both worked with Goncalo Byrne before establishing their own practice while...

On the waterfront: these sleekly industrial metal containers sit lightly on the Oporto quayside.
July 1, 2004... Clinging to the gorge of the River Douro, Oporto's waterfront is one of the most dramatic in Europe. The city tumbles down the steep slopes to the river's edge where it coalesces into a raffish assortment of bars, cafes and restaurants housed...

Market forces: a former market is now a picturesque urban ruin.
July 1, 2004... Working with existing buildings is an important aspect of Eduardo Souto de Moura's oeuvre, but perhaps even he could not have imagined that he would be called upon to remodel one of his own early projects--an intriguing, if slightly...

Blood vessel: tautly wrapped around its site, this blood centre makes quiet poetry of a clinical brief.
July 1, 2004... Despite its reputation, the Oporto architectural scene can be quite insulan--notably few architects from outside the region get the chance to build in the city. Here, then, is a relatively rare phenomenon--a Lisbon-based practice, ARX Portugal,...

Graphic gestures: a skin of superscale graphics animates this remodelled shopping centre.
July 1, 2004... Promontorio Arquitectos was founded in 1990 by a group of five graduates from Lisbon's Technical University. Now grown to over 40 strong, they have amassed a substantial body of work, both in Portugal and abroad, based on pragmatic yet...

Stone boxes: this new cultural centre is a collection of stone containers meshed into the heart of the old city.
July 1, 2004... Currently under construction, Aires Mateus' new cultural centre in Sines in southern Portugal represents a consolidation of ideas and ambitions tested at a smaller scale--the play of mute, austere volumes, a sensitivity to materials and the...

Buoyancy of a stone raft new architecture in the Azores: Marooned in the mid Atlantic, as shown on the seventeeth-century map above, the Azores' isolation has paradoxically enabled them to develop a distinctive architectural culture that combines a modern outlook with a strong sense of place.(Place)
July 1, 2004... 'An island if it's big enough is no better than a continent. It has to be really quite small before it feels like an island; and this story will show how tiny it has to be before you can presume to fill it with your own personality.' D. H....

Material encounters: for reasons of history and economics, there is an especially intimate relationship between materials and Portuguese architecture that still encourages notions of a regional identity.(Materials)
July 1, 2004... Portuguese architecture has been consistently characterized over the last several hundred years by the remarkably placid nature of its forms and details. A highly limited palette has been reworked many times, almost to the extent that the...

Sensing history: a historic house on the site of a convent has been sensitively transformed into a library and archive.(Interior Design)
July 1, 2004... The Casa de Cerca forms part of the historical centre of Amarante, a pretty riverside town to the east of Oporto, dominated by the monastery (and the memory) of Sao Goncalo. It occupies a site roughly corresponding to the former...

Alternative lifestyle: this remodelling of an old winery suggests some bold new ideas about the nature of space and domestic life.
July 1, 2004... As land is both plentiful and relatively cheap in Portugal, the standard model for the family house tends to be the low-density villa on a plot. While this might fulfil social aspirations, the result is often incoherent unsustainable...

Bathroom fittings.(Product Review)
July 1, 2004... Rob Gregory takes the plunge into some recent bathroom innovations. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] 501 CERAMICA FLAMINIA IO is a new bathroom concept from Ceramica Flaminia, comprising a bathtub, three basins in different sizes, wall-hung...

Avanti.(Specifier's Information)
July 1, 2004... Avanti Systems, the UK's largest independent producer of office partitioning systems, has introduced a unique system for creating free-standing rooms that can be entirely constructed of glass for a modern, practical and visually stunning...

Formica.(Specifier's Information)
July 1, 2004... Formica's product range for 2004, 'The Collection', offers a large range of high-quality, high pressure laminate and introduces exciting elements and textures. It encompasses: Metallics, using real metal foils; Veneers, using reconstituted real...

Urbis.(Specifier's Information)
July 1, 2004... Humber Dock Promenade was a dock until the 1970s. Now, pleasurecraft line the piers and it is a hot spot for nightlife. Renewing the lighting and celebrating Hull's maritime history, the city council chose Urbis' Sexton Luminaires,...

Lindapter.(Specifier's Information)
July 1, 2004... Lindapter Hollo-Bolt Cavity Fixing was used in a tower reinforcement application at Bargen, Switzerland. With telecom tower sites at a premium, landowners and operators are keen to maximize productivity of existing sites by increasing the...

Neaco.(Specifier's Information)
July 1, 2004... Neaco's Techdek decking shows its all-weather capabilities in an atrium at De Ferrers Technical College in Burton on Trent by Aedas Architects. The aluminium system has been extensively installed as wall cladding to give ventilation in summer...

Aquila.(Specifier's Information)
July 1, 2004... Aquila's Epsilon luminaires have been installed in the pedestrian areas of Sheffield's Devonshire Quarter, a vibrant mix of residential apartments, shops, restaurants, bars, leisure, commercial and educational facilities. The luminaires,...

Potter & Soar.(Specifier's Information)
July 1, 2004... Portugal's Braga stadium, by Eduardo Souto de Moura (see p42), was a Euro 2004 football venue. Potter & Soar created a wire mesh pattern for security fencing in the ground: 300[m.sup.2] of specially woven Hudson pre-crimped architectural mesh...

Grohe.(Specifier's Information)
July 1, 2004... Seven of the 10 stadiums in Portugal hosting the Euro 2004 championship relied on water technology specialist Grohe for sanitary facilities. Durability, ease of operation and energy-economy, ability to withstand stress and vandalism and...

Why is construction so backward?(Book Review)
July 1, 2004... By James Woodhuysen and Ian Abley. Chichester: John Wiley, 2004. [pounds sterling]29.99 This is a welcome and necessary book. We all agree that our industry is backward, so it is good to have the reasons spelt out. None of us escapes...

Blurred zones: investigations of the interstitial, Eisenman architects 1988-1998.(Book Review)
July 1, 2004... By Peter Eisenman. New York: The Monacelli Press. 2003. [pounds sterling]45 This lavish book with 336 pages in full colour alternates Eisenman's buildings and projects with a series of short essays by and about him, and there is a yawning...

Open to the sky.(Book Review)
July 1, 2004... By Malene Hauxner. Copenhagen: Danish Architectural Press. 2003. [euro]61 This book is interesting more for what it might tell us about ourselves than its general message. The rather earnest theme is that conventional Modernist...

Mass. identity. architecture. architecture writings of Jean Baudrillard.(Book Review)
July 1, 2004... Edited by Francesco Proto. London: Wiley-Academy, 2004. [pounds sterling]39.99 Architecture is a big disappointment to the philosopher Jean Baudrillard. It ought to be the last bastion of resistance to the banality of consumer culture--the...

Takehiko Nagakura's rendering of the interior of the unbuilt Danteum by Giuseppe Terragni and Pietro Lingeri, a still from one of Nagakura's short films about mythical structures.
July 1, 2004... Caption: [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Takehiko Nagakura's rendering of the interior of the unbuilt Danteum by Giuseppe Terragni and Pietro Lingeri, a still from one of Nagakura's short films about mythical structures. The drawing...

Gottfried Semper and the problem of historicism.(Book Review)
July 1, 2004... By Mari Hvattum. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2004, [pounds sterling]65 The German architect and theorist, Gottfried Semper (1803-79), designed a few buildings, all in a sumptuous Renaissance Revival style, including the Opera...

In a rich riot of colour and ornament, Portuguese Azulejos animate buildings and the public realm.(Delight)
July 1, 2004... Few things are as characteristic or expressive of Portuguese architecture as its painted ceramic tiles, or azulejos. The notion of covering walls, floors and even ceilings was originally introduced to the lberian peninsula by the Moors (azulejo...