The Architectural Review articles from July 2005

The Architectural Review archives from July 2005

Sustainability is a judgement of history.(view)
July 1, 2005... Over-use of words like 'sustainability' reduces them to the lowest level of meaning, that is to say the level where politicians and marketing directors feel comfortable using them, safe in the knowledge that they can mean almost anything. The...

H & DM's de Young maturity.(view)(Herzog and de Meuron Architects)
July 1, 2005... While modest in its architectural expression, the completion of Tate Modern was a significant moment in the evolution of the now globally recognised design lab, Herzog and de Meuron. Bringing the Swiss architects to a British audience for the...

From deep green to deep plan.(view)
July 1, 2005... Theories naturally attract conflict and contradiction. Questioning promotes progress. As quickly as ideas are formalised as 'best practice', they are, and should increasingly be, challenged or even disproved by new criteria. Sustainability and...

Coded for design.(view)
July 1, 2005... Bamboo is nothing if not flexible. In last month's AR it featured as cladding on a car park at Leipzig Zoo. Here, it is used structurally for a covered walkway and stage being built for St George's Orphanage in Chennai, India. A 3m wide, 30m...

The AR Awards 2005.(view)
July 1, 2005... The AR Awards for Emerging Architecture are entering their seventh cycle. Inaugurated in 1999, the awards are intended to bring wider international recognition to a talented generation of architects and designers under 45. Supported by Buro...

Giancarlo de Carlo 1919-2005.(obituary)(Obituary)
July 1, 2005... Giancarlo de Carlo died on 4 June aged 86. He was the last surviving member of Team X, the group of young architects set up to organise the tenth CIAM conference in 1956, and re-inject social idealism and planetary consciousness into a Modern...

Seven of the best.(view)
July 1, 2005... The Royal Institute of British Architects' International Awards are given to buildings outside the United Kingdom designed by institute members or honorary members. Sponsored by Monodraught, the specialist manufacturer of low-energy ventilation...

Elevation five and the future of green: while eco-sceptics continue to question established environmental strategies, Peter Clegg raises a quieter battle cry, calling for a less expressive architectural iconography and highlighting some third-generation environmental concerns.(comment)
July 1, 2005... David King, the UK government's chief scientific advisor, suggests that climate change is a more significant threat than terrorism. If so, then architects need to move to the front line and adopt a carefully considered battle strategy. Their...

Pure and simple: Sauerbruch Hutton's headquarters building, for Germany's Federal Environment Agency, is a model of integration.(Cover Story)
July 1, 2005... What thoughts must have crossed the minds of Sauerbruch Hutton when they won the competition in 1998 to design a new headquarters from Germany's Federal Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt/UBA)--in Dessau? How much would the Bauhaus (a short...

Urban poetry: new offices for Caltrans in LA explore notions of economical energy use and urban monumentality.(Los Angeles)(Department of Transportation)
July 1, 2005... Los Angeles sprawls across a desert and its survival depends on water and transport. The city's Department of Water and Power commissioned a landmark headquarters building from A. C. Martin 40 years ago; now the California Department of...

Good call: integrating architecture and environmental control, this new call centre civilises a mundane building type.(call center of SAP AG)
July 1, 2005... Call centres are a scourge of modern commercial life, a twenty-first-century version of the mill or factory to be built as cheaply and expediently as possible. So this new call centre in Galway by Dublin-based Bucholz McEvoy is that rare thing;...

Beyond petroleum? This new headquarters for BP in Cape Town explores an agenda of environmental and social responsibility.(British Petroleum Company PLC)
July 1, 2005... The validity of sustainability in the construction industry is often regarded with suspicion as mere lip-service to the greater green debate. When it is propagated by a petroleum company, suspicion turns to incredulity. So the new head office...

Science lesson: veiled in a polycarbonate skin, this science library exploits site, light and materials in the quiet pursuit of passive environmental control.(University of Orleans)
July 1, 2005... The young French partnership of Florence Lipsky and Pascal Rollet has a reputation for formally sparse but technically and materially inventive buildings that make the most of limited programmes and budgets. Though the pair favour the aesthetic...

Stack effect: Ken Yeang's ongoing quest for ecological propriety gathers momentum in Singapore.(National Library )
July 1, 2005... Every project by Ken Yeang, whether built or not, is part of his singular pursuit of a totally ecological architecture integrated with environment and climate, which reduces consumption of non-renewables and is energy efficient with reduced...

Paradise found: this tourist resort in Mozambique aims to minimise its impact on the local ecology.(traveler's guide)
July 1, 2005... Tourism is now the world's biggest industry and one of the most rapacious in terms of development, particularly along coastlines. For many of the world's poorer coastal areas, tourism represents a crucial impulse for economic development, but...

Green screen: these new offices in Chile incorporate parrones or planted pergolas as a simple means of environmental control.
July 1, 2005... Chile's extreme geography encompasses an enormous diversity of climates, from the arid deserts of the north to the cold, wet south. Most of the population lives in a Mediterranean central belt and the vernacular architecture of this region...

Field of memory: the new memorial to European Jews who perished under the Nazis is an unnerving presence in the heart of Berlin.(Field of Stelae)
July 1, 2005... 'I had an idea about silence--I wanted the monument to speak without speaking.' Peter Eisenman's comment on his monument to the European Jews murdered by the Nazis was an unusually modest and reticent reflection on what he called 'a humbling...

Solar umbrella: Lawrence Scarpa's own family house in Venice Beach is an imaginative and ecologically aware response to the balmy Californian climate.(ar house)
July 1, 2005... Frugality and sustainability are the hallmarks of Pugh + Scarpa's practice, and Lawrence Scarpa's family house is an imaginative manifestation of those principles. Despite its imposing facade, it is an addition: a spacious living area grafted...

Rob Gregory scratches the surface of interiors.(product review)(Buyers Guide)
July 1, 2005... 500 KVADRAT Dutch textile designer Jeroen Vinken has created a collection of woven curtains. In subdued colours they comprise practically endless pattern repeats. Jeroen's goal is to develop new images, new visual representations and...

Specifier's information.(services of O'Donnell Design)(product introduction of Nova Metals)(Gagecast[R])(Association of Interior Specialists)(Site Guide for Raised Access Flooring)
July 1, 2005... O'Donnell O'Donnell Design has completed the installation of contemporary oak finish bedroom casegoods at the brand new 193-room Clarion Hotel, Cork Designed by architects Scott Tallon Walker, The Clarion is a modern, glass-fronted...

Global wake-up call.(Massive Change: The Future of Global Design )(Book Review)
July 1, 2005... MASSIVE CHANGE, THE FUTURE OF GLOBAL DESIGN Bruce Mau and the Institute without Boundaries. London: Phaidon Press. 2004. [pounds sterling]19.95 Most architects will know designer Bruce Mau from his work on S, M, L, XL. In fact, Massive...

Greening the planet.(Cities People Planet)(Book Review)
July 1, 2005... CITIES PEOPLE PLANET By Herbert Girardet. Chichester: John Wiley. 2005. [pounds sterling]19.99 In the context of the global urban population explosion Herbert Girardet asks how a sustainable relationship can be established between...

Sacred space.(Architectural Guide to Christian Sacred Buildings: In Europe Since 1950)(Book Review)
July 1, 2005... ARCHITECTURAL GUIDE TO CHRISTIAN SACRED BUILDINGS IN EUROPE SINCE 1950 By Wolfgang Jean Stock. Prestel, 2005. [pounds sterling]22.99 The impact of post-Renaissance secularisation of the Western world has generally been benign. But, in...

Skin deep.(Modern Construction Facades)(Book Review)
July 1, 2005... MODERN CONSTRUCTION FACADES By Andrew Watts. Vienna: Springer, 2005. [euro]69 How do you publish construction details that appeal to critical practitioners, inexperienced students, a wide range of anoraks as well as designers who are...

Filling the void.(Book Review)
July 1, 2005... THE CHARGED VOID: URBANISM By Peter and Alison Smithson. New York: The Monacelli Press. 2005. [pounds sterling]45 An ample self-confidence comes through powerfully in Peter and Alison Smithson's The Charged Void: Urbanism, the...

David Adjaye: Houses.(musical groups)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2005... Dirty House, Shoreditch, built for artists Sue Webster and Tim Noble, one of the disconcerting dwellings from David Adjaye: Houses, edited by Peter Allison: London, Thames & Hudson, 2005, [pounds sterling]29.95. Characterised by formal and...

Dictyocerus Virchowii and Dictyopodium trilobum.(Brief Article)
July 1, 2005... So now we know where Future Systems get their inspiration. These two exquisitely rendered radiolarians (Dictyocerus Virchowii and Dictyopodium trilobum) are taken from Art Forms from the Ocean, Ernst Haeckel: Munich, Prestel, 2005, [pounds...

Otto at 80.(Frei Otto)
July 1, 2005... 'I have built little. But I have built many castles in the air.' Today Frei Otto's vision is as much alive as it was fifty years ago when he began to realise his first tent constructions. Born in 1925 the son of a German stone mason, Otto's...

Water world.
July 1, 2005... Next to Aaron Betsky's house on a polder 18 feet below sea level is a small grey box with a red light. It contains an emergency switch for the pumps that keep the surrounding grid of picturesque ponds and canals at bay. If the red light comes...

Famous in France.(Brief Article)
July 1, 2005... Famous in France (second only to Corb), Robert Mallet-Stevens was one of the most influential figures of the inter-war era, designing a series of imposing villas for rich clients, together with shops, casinos, hotels, furniture, film sets and...

Architectural gravitas.(browser)(www.foga.com)(www.richardrogers.co.uk)(Brief Article)(Column)
July 1, 2005... The big beasts have irrevocably shouldered the burden of architectural eminence. But their attitude to sites seems to veer between the non-existent (probably Glenn Murcutt), through the laconic (Gehry Partners at www.foga.com has the function...

Yadda yadda yadda.(architectural chat room)(www.pushpullbar.com)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2005... There it was in the PushPullBar Forum Statistics: 'welcome to our newest member SutherlandLyll'. Pink with embarrassment at this public exposure of seriously inept typing I attempted to change the entry. It turns out you can change anything...

A solemn trust.(browser)(www.intbau.org)(www.preservenet.com)(Brief Article)(Column)
July 1, 2005... It's not that Browser is institutionally opposed to reactionary sites, well it is a bit, it is just that having whinged for all those years about people who hated modern architecture you discover the boot is on the other foot and it's dear old...

Veni, Vidi, got in a muddle.(browser)(www.classicist.org)
July 1, 2005... Incidentally, the ICA & CA, which I mentioned in the May issue as being based at the Catholic University of Notre Dame, is actually based in New York and the hundred thousand bucks given to Quinlan Terry had nothing to do with the ICA & CA but...

Structural challenge.(browser)(www.structurae.de)(www.archinform.net)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2005... Back in 2000 we took a look at Structurae at www.structurae.de. This is Nicholas Janberg's English, German, French database and gallery of international structures. Back then we thought the coverage was a bit mixed with some glaring omissions...

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.(browser)(gridswarm)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2005... I'm not entirely sure that gridswarms are something which family architects should be looking at. But they simply have to have some architectural relevance. Strictly speaking a gridswarm is 'a large group of small unmanned autonomous aerial...

Diary.(Brief Article)(Calendar)
July 1, 2005... AR'S CHOICE OF INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITIONS AND EVENTS DENMARK JEAN NOUVEL Until 18 September Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek Former enfant terrible of France's nouvelle vague gets his own grown-up show, tracing a...

Delight.(Dale Chihuly's Gardens of Glass)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2005... THE LANDSCAPE AND GLASSHOUSES OF KEW GARDENS ARE TRANSFORMED BY DALE CHIHULY'S SITE-SPECIFIC SCULPTURES. For the next few months, the exotic flora in Kew Gardens, west London, has some very stiff competition in the form of American artist...