The Architectural Review articles from June 2004

The Architectural Review archives from June 2004

Art is dead--long live art: within a structure that continues to challenge the conception of built form, two concurrent exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou challenge our perception of art.(View)
June 1, 2004... JOAN MIRO (1917-1934) Shifting between recognizable subtleties of Abstraction and Surrealism, the period of Joan Miro's work between 1917 and 1934 was a frantic phase of development in which he pursued his mission to put to death the...

Olympian feat: at long last, Santiago Calatrava's huge roof elements for the Olympic stadium in Athens are being slid into place. They are but part of a huge complex.(View)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... The roof elements of the Olympic stadium are being slid into place in a last minute burst of organizational energy as this issue goes to press. Designed as a prefabricated structure. Santiago Calatrava's oval roof is made of steel and Plexiglas...

Home front, and home back: Michael Landy's installation brings pebble dash suburbia to Tate Britain.(View)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... The Turbine Hall at Tate Modern (pp82-87) is not the only place in London to see dramatic scale-shifting installations. It seems to have an element of healthy sibling rivalry with its elder sister--Tate Britain's Duveen Gallery. Both contend in...

ar+d 2004.(View)(Brief Article)
June 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...

Begging for revolution: will Moscow break free from the imposed taste of Mayor Yuri Luzhkov?(View)
June 1, 2004... After more than ten years of rapid growth in the construction service market, Moscow is ready to welcome contemporary architecture. Local professionals have already produced several good quality buildings, but more than 90 per cent of contracts...

Sutherland Lyall casts his net over the cyber sea to fish out nutritious delights.(Browser)
June 1, 2004... You couldn't make it up. Is this a solipsism or what? It's a story about architecture on Radio 3 which appears on the site Architecture Radio. For the record, it was the BBC's Radio 3; it was more a note than a story and you can read it at...

Gift of too much gab.(Browser)
June 1, 2004... The Reflecting City is a really sweet name for a site. This one is, unsurprisingly, at www.reflect-ingcity.com and it's about Dublin. The reflecting bit comes from an image of the dark waters of the river Liffey that swirls its way through this...

Prophets in their own country.(Browser)
June 1, 2004... Before returning to Albion I took a look around and was delighted to see that nice site archeire [architecture Eire geddit] at www.archeire.com claiming back Peter Rice, an Irishman hitherto too frequently described as a UK citizen. Funny that,...

Virtual unreality.(Browser)
June 1, 2004... I couldn't understand why the photos were so bad on Columbia University's Amiens Cathedral website at www.learn.columbia.edu/Mcahweb/Amiens.html. The answer, I think, is a mistaken pursuit of a kind of purity in the sense that the photos were...

The majesty of it all.(Browser)
June 1, 2004... I checked to see why the sound wasn't on when the big red SOM loomed majestically out of the black vdu screen. Where were the trumpets, the choirs? This is the site of the practice which after the Second World War defined Modernism as the...

Vibrant Orange.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2004... SIR: In response to 'The Art of the Possible' by Michael Webb (AR April 2004), I agree on the importance, and somewhat paradoxical development, of the Crystal Cathedral Campus in Garden Grove, California. However, to blanket the description of...

Energy in the USA.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2004... SIR: Thanks for publishing the Genzyme Center in Cambridge by Behnisch (AR April 2004). At last a really intelligent and provocative building in the USA, one that reflects (and reflects on) the issues of our times rather than the superficial...

Townscape tradition.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2004... SIR: Thank you for publishing Jim Antoniou's last article (AR May). His quiet, yet entirely consistent and human attitude to urban planning was an inspiration to many of us. In a way, it continued the great Architectural Review tradition of...

Liturgical error?(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2004... SIR: Richard Meier has provided a wonderful shell for the Rome church (AR April 2004). Alas for the interior. Presumably the layout reflects his brief, one curiously at odds with the idea of fostering the 'active and full participation in...

AR inconsistent.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2004... SIR: I really can't understand AR. You personally have spent years denouncing Rem Koolhaas as a betrayer of the Modern Movement and superficial stylist who eroded the very nature of architecture. Now he's on the May cover. Can this be...

Addendum.(Correction Notice)
June 1, 2004... Any readers with information on the Moka-Ris coffee bar (AR March, p34) should email Matthew.Partington@uwe.ac.uk

Diary.(Brief Article)(Calendar)
June 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 ABALOS + HERREROS Until 20 June deSingel, Antwerp ...

Stockholm's island city is the work of many hands over time and continues to evolve, with some adventurous new proposals.(View from Stockholm)
June 1, 2004... Looking down as my flight from Copenhagen neared Stockholm, the coastline seemed to dissolve into the Baltic like a melting ice pack, forming an archipelago as seemingly insubstantial as flecks of foam on the water. The Swedish capital was...

Field of dreams: this inventively conceived baseball field creates a new social focus in a rural hamlet.(Design Review)
June 1, 2004... Despite Sambo Mockbee's death at the end of 2001, the Rural Studio that he established at Auburn University's College of Architecture, Design and Construction continues to thrive under the direction of Andrew Freear. Its premise will be...

Arts' powers: buildings for the arts have hit the headlines in recent years. True artistic integrity is stultified by the deathly embrace of marketing. Imagination and inspiration are needed.(Commont)
June 1, 2004... Once upon a time, culture was unified. None of the participants in the great annual Panathenaic procession, who followed the way up the Acropolis through the Propylaea, past the temple of Nike Apteros to wind their way round the Parthenon, had...

Tuned instrument: Piano's arts museum in Dallas rivals Kahn's in neighbouring Fort Worth in lucidity and the subtle use of limpid light.
June 1, 2004... Combining a gallery and walled garden, both displaying works in its collection, the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas joins Tadao Ando's recent Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (AR August 2003) in further consolidating the neighbouring cities as...

Crystal case: the Rhineland Regional Museum in Bonn is a model of its kind in both urban and cultural terms.
June 1, 2004... The Rhineland Regional Museum started as long ago as the 1820s, and has accumulated a distinguished collection ranging from the 40000 year old skeleton of Neanderthal man to contemporary artworks. The original purpose-made museum building was...

Theatre comes home: a fine '20s steel building retains its original spirit, while generating a new and urbane theatre complex.
June 1, 2004... The company Theaterhaus Stuttgart, now in existence for 18 years, is one of the best known alternative theatre operations in Germany. For more than ten years, they held their avant-garde productions in a former factory in the suburb of Wangen,...

Quantum leap: David Chipperfield's studio for sculptor Antony Gormley.
June 1, 2004... It didn't take Gormley and Chipperfield long to establish that a modified industrial shed would be a woefully inadequate solution for the 1994 Turner Prize-winning sculptor's new studio. Having outgrown his gritty Peckham studio--a former...

Music box: this centre for young Spanish musicians is a hermetic stone cube with a luminous heart.
June 1, 2004... Founded in 1495 as a 'Grammatic Academy', the University of Santiago de Compostela is one of the oldest in Europe, playing an important part in the cultural life of Galicia and Spain. Like all modern academic institutions it continues to...

Boxing clever: Gigon/Guyer add to their extensive arts building collection with this charming store.
June 1, 2004... Despite their seductive simplicity, Gigon/Guyer's arts buildings are highly considered, inventive solutions. Demonstrating a commitment to thinking outside the pure Swiss box, their formal and tectonic qualities are a delight to behold, bearing...

High art attraction: at the top of a skyscraper, this new art museum rises above the blare and distraction of Tokyo.
June 1, 2004... The upper floors of a ritzy skyscraper may seem an unlikely home for a museum of contemporary art, but in the metropolitan context of Tokyo almost anything is possible. The Mori Art Museum occupies the top of a 53-storey tower designed by...

Flamenco flair: Herzog de Meuron reinterpret the southern Spanish tradition of flamenco in a new contribution to Jerez.
June 1, 2004... Flamenco occupies a cherished place in Andalucian culture, and the city of Jerez de la Frontera is widely regarded as its birthplace and spiritual home. The city produced numerous famous performers, creators and interpreters, and the local...

Bankside revisited: as the first public event in May 2000, London Taxi drivers were invited to a party in the Turbine Hall as part of a clever marketing plan to raise Tate Modern's profile. Since then, what has been happening in London's newest public square, a destination that through the success of the Unilever Series has become a new gauge for public art?(Process)
June 1, 2004... The construction of Herzog and de Meuron's Tate Modern (AR August 2000) was significant for many reasons. Not only would it provide London with a long awaited gallery of modern art, but it would also act as a significant catalyst for the...

Retail therapy: with sympathy and imagination, a well-loved London landmark has been given a new lease of life by radical alteration and thorough internal revision.
June 1, 2004... Peter Jones is one of the few fine urban Modern Movement buildings made in Britain between the Wars. The department store in Sloane Square was acquired by the thrusting John Lewis retail group in 1905, the boom age of London's retail buildings:...

Arresting copper: a house on Denmark's austere north coast opens to magnificent views of sea and sky.(AR House)
June 1, 2004... The top end of Jutland (the bit of Denmark that points northwards from the main mass of the Continent) is very flat and rather sparsely populated. The peninsula is cut across by the sinuous path of the Limfjord, a long sea-water thoroughfare...

Julia Dawson explores the great outside.(Product Review)
June 1, 2004... 501 GKD Shanghai's motor-racing circuit by Aachen architect Hermann Tilke, the most expensive Formula One racing track in the world, has taken just 18 months to build. The circuit will be inaugurated in China's first ever Grand Prix on 26...

Wright Style.(Specifier's Information)
June 1, 2004... Safety and security in building design are becoming more and more important, as architects struggle to balance form and function with the new requirement of additional security. Wright Style have had project-related, high pressure blast...

Burlington.(Specifier's Information)
June 1, 2004... A main focal point in the Scottish Corporate Office of drinks business, Diageo, is a circular world map created using Burlington's Broughton Moor natural stone. Inlaid in the floor of the reception, the map was designed by architects and...

Potter & Soar.(Specifier's Information)
June 1, 2004... The striking exterior of the new Met Office Headquarters and Operations Centre in the west of England by Broadway Malyan includes six dramatic external stair towers. Providing fire exits for over 1000 employees, the towers have been clad with...

Lutron.(Specifier's Information)
June 1, 2004... Lighting control manufacturer Lutron has introduced two electronic low-voltage transformers to provide step-down voltage for halogen lamps to work with Lutron's leading and trailing edge 230V CE products. The Lutron transformers incorporate...

John Sydney.(architectural services)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... John Sydney has supplied the four-star Hyatt Regency Birmingham hotel with its range of Elite basin mixers and shower equipment, which have been fitted into the Presidential, Executive and Junior Suites at the hotel in a major refurbishment...

Interpave.(Specifier's Information)
June 1, 2004... Pave-It has just been published covering a wide range of topics related to the paved environment. The glossy magazine is free to all involved in urban design, hard landscaping, civil engineering and indeed any form of paving--whether designers,...

Interpave.(Specifier's Information)(Brief Article)(Advertisement)
June 1, 2004... The hunt is on for the best designs and most imaginative uses of precast concrete paving in public spaces as Interpave and Public Sector Local Government magazine call for entries to the prestigious urban design awards covering both large and...

Armourcoat.(Specifier's Information)
June 1, 2004... Distinctive modern architecture, galleried shopping malls, 320 shops, over 3000[m.sup.2] of Armourcoat polished plaster and a unique range of Armourcast seating. When the [pounds sterling]350m Bluewater retail complex opened in 1999, it was a...

Photographic joy.(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... BUILDING WITH LIGHT: THE INTERNATIONAL HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURAL PHOTOGRAPHY By Robert Elwall. London: Merrell. 2004. [pounds sterling]39.95 It is now nearly seventeen years since Robinson and Herschman's monumental Architecture...

Cyber enhancement.(Reviews)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... ME++: THE CYBORG SELF AND THE NETWORKED CITY By William J. Mitchell. London: MIT Press. 2003. [pounds sterling]18.50 Bill Mitchell is Professor of Architecture and Media Arts and Sciences and until recently Dean of the School of...

Eisenman's enigmas.(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... GIUSEPPE TERRAGNI: TRANSFORMATIONS, DECOMPOSITIONS, CRITIQUES By Peter Eisenman. New York: Monacelli Press. 2003. [pounds sterling]40 The Casa del Fascio is certainly a tour de force, one of the great works of Modernism, fascinating...

Romantic romp.(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE ROMANTIC ERA, 1760-1850 Edited by Christopher John Murray. New York & London: Fitzroy Dearborn. 2004. [pounds sterling]175 This two-volume encyclopaedia provides entries, generally about 1000 words long, on the...

Germany's ferocious Atlantic Wall on the French coast has been transformed by nature and art.(Delight)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... To commemorate the 60th anniversary of D-Day, two exhibitions of lanthe Ruthven's moving photographs of Germany's Atlantic Wall on the French coast have been organized at the Utah Beach Museum (until 31 July) and the National Theatre, London...