The Architectural Review articles from March 2006

The Architectural Review archives from March 2006

A house is not a home.(view)
March 1, 2006... In his just-published Manifesto for a cinematic architecture,* the teacher Pascal Schoning describes how such an architecture 'aims to dissolve or expose the concept of a static material world through a buzz of constant change', and that it...

Santiago's second shrine: the first phase of Peter Eisenman's ambitious Galician City of Culture is nearing completion.(view)
March 1, 2006... 'Build it and they will come' was a mantra that worked well for Santiago de Compostela in the Middle Ages when a chapel, and then a cathedral, were erected round the purported relics of St James, Spain's patron saint. Millions of pilgrims...

Viktor Melnikov 1914-2006: following the death of the 91 year old artist, Viktor Melnikov, who will now lead the campaign to save his father's seminal home in central Moscow?(obituary)(Death of Viktor Melnikov )(Obituary)
March 1, 2006... I was fortunate enough to meet Viktor Melnikov twice; both times at home, and both times within and surrounded by an extensive collection of his father's work--the frustrated Russian Constructivist architect, Konstantin Melnikov (1890-1974)....

Erratum.(Correction notice)
March 1, 2006... In the review of Perriand at the Pompidou (AR February, p80) the bottom right caption should read: Perriand's own dining room, as exhibited at the Paris Salon des Artistes Decorateurs in 1928.

MIPIM 2006.(awards)
March 1, 2006... The MIPIM Architectural Review Future Project Awards, now in their fourth year, recognise the role that design quality plays in the creation of successful developments. This is not just a matter of designing a good building, but thinking about...

Crowning glory.(view)(Centre for Tourism and Culture in the Swiss Italian resort town of Ascona)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... Caruso St John Architects, who feature in this issue with their Brick House (p38), have recently won an international competition to build a [pounds sterling]25m Centre for Tourism and Culture in the Swiss Italian resort town of Ascona....

Peter Cook: Peter Cook samples buildings by Morphosis, Rafael Moneo and Frank Gehry in his Grand Tour of Los Angeles.(view)
March 1, 2006... A respectable Grand Tour in the eighteenth century might well have included a place of worship, a place of celebration and one of general day-to-day activity--exactly what is on offer in a twenty-first century downtown of Los Angeles that seems...

Making a place to dwell; Finding a place within the city: how architects are reconfiguring the urban home.(comment)
March 1, 2006... How do we find a place in which to dwell? In dense cities what options are available, apart from terrace, villa, or the ubiquitous (not-so) luxury apartment? As the market continues to frustrate, discerning residents are increasingly looking...

Modern romance; Hidden love: beyond an anonymous Victorian arched carriageway, Caruso St John bring New-Romanticism to the heart of Notting Hill.
March 1, 2006... To make an extraordinary material special, is banal. To heighten one's awareness of a humble material like brick, is poetic. Adam Caruso, Sigurd Lewerentz and a Material Basis of Form, 1997 The clients for this house, who continue to...

Inner realm: with a combined interest in the sculptural use of concrete and the process of making domestic rooms, Jamie Fobert creates a new family home within the shell of a not so humble Victorian terrace.
March 1, 2006... Jamie Fobert is known to most for his award-winning Anderson House, set deep within a central London Edwardian block (AR April 2004). With no elevations, and conforming to no particular domestic type, comparisons could easily be made between...

Plotting a future: Prewett Bizley's house serves as a useful bookend, not only to this north London terrace, but also as the third example in our study of capital conditions.
March 1, 2006... As Prewett Bizley's first built work, this distinctive end-of-terrace has been made very much their own, providing a home for founding partner Graham Bizley, and a base for the fledgling practice co-founded with Robert Prewett. The site was...

Treading lightly: this holiday house in Big Sur is a highly tactful and inventive response to stringent local environmental regulations.
March 1, 2006... Big Sur, a rocky outcrop on the shore of central California, is a magical place with two distinct personalities. Visitors speed along the winding coast highway, pausing at overlook points to admire the spectacle of towering cliffs, surf-lashed...

Oriental miniature: barely the width of a flowerbed, this urban micro house is compact even by Japanese standards.
March 1, 2006... Even by Japanese domestic standards, as explored in a recent AR special issue (AR September 2005), this house by Atelier Tekuto is an astonishing triumph over conditions that most clients and architects would reasonably regard as unbuildable....

Caged in? Inventive house solutions are not restricted to dense urban conditions, as this suburban example demonstrates, making a mockery of local planning codes.
March 1, 2006... Clearly antagonised by 'banal local design statutes' that were apparently 'incapable of advancing architectural culture', architect Titus Bernhard is proud of the message that this house has brought to the inhabitants of Augsburg in south-east...

Sensing place: in alpine New Zealand, this house reinterprets the sobriety and simplicity of local rural buildings.
March 1, 2006... New Zealand's Southern Alps form a towering backbone to the long land mass of South Island. At the southern end of the Alps lies Lake Wakatipu, a great Z-shaped slash of water that wraps around a glacial basin on its north edge. Traditionally,...

Modules for living: the advantages of prefabrication have yet to be translated into decent architecture, but in California, cradle of the modern house, experimentation goes on to provide elegant, economical dwellings that have a viability beyond the prototype stage.(process)
March 1, 2006... Constructing a one-off residence is a costly, messy, and time-consuming process, which is why, for the past ninety years, progressive architects have dreamed of standardised modern houses built on a production line like cars and aircraft. Le...

House of retreat: completed some 30 years after its conception, this remarkable rural house in Andalusia by Emilio Ambasz resonates with place, tradition and nature in a way that has wider lessons for amodern, ecologically responsive architecture. Peter Buchanan considers its significance.
March 1, 2006... It was one of the most compelling architectural images of its time. Two tall white walls rising from a green sea of grass like sails to capture breezes and reflect the sun down into, or shade it from, a sunken courtyard. Beyond this, the...

Nordic light: Stockholm's Furniture Fair is a beacon of civilised Nordic values that illuminate a dreary time of year. Established names rub shoulders with the talents of tomorrow in the Greenhouse, a special section for students and newly qualified designers. Catherine Slessor heads north.(product review)
March 1, 2006... 500 MOOOI Laced Crochet table by Marcel Wanders for Moooi, proof that you can do virtually anything with the appropriate craft skills. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Enquiry 500 www.arplus.com/enq.html 501 LAMMHULTS Cortina, a...

Specifier's information.(home furnishings)
March 1, 2006... Dulux Diamond Glaze, Dulux Trade's premium interior woodcare product, is being used across 17 luxury homes as part of a prestigious development in Devizes. The hardwearing lacquer has been used on wooden flooring throughout The Mews...

Numinous Utzon.(Jorn Utzon's buildings)(Bagsvzaerd church)(Bagsvaerd Church, Jorn Utzon Logbook Vol II)(Book review)
March 1, 2006... BAGSVAERD CHURCH, JORN UTZON LOGBOOK VOL II By Torsten Blondal & Jorn Utzon. Hellerup: Edition Blondal. 2005. DKK350 Jorn Utzon's buildings are at last getting the kind of publication they deserve. Bagsvzaerd is the second volume in...

Archigram assessed.(Archigram: Architecture without Architecture)(Book review)
March 1, 2006... ARCHIGRAM, ARCHITECTURE WITHOUT ARCHITECTURE By Simon Sadler London: MIT Press. 2005. [pounds sterling]22.95 (paperback only) A monograph appraisal of the Archigram group has long been awaited, as the work of the group itself continues...

Barricade politics.(Against the Wall)(Book review)
March 1, 2006... AGAINST THE WALL Edited by Michael Sorkin. London: The New Press. 2005. [pounds sterling]10.99 The cover page of the Arts and Leisure section of the New York Times on the first day of the new year, was dominated by an article by...

Brunel's testament.(Brunel: The Man Who Built the World)(Book review)
March 1, 2006... BRUNEL: THE MAN WHO BUILT THE WORLD By Steven Brindle (introduction by Dan Cruickshank). London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 2005. [pounds sterling]25 This year, the 200th anniversary of I. K. Brunei's birthday, will witness yet another...

Architecture in Wood: A World History.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 1, 2006... The Russian Orthodox Church of the Assumption in Kondopoga, from Architecture in Wood: A World History, by Will Pryce, London: Thames & Hudson, 2005, [pounds sterling]39.95. Dating from around 1774, the church's distinctive pyramidal roof...

Putting buildings in their place.(David Adjaye)
March 1, 2006... David Adjaye, the Tanzanian-born (1966) London-based architect, has produced some notable houses and apartments; his practice has flowered recently with a series of public building projects. Ten of them, ranging from an upgrade of the Nobel...

Captain's blog.(Google Inc.'s weblogs)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... This month we look mostly at blogs (it just turned out that way). Architects like looking at (and showing) buildings they admire--and sounding off about them. What better way than to start up a blog? The common characteristic of the blogs noted...

Getting to grips.(Ruairi Glynn)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... As you might expect, Interactive Architecture dot Org is at www.interactivearchitecture.org. It's one of those blogs which is difficult to distinguish from a standard website. The clue is the persistent use in the text of the first person...

Overload, overload.(www.inhabitat.com)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... Among the many pleasures of www.inhabitat.com is the armchair which converts into an electric double hob. I don't want to say anything about the design of this US blog beyond observing that if designers insist on doing everything--including the...

One in the eye.(eyecandy-webcandy.blogspot.com)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... No, we haven't suddenly dropped our strict standards with the Eye Candy blog at http://eyecandy-webcandy.blogspot.com/. This is actually 'a pic a week from our weekly e-zine' according to the sub-heading, which urges you to sign up for the free...

This is not a pipe.(www.dasparkhotel.net/index.php )(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... My schoolboy German isn't good enough to establish whether Dasparkhotel at www.dasparkhotel.net/index.php is a joke or not. A Parkhotel room is a section of one of those giant concrete storm water pipes with a rooflight, a built-in bench and a...

Diary.(Calendar)
March 1, 2006... AR'S CHOICE OF INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITIONS AND EVENTS DENMARK BASELITZ: PAINTER Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek Until 6 June Retrospective of German artist Georg Baselitz from the art museum that gave him his...

Delight.(ice craving exhibits at the snow show)
March 1, 2006... Those who thought the Winter Olympics were all about slithering rapidly across ice or snow wearing a condom or sequins, might be reassured by the more culturally refined caperings of this year's Snow Show staged in the Italian alpine resort of...