The Architectural Review articles from March 2008

The Architectural Review archives from March 2008

A sense of identity.(view)(Real Estate Industry and sustainable development)
March 1, 2008... The annual MIPIM real estate jamboree in Cannes, taking place later this month, is a reminder that identity and architecture are intimately linked, sometimes in unexpected ways. There is still a sense of nationalism at this event, though it is...

Workers' playtime: Zlin's radical Czech modernist history informs and sustains new development.(view)(In memoriam)
March 1, 2008... To appreciate the radical agenda of Czech functionalism between the wars you should spend a day in Zlin, a town in the province of Moravia that was transformed by the vision of a remarkable individual. Tomas Bat'a was a dynamic industrialist...

A popular medallist: the awarding of the Royal Gold Medal to Edward Cullinan was marked by two days of celebrations at the RIBA in London last month.(view)
March 1, 2008... The evident affection in which Ted Cullinan is held by architects of all ages was the atmospheric backdrop to the celebratory Gold Medal Dinner, and the following evening's formal lecture marking the award. The president of the RIBA, Sunand...

Living Steel: Living Steel, the organisation created by the world's leading steel-makers, has launched its third international architecture competition.(view)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... The Living Steel competition aims to create affordable energy-efficient, single-family, detached housing (for a site in Russia) that minimises climate change emissions and can withstand temperature extremes. Architects (in teams of at least...

Erratum.(Correction notice)
March 1, 2008... Photographs of the new V & A gallery in London (AR February, p78-79) were by Leon Chew and not as printed.

Liverpool conference.(view)(Conference news)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Following the January special issue on Liverpool, this year's European City of Culture, we have organised (with the Architects' Journal) a one-day conference, 'Designing for Liverpool', taking place on 29 April. The conference will examine...

Outrage: plans to demolish an important housing development in East London are absurd and should be stopped now.(view)
March 1, 2008... Readers are probably aware of the acute London housing shortage, especially 'affordable housing', created by two decades of inadequate government policies, unacknowledged immigration, and a sclerotic planning environment. The result has been a...

Robert Gutman 1926-2007: Robert Gutman (born 1926), one of the few academics to explore the connection between architecture and the social sciences, died at the end of November last year. In an edited version of his memorial address, Frank Duffy, chairman of DEGW, recalls aspects of his teacher's life and work.(obituary)(Obituary)
March 1, 2008... For both architecture and sociology, the latter half of the 1960s was a turning point, certainly in the UK. The idea that the architectural profession was principally an instrument for delivering the built fabric of the Welfare State was...

This striking office tower design for Kuwait City, by Gary Haney of SOM's New York office, has won the overall prize (and the Tall Buildings category) in the MIPIM Architectural Review Future Projects Awards this year.(view)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... This striking office tower design for Kuwait City, by Gary Haney of SOM's New York office, has won the overall prize (and the Tall Buildings category) in the MIPIM Architectural Review Future Projects Awards this year. Judges admired the way...

Peter Cook: Peter Cook extols the virtues of getting touchy-feely rather than digitalising.(view)(Viewpoint essay)
March 1, 2008... Is it that one retains some spooky, primeval thing about touchy-feely objects? Or that, somehow, one remains the same child who remembers that there was no firm dividing line between the days of playing with wooden bricks and the days when...

Homes alone: historically, the house has been a vehicle for experimentation and today's young architects continue this quest.(comment)
March 1, 2008... The private house continues to occupy a unique position both in the history of architecture and human imagination. The house, the domus, the home, is at once refuge and shelter. It is the place of communion for the family and its many...

Cherry blossom: this hermetic urban house is wrapped in a decorated and perforated skin.(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... The challenges of trying to build in Tokyo's cramped, blaring metropolis need no restating, but it's also apparent that such difficult circumstances can spark incredibly inventive formal and architectural responses. As is the case here, with a...

X marks the spot: with no site, Arquitectura X create a generic framework.(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... This Donald Judd-inspired house, in Quito was conceived before the architects knew its location. The final resting place could have been anywhere between the eastern and western ranges of the Andes, and so the architects began by designing a...

Cool water: Studio Mumbai's subterranean santuary.(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... These atmospheric subterranean interiors are situated beneath the courtyard garden of an existing family home in Kashid, Maharashtra, in south-western India. The artesian well, used for bathing and relaxing, is filled silently with water from a...

Shelf life: interlocking pine planks create this delightful house cum library.
March 1, 2008... Reminiscent of Atelier Tekuto's AR Award-winning Cell Brick house (AR December 2004), this house comprises a modular prefabricated egg-crate structure. Named Shelf-Pod House, the building is not simply a private dwelling. Instead, it was...

Adapt ... Re-use: five projects by emerging architects that show how to make the most of existing structures.
March 1, 2008... With the unpredictability of today's housing market, increasing numbers of people are opting out of the trend to move out and move up the property ladder (growing families needing more space and aspirational individuals wanting more spare...

Less is more: this remodelled old house has an elegant economy.
March 1, 2008... Historically, Portuguese architecture is firmly rooted in the vernacular, with craft-based, artisanal origins and a limited range of forms and materials. Inevitably this has fed through into contemporary practice, cultivating the notion of what...

Fine lines: the application of a well considered line of reasoning extends a protected friary in County Kilkenny.(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Odos Architects impressed the judges with both this extension in Knocktopher (with O'Shea Design Partnership) and a more intricate urban in fill in Dublin (p70). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]...

Step change: Plasma Studio's mountainous roof addition in Innichen.(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Parasites are usually unwelcome. This one, however, has its own quirky charm that makes this domestic relationship seem more symbiotic than the architect's description initially suggests. Conceived as a stratified geological formation (an...

X-box: Boyd Cody's copper cube connects house and garden.(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... When approaching this house, it appears a relatively unremarkable three-storey brick-fronted Victorian semi--albeit with a rather grand demeanour, set well back from the street by a large forecourt. Once inside, however, you soon suspect that...

Roof light: unconventional ideas produce surprising results, as seen here in Innsbruck.(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... At the start of his career, Daniel Fugenschuh designed and oversaw construction of a radical home for his parents. With this feather in his Tyrolean cap, he came to London, working for Michael Hopkins and Florian Beigel before returning to his...

Urban ... infill: working within the constraints of as-found urban sites, this section shows how to make the most of residual land.
March 1, 2008... In relation to the previous examples, this section considers new insertions between existing buildings. Just as individual properties contain residual space, complete plots also lurk in unexpected places, providing excellent development...

Between the lines: clever planning has provided space for a unique three-bedroom family home in Toronto.(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... The form of Toronto's city centre is immediately legible to any newcomer. From its mid-rise CBD, passing an intermediate layer of adapted industrial buildings, pedestrian visitors soon reach the low-rise residential districts that make Toronto...

Plain speaking: a rigorous spirit bears surprising fruit in a small Austrian town.
March 1, 2008... Waidhofen is a pretty town in north-east Austria, where the Alps begin to peter out into the lowlands around Vienna. Its hugger mugger Baroque core tips down the steep banks of the River Ybbs, a tributary of the mighty Danube. Within this...

Family plot: making the most of proximity to a rare piece of open space.(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Unlike America, Japan has for many years been inventing ingenious and at times radical solutions to living cheek by jowl in tight urban situations. This house extends the tradition, but in a unique way due to its adjacency with a relatively...

Raising the bar: unlike neighbouring properties, this home rises to three storeys.(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... The densification of residential districts is not only a European issue. In California over 6 million new inhabitants are anticipated over the next decade, and as such inventive housing solutions such as this are helping to meet the demand. The...

Good cornering: on an apparently hopeless site, Odos Architects neatly turn out a fine new three-bedroom house.
March 1, 2008... Dublin's architects are establishing an impressive reputation for producing excellent responses to their city's unique urban grain. In 2006, Boyd Cody's brick cube drew the jury's attention (AR December 2006, p74), and in 2007 a number of new...

Rural ... remote.
March 1, 2008... If space and solitude are what you want, for some there is no better alternative than to move out of the urban conurbation in search of the good life. The six projects featured in this section illustrate designs in rural and remote settings...

Black box: this weekend house in the Japanese mountains is a real box of tricks.
March 1, 2008... If you were to drive for two hours north-west from Tokyo to the mountain resort of Karuizawa and then go down into the woods there, you might be surprised and perhaps even a bit discomfited to come across this little black cottage squatting in...

Wood and light: on Japan's northernmost island, this family house is a study in modesty.
March 1, 2008... Though at first glance, from the snow-filled environs and timber cladding, this little house looks as if it is in a suburb of Oslo or Helsinki, it is actually in Japan; in Sapporo on the northernmost island of Hokkaido, where the dry, cold...

Abstract nature: deep within the Wisconsin backwoods, something stirs ...(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Not for nothing is this weekend retreat in a Wisconsin forest known as the Camouflage House. But this is no charmingly rustic cabin, rather a crisply elegant exercise in form and tectonics, as if nature itself were somehow pixelated and...

Copper hive: a beekeeper's home in Austria packs a sting.(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Buildings in remote rural areas do not necessarily always yield their form to the predominance of nature, as forthrightly demonstrated by this house in the Luftenberg region of Austria. The 15x15m cube is as formally assertive and alien as is...

Well pressed: sharp lines build on the essential qualities of winepress and store.(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Extending the theme of Austrians building simple forms in the landscape, this house in Styria, reworks a traditional winepress and store. Above a restored brick-vaulted wine cellar, the architects replaced a decrepit timber winepress enclosure...

Call of nature: this weekend house in Finland is intimately connected with nature.(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... One of the great joys of Finnish life is the weekend house. Most families have some sort of bothy in the woods, and maybe a mooring for a boat at the lakeside. Usually, they are fairly modest structures, as physical luxury is not the point;...

Bella figura: Dolce & Gabbana's remodelled London store is a subtle recasting and refreshing of the Italian fashion firm's image.(interior)
March 1, 2008... 'Our Dolce & Gabbana boutiques create a private and sophisticated world. In some there is even a VIP room,' reveals fashion designer Domenico Dolce. And even without a VIP room, London's Old Bond Street store, which reopened late last year,...

Northern lights.(product review)(Stockholm Furniture Fair )
March 1, 2008... One of the more civilised venues for the international design circus, this year's Stockholm Furniture Fair encompassed both cool-headed functional invention and jolly eccentricity. Catherine Slessor reports. Go to www.arplus.com/enq.html for...

Specifier's information.(product and service)
March 1, 2008... Hafele The fast-growing architectural department at Hafele has launched a concept brochure 'Space & Light'. This showcases Hafele's huge range of fittings for glass doors and windows and what that means for modern building design. Products...

A choice critic's choice.(Book review)
March 1, 2008... THE STRANGE DEATH OF ARCHITECTURAL CRITICISM-MARTIN PAWLEY COLLECTED WRITINGS Edited by David Jenkins. London: Black Dog Publishing. 2007. [pounds sterling]39.95 Nobody can blame Martin Pawley for the death of architectural criticism....

Victorian values.(Book review)
March 1, 2008... VICTORIAN ARCHITECTURE: DIVERSITY AND INVENTION By James Stevens Curl. Reading: Spire Books. 2007. [pounds sterling]69.95 This comprehensive work combining scholarship with imagination, 635 pages long and with 535 illustrations,...

Village utopias.(Book review)
March 1, 2008... VILLAGES OF VISION: A STUDY OF STRANGE UTOPIAS By Gillian Darley, London: Five Leaves Publications. 2007. [pounds sterling]14.99 There is much to be glad of in the republication of Villages of Vision, which first appeared from the...

The rise of crinkly tin.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 1, 2008... CORRUGATED IRON: BUILDING ON THE FRONTIER By Adam Mornement and Simon Holloway. London: Frances Lincoln. 2007. [pounds sterling]35 This book fills a gap. 'Corrugated iron' is probably the world's most common building material. Yet,...

Supersize modern.(Book review)
March 1, 2008... THE A-Z OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE (Two volumes in slipcase.) Edited by Peter Gossel. Cologne: Taschen. 2007. [pounds sterling]160, [euro]200 Does size matter? Clearly it does for Taschen whose monumental two volume Modern Architecture A-Z...

Crumbling Art Deco megastructures and cars with tail fins--we could only be in Havana.(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Crumbling Art Deco megastructures and cars with tail fins--we could only be in Havana. The city's astonishing Deco legacy, more sultry than its European counterparts and liberally spiced up with Afro-Cuban elements, is re-examined in Havana...

White goods: Richard Meier, the original White God, shows how far he's come in 45 years with a major London show.(reviews)
March 1, 2008... In the exhibition catalogue, Joseph Rykwert pays tribute to Meier's achievements in '... a variety [of work] which shows his sharp awareness of the constant dialectic between the unswerving demands of form and the equally urgent dictates of...

Left fielder.(browser)(Website overview)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Norman Blogster, whose totally readable PartIV features regularly in this column, had gone a tad monosyllabic over the Christmas break. Now he's serialising The Honeywood File at http://tinyurl.com/2vfeuv. Ask that broken down old architect in...

The pushmepullme.(browser)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Tired of watching Propellorz's endlessly rotating logo and no subsequent uploading of the home page at www.propellerz.at, I took a punt at www.pushpullbar.com purely because of the inexplicable name, viz [pushpullbar][.sup.2]. Apparently it's...

Not me guv.(browser)
March 1, 2008... We hacks live by and for bylines. So it's quite difficult to understand the lengths to which architectural blogistcs will go to preserve their anonymity. It is not as if they very often peddle interesting scandal (as does New York's Gutter at...

Three websites in search of a meaning.(browser)(www.archi-students.org )(Website overview)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... I've never been sure about the Archi-student site at www.archi-students.org or that of its fellow Archi-Europe at www.archi-europe.com or yet their parent Archi-World at www.archiworld.com, which has apparently been going since 1997, has 153...

Diary.(Diary entry)
March 1, 2008... AR'S CHOICE OF INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITIONS FROM WWW.ARPLUS.COM FINLAND RAILI AND REIMA PIETILA Museum of Finnish Architecture, Helsinki Until 25 May Reima Pietila rose to fame when the established principles of Modernism...

Delight.
March 1, 2008... As public smoking bans come into force across Europe, and pipe smoking in particular continues its inexorable decline towards extinction, it may be a good time for architects to reflect on its passing. Le Corbusier, Charles Eames, Arne...