The Architectural Review articles from May 2002

The Architectural Review archives from May 2002

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May 1, 2002... OLD FRANCE CELEBRATED IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY PHOTOGRAPHY. COMMONWEALTH ASSOCIATION OF ARCHITECTS STUDENT COMPETITION. PRITZKER FOR AUSTRALIAN ARCHITECT GLENN MURCUTT. AR'S REVITALIZING THE EUROPEAN CITY CONFERENCE. JEWISH ARCHITECT TOM KAY...

Browser: Sutherland Lyall trawls the web to find architectural distinction. (View).
May 1, 2002... Clunky mechanics, impeccable type With David Mackay star of the March Architectural Review cities conference at the RIBA in London (p26), it seemed proper to take a look at his practice site at www.mbmarquitectes.com. MBM Arquitectes is the...

Education and architecture. (Comment).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... Architecture has a crucial role in the educational system because it provides the spaces in which we grow up and learn about society. But what sort of buildings are needed for the age of electronic information, which is transforming all our...

Winged presence; one of the most important things in an educational institution is to engender a sense of place: an area of the mind we can relate to for the rest of our lives. Here is a powerful focus.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... EXHIBITION AND PERFORMANCE BUILDING, UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA ARCHITECT MGT ARCHITECTS Quite the most dramatic part of the University of New South Wales at Kensington, Sydney is the Scientia, which houses the...

Erskine's Aula: Ralph Erskine and his colleagues continue their reinvention of the Stockholm University Frescati campus as a humane model for higher learning institutions.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... UNIVERSITY GREAT HALL, STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN ARCHITECT RALPH ERSKINE The University of Stockholm's campus at Frescati is in many ways a disappointing place. This is a country that has a proper long-established European respect for...

Ladakh learning: an idealistic school in the Himalayas aims to transform education for poor and remote people and be an example of sustainable building of the area.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... SCHOOL, LADAHK, KASHMIR ARCHITECT ARUP ARCHITECTS & ENGINEERS The Druk White Lotus School is part of the village of Shey, Ladakh in the upper Indus valley under the awesome arid slopes of the western Himalayas. At the moment, it...

Suburbia undermined: an underground kindergarten near Graz in Styria that protects and cherishes small children, while being a fairy story in itself in its evocation of archetypes.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... SCHOOL, HART, STYRIA, AUSTRIA ARCHITECT KONRAD FREY In all of us, there lurks a hobbit. We may be embarrassed about the residual Baggins, but the notion of living under a green hill in a cave somehow bathed in sunlight seems deeply embedded...

Steel belvedere: docked onto the edge of an iconic Ellwood building, this new student pavilion at Pasadena's Design College is an industrially inspired armature for different activities.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... STUDENT CENTRE, PASADENA, CALIFORNIA, USA ARCHITECT HODGETTS & FUNG Over the past 26 years, the varied activities of Pasadena's Art Center College of Design have been confined within Craig Ellwood's black steel box, an acclaimed...

Stepping forward: a school cut into the misty dry desert of Peru's coastal plain sets up a sense of place for small children, even in the most inhospitable of regions.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... SCHOOL LA MOLINA PERU ARCHITECT COOPER GRANA NICOLINI ARQUITECTOS The Coleglo San Pedro is an ambitious project that will eventually cater for 1000 pupils at a new settlement in La Molina in the desert coastal strip near...

Rust in urbe: one of the most daring and inventive university complexes of the 1970s has been extended and augmented with sympathy for the existing buildings and for the students who use them.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... UNIVERSITY, ODENSE, FYN, DENMARK ARCHITECT CUBO ARKITEKTER Odense University was one of the minor architectural Meccas of the early 1970s. The ordered modular ranks of the small technological and business institution, designed by...

Harmonic scale: in Hertfordshire, an extension of a music school is sensitive to its Victorian context while providing a tranquil and spiritually inspiring setting.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... MUSIC BUILDING, HITCH IN, ENGLAND ARCHITECT PATEL TAYLOR ARCHITECTS The Benslow Music Trust, established in the Late 1920s in the grounds of a late nineteenth-century house in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, runs residential courses...

Clinical rigour: a functional rationalist exterior conceals a gentle and convivial social space which encourages the casual encounters necessary in higher academia.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... BOTANICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE, HALLEWITTENBERG, GERMANY ARCHITECT KISTER SCHEITHAUER GROSS Halle lies on the Saale river in the former GDR, 30 kilometres north-west of Leipzig. Unemployment is high. Many have left the city to find...

Creative factory: combining rational form with simple materiality, this new School of Arts in Cordoba forms the latest addition to the city's evolving university campus.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... UNIVERSITY FACULTY, CORDOBA, ARGENTINA ARCHITECT MIGUEL ROCA Cordoboa is Argentina's second city and historic centre of learning, with one of the oldest universities in South America, founded in the seventeenth century by the Jesuits, whose...

Underground thoughts: the University of Thessalonica has dug in to create an underground library that gives the comfort of the cave, while being a powerful academic machine. (Interior Design).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... LIBRARY, ARISTOTLE UNIVERSITY OF THESSALONICA, GREECE ARCHITECT ANASTASSIOS KOTISOPOULOS, MORPHO PAPNIKOLAOU, IRENA SKELLARIDOU The main campus of the Aristotle University of Thessalonica was started in the 1950s and, like many of...

Precise jewel casket: a small space has apparently been vastly expanded by using reflective surfaces. And it has been greatly enriched by judicious use of fine materials and detailing.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... JEWELLERY SHOP, WEST END, LONDON ARCHITECT GUMUCHDJIAN ASSOCIATES The jewellery shop on Conduit Street is the third designed in London by Philip Gumuchdjian for Van Peterson, and heralds more shops planned for Tokyo, New York, Paris and...

Japanese puzzle: embodying a serenity born of formal and material economy, this family house in the suburbs of Tokyo is also spatially inventive. (Ar House).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... HOUSE, TOKYO, JAPAN ARCHITECT MANABU CHIBA The black cubic house constructed recently by the young Tokyo architect Manabu Chiba is, in plan, longer in one direction than the other and, in elevation, slightly taller than either...

Spanish Ceramic Tiles Manufacturers Association. (Product Review: Interior Finishes).(Advertisement)
May 1, 2002... Ascer, the Spanish Ceramic Tile Manufacturers' Association, is launching a new competition, the Tile of Spain Awards for Architecture and Interior Design. It is open to architects and interior designers from both Spain and abroad; projects...

Ariostea Marmi. (Product Review: Interior Finishes).(Advertisement)
May 1, 2002... Ariostea Marmi flooring materials are industrially produced to achieve natural stone and marble-like qualities. They include Madras, a manufactured stone with warm amber tones; Albino Light, a manufactured stone identical to white quartzite;...

Carpet concept. (Product Review: Interior Finishes).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... NET is an innovative woven floor covering with metallic highlights. The metallic-looking textile yarn, used in a tough loop pile, traces graphically-aligned squares to achieve diaphanous spatial effects. The carpet, conceived by Thomas...

Freudenberg Bausysteme. (Product Review: Interior Finishes).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... The Building Construction Department of the city of Basle, Switzerland, is housed in the Munsterplatz, a historic early twentieth-century building reminiscent of an Italian palazzo. It has been refurbished, including a new rubber floor...

Sicis. (Product Review: Interior Finishes).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... Sicis, manufacturer of marble and glass mosaics, has introduced a metal mosaic, Metallismo. Various shapes and sizes are available, including 75mm squares, mini-bricks, ovals and dots, rhomboids, octagons and large tiles. The mosaics are formed...

Fantoni. (Product Review: Interior Finishes).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... Topakustic sound-deadening panels are suitable for covering ceilings, walls and partition walls. They take the form of melamine-faced slats and are available in white, maple beech and silver finish. Enquiry 506 www.arplus.com/enq.html

North 4 Design. (Specifier's Information).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... Vision panel specialist North 4 Design has added a 30-minute fire integrity to its expanding range of vision panels for doors and walls. Finished in brushed stainless steel with a choice of glass and fixings, they provide an attractive solution...

Levolux. (Specifier's Information).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... The Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, designed by Edward Cullinan Architects, has brise-soleil and external blind systems designed and installed by Levolux. The building is naturally ventilated and the products play an...

Chorus. (Specifier's Information).(Advertisement)
May 1, 2002... Aero, an innovative bench designed for public areas, has won the 'product of the show' award at Valencia, Spain. The bench is formed by slotting together three sections of extruded aluminium, which are supported by a simple 'space frame' of...

Corus Kalzip. (Specifier's Information).(Advertisement)
May 1, 2002... Over 153,000 square metres of Kalzip aluminium standing seam roofing has been specified for the new international airport at Guangzhou, capital of the Chinese province of Guangdong. The airport was designed by the US-based Parsons Design Group...

Dorma. (Specifier's Information).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... The Dorma BST curved sliding door system has been installed in Carlton Highland Hotel, Edinburgh in a [pounds sterling]7 million refurbishment. The sliding door, set below a glass canopy, forms the main entrance. It is powered by a Dorms ES 90...

Vetrotech Saint-Gobain. (Specifier's Information).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... Pyroswiss Extra, a specialist fire-resisting glass from Vetrotech Saint-Gobain, has been used in a glazed flyover tunnel in Hong Kong. The tunnel, which carries a dual carriageway, was built to reduce traffic noise for the benefit of nearby...

Laukien. (Specifier's Information).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... The new Max-Brauer office building in Hamburg is clad with an aluminium facade produced by Laukien. The building, designed by Architekturburo A6, uses 2mm external facade panels with curved corrugated aluminium sheets on the second storey....

James Latham. (Specifier's Information).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... Lathams is a specialist national importer and distributor of wood-based panel products and processed quality hardwoods and softwoods. The range has recently been extended to include high quality laminated hardwood panels produced by the Italian...

Reyner Banham, Historian of the Immediate Future. (Banham Enhanced).
May 1, 2002... By Nigel Whiteley. London: MIT Press. 2002. [pounds sterling]27.50 To write a 400 page book about Reyner Banham's writings -- not his life, but his writings -- seems like a terrible idea at first. Why waste time reading about his writings...

Great City Parks. (Purple Heat).
May 1, 2002... By Alan Tate. London: Spon Press. 2001, [pounds sterling]49.50 Alan Tate tells us that he has been Hong Kong head of the Clouston landscape design empire and is now head of the landscape department at Manitoba University. His book is, he...

The Engineer's Contribution to Contemporary Architecture Series: Peter Rice. (Rice Lateral).
May 1, 2002... By Andre Brown. London: Thomas Telford Publishing. 2001, [pounds sterling]25 If you want to know about structural innovation, and you should, then this is a wonderful example of the lateral thinking and creativity of a great engineer. ...

Kant, Art and Art History: Moments of Discipline. (Defeated by Empiricism?).(Review)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... By Mark A. Cheetham. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2001. [pounds sterling]37.30 I look sometimes with envy but more often with disappointment at the ordered methodological discipline of art history, in comparison with the almost...

Japanese Architecture as a Collaborative Process. (Japan Builds).
May 1, 2002... By Dana Buntrock. London: E & FN Spon. 2001. [pounds sterling]32.50 'There is no more satisfying experience than building in Japan' says Cesar Pelli, and most of us envy a country that has a building industry with a care for craft, a wish...

William Beckford, 1760-1844: An Eye for the Magnificent. ('Oh My God, so Many Things').
May 1, 2002... Edited by Derek E. Ostergard. Yale. 2002. [pounds sterling]50 This lavish catalogue was published to accompany an exhibition at the Bard Graduate Center, New York and at Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, but though the exhibition focuses...

Planning the Twentieth Century City: The Advanced Capitalist World.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... By Stephen V. Ward, Chichester: John Wiley. 2002. [pounds sterling]29.95 We have already seen several global surveys of twentieth-century town planning, and Professor Ward (who is no relation, but has been a valuable president of the...

Rammed Earth: Martin Rauch.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... By Otto Kapfinger. Basel: Birkhauser. 2001. [epsilon]58 The benefits of building with earth are widely recognized by now, at least among the green fraternity. It is abundant and it is cheap; used locally (as it should be), it reduces...

Delight: one of the saddest things about the high modern movement is the way in which it was almost always photographed in monochrome, so everyone thought that the buildings were white.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... Among the most unfairly neglected of Modernist Architects, Bruno Taut (1880-1938) played a leading role as spokesman and convenor for the Expressionist movement. Later he became chief architect for GEHAG, the largest Berlin building society,...