The Architectural Review articles from May 2003

The Architectural Review archives from May 2003

Deco rationale. (View).
May 1, 2003... A sleek streamlined car imported from America, the Auburn 851 'Boat Tail' Speedster (1935), pulls up at the entrance to the Strand Palace Hotel in London. A bright young thing steps out, resplendent in her Elsa Schiaparelli scarlet taffeta coat...

Greening the European City. (View).
May 1, 2003... As we become increasingly urban, living in rising densities, discussing how we collectively influence and are influenced by the built environment is unavoidable, Living in harmony with the planet is no longer a green-field issue limited to...

Letters.
May 1, 2003... MESSAGE OF HOPE SIR: What a pleasant welcome with your March 2008 issue of the AR at this tragic and sad time for our civilization. How good you put together with the 'Letter from Baghdad' the beautifully rendered essay on 'Chandigarh:...

Browser: Sutherland Lyall separates cyber wheat from chaff on architectural threshing floors. (View).
May 1, 2003... Pleasure principle Klein Dytham Architecture is the youngish Tokyo-based practice whose interactive communication experience was featured in AR's April issue. The practice is, apart from the local staff, Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham. Eight...

View from Tbilisi: Georgia's painful transition from Soviet republic to independent state is chronicled in its architecture. Among many unhappy events, Nick Shavishvili holds out hope. (View).
May 1, 2003... Tbilisi, capital of Georgia (a newly independent country in the Caucasus, formerly a southern republic of the USSR) is over 1500 years old. Its name is translated as 'hot springs': the legend goes that while hunting Vachtang Gorgasali, the King...

June. (View).
May 1, 2003... Next month's issue looks at building in hot countries. Historically, the challenge posed by building in such climatic extremes, whether the desert or the tropics, has often given rise to some of the most inventive vernacular architecture that...

Spectrum preview. (Design Review).
May 1, 2003... Spectrum 2003, the annual international furniture and interior design show, takes place between 13 and I 6 May in the Commonwealth Institute on Kensington High Street, London. For the first time, the AR is mounting an evening lecture, which has...

Enriching entertainment. (Comment).
May 1, 2003... The need for public entertainment has shaped both human development and the built environment, and despite the anti-social tendancies of today's leisure technologies, it is still possible to sustain a connection with space and place. From...

Frozen music: Leon's new concert hall is an imaginative distillation of Iberian vernacular that forms not only a dignified space for music, but also enriches the urban realm.
May 1, 2003... Nestling at the foot of the Cantabrian Cordillera, Leon in northern Spain was an important stopping off point on the historic pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela. Countless pilgrims have passed through it and the old town still contains...

Moving image: a remarkable filmic addition is made to Sydney. Unlike most cinemas, it promises to add to the jollity of urban life.
May 1, 2003... Sydney has one of the most wonderful natural sights in the world, with huge centre city parks coming down to the vast natural harbour, which still in some places retains its original bush vegetation, and in others is dominated by skyscrapers...

Lab experiments: a remarkable new civic heart for Melbourne combines traditional urban qualities with wilfully anti-human geometry.
May 1, 2003... Architecturally, Melbourne is wacky. For a long time, the capital of Victoria seemed to be the seat of provincial respectability. But in the mid 1970s, tectonic culture was transformed, largely by Peter Corrigan of Edmund and Corrigan, who...

Urban orchestration: formally imaginative and technically assured, Renzo Piano's s concert hall complex in Rome is also a civic place in the city's best tradition.
May 1, 2003... Befitting the epithet of Eternal City, Rome has waited a long time for its new Parco della Musica. Renzo Piano's arrestingly zoomorphic trio of scarab-shaped concert halls marks the culmination of a typically protracted Italian saga that began...

Learning curve: on a difficult site and with a complicated programme, the architects have generated a building that offers many forms of leisure to its academic community.
May 1, 2003... Universities used to be forbidding places, with large and pompous buildings headed by inscriptions in Latin, and campuses dotted with warnings to keep off the grass. The passer-by was supposed to know that scholarship required a respectful...

Hotel Bohemia: a hotel in the Old Town of Prague adds to urban richness, as well as providing a civilized place to stay in the city centre.
May 1, 2003... Prague is a city of enormous and invigorating stylistic diversity. Its magic arises from its disposition either side of the Vltava river, with Prague Castle omnipresent on the left bank, dominating the city's labyrinthine streets and squares,...

Pleasure dome: Pachinko is the national game of Japan, and Itsuko Hasegawa has invented a suburban temple type to celebrate it.
May 1, 2003... Pachinko is an immensely popular pastime but almost solely limited to Japan. Every Japanese city seems studded with pachinko parlours, easily detectable by their bright signs in rather pretty pastel-coloured fluorescent tubes. Inside, through...

Eating in and out: a crisply dressed restaurant complex smoothly elides interior and exterior, and provides a rich variety of particular spaces for social interaction. (Interior Design).
May 1, 2003... The lunch complex that Camenzind Grafensteiner have built in Zurich for the Swiss headquarters of Siemens, the electrical giant, caters for 700 people at a time, both staff and general public. It contains three restaurants and a cafeteria, in...

Underground waters: design of a spa for a Gloucestershire hotel makes it an inconspicuous part of a newly designed landscape. (Interior Design).
May 1, 2003... The spa, designed by de Matos Storey Ryan, is part of a new hotel created out of Cowley Manor, a restored mansion in Gloucestershire. Before being acquired for conversion in 1999, the manor had been an old people's home. Said to date from...

Tokyo translucence: this new living and work space in Tokyo makes the most of a tight urban site and lyrically reinterprets Japanese tradition. (AR House).
May 1, 2003... Over the past decade, Kengo Kuma has made brilliant use of clear glass, wooden slats, bamboo, precast concrete, and, most recently, plastic, to create membranes and grilles that dematerialize structure and achieve wondrous optical illusions....

Trilux. (Product Review: Lighting).
May 1, 2003... Trilux's 504 and 505 series of single lamp, surface-mounted and suspended luminaires are characterized by their timeless slender design. Their multi-lamp technology is a new feature allowing operation of T5 lamps at different wattages. ...

Ansorg. (Product Review: Lighting).
May 1, 2003... On Barcelona's Placa Commercial, Ansorg have recently launched their new showroom in collaboration with Belux, Visplay and Vizona. Together in one space, the new multiple-occupancy showroom will exploit synergies that will benefit clients,...

Siteco. (Product Review: Lighting).
May 1, 2003... The SiCOMPACT A2 MINI and S2 MINI are the latest additions to the wide-ranging selection of floodlights from Siteco. 503. With the asymmetrical beam of the A2 MINI and the symmetrical beam of the S2 MINI, these models complete Sitecos versatile...

Martin. (Product Review: Lighting).
May 1, 2003... The Cyclo series from Martin Architectural adds a new dimension to interior lighting, with a new range of colour changing washlights with RGB mixing or colour correction control. As a slim surface-mounted fitting, it is perfect for cove,...

Fagerhult. (Product Review: Lighting).
May 1, 2003... Notor is a slender and minimal anodized aluminium luminaire with clean square lines. With a T5 light source. Notor satisfies high design and performance aspirations making it an ideal fitting in rooms where simplicity is sought. Enquiry...

Shopkit. (Product Review: Lighting).
May 1, 2003... These suspended lighting gantries are new additions to Shopkit Designs TZ low voltage range. For drops of up to one metre, the power reaches the lighting gantry via the fine suspension cables, while drops of a greater length are powered from a...

Kreon. (Product Review: Lighting).
May 1, 2003... Secret is a new lighting concept from Kreon that can be fully integrated within the depth of the internal finishes of a room. As a recessed fitting, all versions in this range are invisible when the light fitting is turned off, however, when...

Louis Poulsen. (Product Review: Lighting).
May 1, 2003... Icon Mini, 509, is an outdoor fixture distinguished by its simple and sturdy design. With the flexibility to incorporate a variety of optic systems. each installation can be tailored to its specific location, creating a natural ceiling for...

Regent. (Product Review: Lighting).
May 1, 2003... With its Micro Downlight Technology (MDT), Regent is revolutionizing glare-free lighting, creating comfortable lighting conditions. Several hundred micro-downlighters, deep-drawn from aluminium reflector material, and an inner reflector ensure...

Corus Kalzip. (Specifier's Information).
May 1, 2003... Kalzip's ski slope' roof and vertically clad flue stack at the Hutchison Medical Research Council Building forms a striking landmark at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge. The building is roofed with PVF2 finish silver Kalzip 65/400 aluminium...

Reynaers Ltd. (Specifier's Information).
May 1, 2003... Merlin Sunscreening Systems announces its recent acquisition by the Reynaers Aluminium Group. As specialists in aluminium solar shading devices, Merlin Sunscreening market intemal blind and external brise-soleil systems, providing a total...

Gooding Aluminium. (Specifier's Information).
May 1, 2003... A sensational makeover has taken place at the Foundry Niteclub, Carlow, Ireland, where Gooding Aluminium's stunning range of Impressional decorative cladding panels has been given star billing in creating the coolest hotspot in town. Niall...

S & P Coil Products. (Specifier's Information).
May 1, 2003... S & P Coil Products have opened a permanent office in Dubai in response to the rapidly growing use of heat pipes in air conditioning units across the Middle East. SPCs patented heat pipes, which substantially improve indoor air quality by...

Potter & Soar. (Specifier's Information).
May 1, 2003... Potter & Soar's textured architectural mesh was used to clad the new Courthouse building at Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam, Niagara mesh has been hung from all sides of the building creating an attractive, cost-effective facade covering 80% of the...

Wright Style. (Specifier's Information).
May 1, 2003... Wright Style, an innovative steel and glazing specialist, has introduced a structural glazing system for use in flush-fitting glass facades. The SG system removes the need for extemal pressure plates and capping profiles, giving exciting...

Kawneer. (Specifier's Information).
May 1, 2003... Kawneer UK has a new corporate style for its communications materials following its acquisition by Alcoa Building and Construction Systems. Across the range of product information, advertising, corporate brochures, newsletters and sales...

Weko Baureihe T. (Specifier's Information).
May 1, 2003... While some may think that furniture often lags behind the efficiency of modern architecture in gaining maximum flexibility with minimum expenditure, Weko offers a new development. Two tablestands of Baureihe T and a simple connection element...

Repairing the American Metropolis: Common Place Revisited. (Limits of Unified Theory).(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... By Douglas Kelbaugh. Washington: University of Washington Press. 2002. [pounds sterling]22.95 In the last decade, the New Urbanism has come to dominate much of the discussion of urban design in the United States. Repairing the American...

Building the post-war world. (What Went Wrong With Utopia).(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... By Nicholas Bullock. London: Routledge. 2002. [pounds sterling]24.99 This is a full and fascinating account of how Britain endeavoured to rebuild itself after the last war. A first reaction is to demand further research on the subject,...

Imperial Delhi. (Delhi Described).(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... By Andreas Volwahsen. London: Prestel. 2002. [pounds sterling]45 DOME OVER INDIA. RASHTRAPATI BHAVAN By Aman Nath. New Delhi: President's Secretariat, Rashtrapati Bhavan, in association with India Book House, Mumbai. Distributed by...

Landscape and identity in early modern Rome: Villa culture at frascati in the Borghese era. (Renaissance Rome and The Land).(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... By Tracy L. Ehrlich, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2002. [pounds sterling]70 It is a remarkable demonstration of the conservative nature of American academic life that scholars throughout that great republic should continue to...

Xtreme houses. (Riposte to Architects).(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... By Courtenay Smith and Sean Topham. London: Prestel. 2002. [pounds sterling] 22.95 Two non-architects, not unreasonably depressed by the houses on the market, have responded by gathering a collection of buildings and ideas showing...

Landscrapers: Building with the Land. (Hugging the Ground).(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... By Aaron Betsky. London: Thames and Hudson. 2002. [pounds sterling]29.95 There's this standard publishing formula for architecture books. It goes thus: a fifteen to thirty thousand word overview essay occupying the first quarter of the...

Delight.(review of book picturing Pompeiian ruins)(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... THE DISCOVERY OF THE RUINS OF POMPEII HAD AN IMMENSE EFFECT ON WESTERN IMAGINATION IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. A FINE NEW BOOK EXPLORES SOME OF THE IMPACT OF THE REVELATIONS. One of the frescoes of the Macellum in Pompeii, now thought to...