The Architectural Review articles from May 2004

The Architectural Review archives from May 2004

State modern--behind the curtain: young architects on display in Moscow while van Egeraat is turned down; Highest-rise living proposed in Manchester, England; Patrick Nuttgens obituary; Browser reviews Zaha Hadid't mysterious website; Blobs in Birmingham and Graz--is there any real difference?; View from Phnom Penh.(View)
May 1, 2004... The three drapes that hung in the centre of Moscow's handsome Gostiny Dvor exhibition hall were, in reality, far weightier than their lightweight appearance initially suggested. In separating the fourth biennial FIDExpo from the innaugural 100%...

High life: Manchester joins London's residential race to reach for the skies.(View)
May 1, 2004... With demolitions complete and piling under way, work is progressing on site to create the UK's highest living space. The 48-storey building designed by Manchester-based Ian Simpson Architects, will include over 200 skyline apartments and a...

Pat Nuttgens.(Obituary)(Obituary)
May 1, 2004... Patrick Nuttgens was a magician. I was lucky enough to have him as my tutor in my first years as a student. He was always challenging, witty, kind (though never soft on laziness, either mental or physical), full of enthusiasm, thoughtful,...

Sutherland Lyall races through the labyrinths of the world-wide web.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Feed from the hand that bites One school of thought says you can't have too many newsfeeds about architecture and the arts. The other says yes we certainly do. Whichever, here's another one which comes much recommended by the Architects'...

Diva divine all architects excelling.(Browser)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... And so to the website of the extraordinary Zaha Hadid at www.zaha-hadid.com. Slightly scarily you are greeted by a black screen and there at the bottom right through a veil of moving vertical lines is a black and white head view of Herself....

Moving picture show.(web site personalization)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Remember that great Rice Daubney site which used (and at www.ricedaubney.com.au/ still uses) animated figures and lets you meet and hear members of this Sydney practice? Since then there has been an explosion of site personalization--OK, a mild...

Get a move on MAK.(Mak Architects, services)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Another site which uses animation is that of MAK at www.makarchitects.co.uk. The London practice had a bit of a contretemps last month. There is no mention of this in the 'news' section but at the time it announced that its members were going...

It's a sad, Mac world.(Cult of Mac, new service)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... There are lots of web-shrines to the great Mac designer and High Hierophant Jonathan Ives, many of them surfed and even run by devotees from the world of architecture and design. But now that essential internet institution, Wired magazine has...

Slugs and jack-fruit.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2004... SIR: Birmingham and Graz now share examples of your 'Monstrosities'. Good, new architecture surely should be neighbourly, not just 'creative interventions', any old how. With others there before them, it is quite ill-mannered to be quite...

An 'unqualified disaster'.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2004... SIR: Last night I was looking at your March 2004 issue featuring the blobby plastic Kunsthaus in Graz by Peter Cook. Admittedly the surrealistic juxtaposition of The Thing That Swallowed Tokyo against the Neo-Classical Hapsburg fabric of Graz...

Meier no Kahn.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2004... SIR: Your leader on Light and Dark (AR April, p46), was a fine evocation of the spirit of Louis Kahn. Bring back the magic of shadows. Despite this, your presentation of Meier's Church illustrated a relentless flood of light with little space...

Power of the divine.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2004... SIR: I found your April issue revealing in many ways; Richard Meier's somewhat bombastic Visitor's Centre in California made a curious contrast in scale and aspirations with his (long overdue) church in Rome. Though for the Rome project it...

A fine example.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2004... SIR: Congratulations on finding and publishing the little house in central London by Jamie Fobert (AR April, p87). It is exactly the kind of project that shows what the architectural profession can do in the most difficult of circumstances, a...

Dazzling neighbour.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2004... SIR: I was impressed by your coverage of Frank Gehry's new Disney Hall (AR March p54); LA has a new civic monument. But I wondered whether the glare of the California sun on the polished metal cladding might not make the building an...

Moving Image Centre, Sydney.(Erratum)(Correction Notice)
May 1, 2004... Sauerbruch Hutton were the winners of the international competition for the Moving Image Centre in Sydney, Australia, not as stated in AR May 2003.

Diary.(Calendar)
May 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 FRANCE JOAN MIRO Until 28 June Centre Pompidou, Paris Focusing on...

View from Phnom Penh: the formerly elegant Cambodian capital was one of the many victims of the country's civil wars. It is now at peace, and attention can finally turn to restoring its rich architectural heritage.
May 1, 2004... In April 1967, Lee Kwan Yew was invited to Phnom Penh by Cambodia's Prince Norodom Sihanouk. Cruising along the capital's elegant boulevards in his Mercedes convertible, the Singaporean premier turned to his host and mused, 'I hope, one day,...

Spectrum preview.(Design Review)
May 1, 2004... Spectrum 2004, the annual international furniture and interior design show, takes place between 18 and 21 May in the Commonwealth Institute on Kensington High Street, London. For the second year running, the AR is mounting an evening lecture,...

The office: offices change constantly as new management theories and communication systems transform the nature of work. While some new employment environments enhance workers' lives, others are distinctly sinister.
May 1, 2004... All workplaces now tend to the condition of the office. Even in factories, developments in automation and information processing ensure that work is in general supervisory, rather than laborious in the old-fashioned sense: no longer do people...

The Cabinet of Dr : gently subverting Berlin's urban matrix, the new Dutch Embassy is an expressionist labyrinth with a surprisingly informal interior realm.(Cover Story)
May 1, 2004... The new Dutch Embassy in Berlin is a classic Koolhaas building. It reveals traces of some of his best known works and concepts, such as the external metaphoric materialism of the Rotterdam Kunsthal and the internal structural and functional...

Civic dignity: part of a programme of imaginative municipal building in Ireland, these new offices inventively address concerns of form, site and environment.(Bucholz McEvoy, Dublin-based partnership of Merrit Bucholz and Karen McEvoy)
May 1, 2004... With the construction of new local authority buildings all over the country, Ireland is undergoing something of a municipal renaissance. Encouragingly, rather than opt for lowest common denominator methods of commissioning and design, the Irish...

Urban rationale: these new municipal offices for a small Irish town meld old and new elements into a highly civilized yet clearly modern urban presence.
May 1, 2004... Like Bucholz McEvoy's building in Limerick (p58), these new civic offices in Tubbercurry form part of Ireland's ongoing programme of municipal reorganization that has generated a wave of distinctive new architecture. McCullough Mulvin's project...

Tropical umbrella: manipulating shade and skin, Yeang suggests ways to make energy-efficient tropical offices.
May 1, 2004... Research by design is a critical factor in the ongoing evolution of Ken Yeang's architecture. Smaller projects are used to test ideas that are then selectively applied to skyscrapers and other large building types. In a series of projects...

Nature abstracted: a building that combines offices and shopping on one of Tokyo's most posh streets responds to contexts both physical and historical.
May 1, 2004... With its chichi shops and cafes sheltering under mature zelkova trees, Omotesando is Tokyo's equivalent of the Champs Elysees. In scale and ambience this grand boulevard is more European than the dense, jumbled Japanese streetscape. At its west...

Athenian transformations: Athens is undergoing traumatic transformations in preparation for the Olympics. Report by Jim Antoniou.(Place)
May 1, 2004... Greece is renowned as the homeland of the Olympic Games in honour of the god Zeus at Olympia, now the mute ruins of the Palaestra, or training ground. Training was gruelling work, so much so that the Greek word for competing games, agones,...

Squaring the circle: fitting square pegs into a round hole--how do you fit out radial floor plates? Bennett interior design are the first to tackle Foster's 30 St Mary Axe.(Interior Design)
May 1, 2004... At City Hall (AR August 2002), Foster and Partners justified the use of circular floor plates within a distorted spherical form, as a means of reducing solar gain. (Enclosing maximum volume within minimum envelope.) Likewise, at 30 St Mary Axe...

Stepped box: this multi-generational house in Kyoto makes inventive use of a confined site.(AR House)
May 1, 2004... On a quiet street in the north Kyoto neighbourhood of Shimogamo is an enigmatic spectacle--a white concrete box, lofted above a carport and broken only by a ribbon of windows and a single porthole to one side. Aluminum panels on the rear wall...

Milan.(Product Review)
May 1, 2004... Judging from the locust-like crowds swarming around the showgrounds and showrooms, Milan's insatiable appetite for the elegant (welcome reissues of Charlotte Perriand's oeuvre by Cassina), the fashionably provocative (Arad, Starck, Droog et al)...

Simply Washrooms.(Specifier's Information)
May 1, 2004... An innovative stainless steel washroom collection has been launched by Simply Washrooms, the new nationwide washroom and utilities specialist. The comprehensive product portfolio, which combines contemporary style with high performance, spans...

John Sydney.(Specifier's Information)
May 1, 2004... John Sydney's design JS2 has been named as the best brassware launch of 2003 by Bathroom Journal, which paid tribute to the company for successfully putting the John Sydney brand firmly back in the market. John Sydney's bathroom collection is...

E-Motive display.(Specifier's Information)
May 1, 2004... E-Motive has supplied a lift monitoring system to the Constellation Office Tower in Los Angeles. The monitoring system tracks real-time lift movement and current status of all cars. Remote operational control allows commands to each lift...

Armourcoat.(Specifier's Information)
May 1, 2004... At the redevelopment of the BP facility in Sunbury-on-Thames by Broadway Malyan, Armourcoat was asked to create unique walls reflecting the company's identity. Armourcoat applied 235m (2) of blended Spatulata in 17 different colours....

Potter & Soar.(Specifier's Information)
May 1, 2004... Potter & Soar has introduced Tsunami, a welded mesh featuring flat wires. An alternative to expanded metals and other mesh products, Tsunami's simple design is translucent while offering, say the manufacturers, extraordinary strength to weight...

LS Longden.(Specifier's Information)
May 1, 2004... Twenty seven single and double doorsets have recently been supplied by LS Longden for use within a luxury Thames side house in London. Including BWF-CERTIFIRE certified fire doors, all doors, frames, architraves, plinth-blocks and skirtings...

Barlo plastics.(Specifier's Information)
May 1, 2004... Designers now have a new world of colour to work with as Barlo has added a contemporary colour palette to its cast acrylic design sheet. It includes exotic colours such as Tahiti Blue and Bali Green through to cooler shades like Iceland White...

RIDI.(Specifier's Information)
May 1, 2004... RIDI Lighting has produced the Corona, a circular wall-mounted luminaire. It uses the circular fluorescent 40W TS lamp, which is combined with a cross-section rectangular housing to create a luminaire intended for school, restaurant and...

Malcontent?(Content: Triumph of Realization)(Book Review)
May 1, 2004... CONTENT: TRIUMPH OF REALIZATION Edited by Rem Koolhaas. Cologne: Taschen. 2004. [pounds sterling]6.99 This revolting comic book for students--revolting in its tortuous graphic and typographical design, revolting in its charmless...

Opera becomes phantom.(The Saga of Sydney Opera House)(Book Review)
May 1, 2004... THE SAGA OF SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE By Peter Murray, London; Spon Press. 2003. [pounds sterling]19.99 'The Tragedy of Sydney Opera House' might have been a more appropriate title for this book which, were it not for the physical result of...

Foster's new gospel.(Norman Foster--Works Volume I)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2004... NORMAN FOSTER--WORKS VOLUME I Edited by David Jenkins. London: Prestel. 2003. [pounds sterling]60 This is a big book for a big architect. 1989 saw the start of a series of five volumes chronicling the work of Foster and his office;...

Claude no more.(Modern Landscape)(Book Review)
May 1, 2004... MODERN LANDSCAPE By Michael Spens. London: Phaidon, 2003. [pounds sterling]45 Phaidon has come late in the current race to get this season's big landscape book on the sales shelves. Happily for the author of Modern Landscape, Michael...

Seeing the future.(Shigeru Ban )(Book Review)
May 1, 2004... SHIGERU BAN By Matilda McQuaid. London: Phaidon, 2003. [pounds sterling]45 'Shigeru Ban is the future', Frei Otto writes in his introduction to the work of this 'real building artist'. Thirty-two projects, nearly all from the past...

Future urbane.(Cities of Innovation: Shaping Places for High-Tech)(Book Review)
May 1, 2004... CITIES OF INNOVATION: SHAPING PLACES FOR HIGH-TECH By Marcial Echenique, Barry Pearce, William Fawcett and Jason Palmer, Cambridge: The Cambridge-MIT Institute. 2003. [pounds sterling]25 The technology cluster or research park has...

Domus classicus.(The Roman House And Social Identity)(Book Review)
May 1, 2004... THE ROMAN HOUSE AND SOCIAL IDENTITY By Shelley Hales. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2003. [pounds sterling]55 The Roman house enjoys enduring respect as an emblematic response to its environment, and the Mediterranean climate...

Villa Lante's miraculous and gentle balance between humanity and nature continues to inspire.(Delight)(Villa Lante, at Bagnaia, 40 miles north of Rome)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... The Villa Lante, at Bagnaia some 40 miles north of Rome, was built (probably by Vignola) for Cardinal Gambara in the 1570s. It has often been described as the most beautiful garden of the Italian Renaissance, and it remains, scrupulously...