The Architectural Review articles from October 2007

The Architectural Review archives from October 2007

Culture and continuity.(Aga Khan Awards )(Viewpoint essay)
October 1, 2007... The Aga Khan Awards (which we will publish next month) have just completed their 10th cycle and thus a 30-year period in which ideas about architecture, culture and continuity have undergone profound change, not least as a result of the...

Conserving energy: Foster + Partners are working with Libya on plans for the world's first regional-scale conservation and development project in the Green Mountain area.(view)
October 1, 2007... The topography of the east Libyan coastline is unusual in that behind the coastal strip, massive limestone escarpments step back in two levels, rising to a height of 600 metres. This Green Mountain region covers an area of 5500sq km and over...

Time to enter Mipim/AR awards.(view)
October 1, 2007... Entries are invited for the Mipim AR Future Project Awards 2008. There are eight categories this year which will be presented at MIPIM in Cannes in March 2008. All entries will be featured in the official catalogue and will be on show at MIPIM....

Living steel winners.(view)(2nd International Architecture Competition for Sustainable Housing)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Last month Living Steel announced the winners of the 2nd International Architecture Competition for Sustainable Housing, which challenged entrants to design efficient and innovative housing solutions using steel construction to meet the demands...

Peter Cook: sowing the seeds for a new wave of vegetation on buildings.(view)
October 1, 2007... Here in Northern Europe a damp summer has reminded us of the remarkable vivaciousness of all the green stuff that we take for granted. My Tel-Avivian wife calls it our 'automatic garden' comparing it with her mother's garden which has to be...

Coop Himmelb(l)au's BMW Welt (BMW World) will be unveiled in Munich on 20 October.(view)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Coop Himmelb(l)au's BMW Welt (BMW World) will be unveiled in Munich on 20 October. The building's main element is a large permeable hall with a sculptural roof and a double cone which emerges in relation to the existing headquarters complex....

The stone and the Feather: culture unites us and makes us human, but our expectations of the buildings that contain it continue to evolve.(comment)
October 1, 2007... Philip Larkin, that famous poetic miserabilist, once declared 'What will survive of us is love'. (1) Qin Shihuangdi, the First August Divine Emperor of China, might have begged to disagree. He created the famous terracotta army, a 7000 strong...

Lighting up the Midwest: translucent lanterns shelter Steven Holl's new addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum.
October 1, 2007... Too many new art museums and additions to old institutions are clamouring for attention and neglecting the experience that brings visitors back. In Kansas City, the Nelson-Atkins got it right--through meticulous planning, fundraising to endow...

Silent witness: thirty years after Stirling brought Po-Mo to Stuttgart, David Chipperfield reinstates Classical order.
October 1, 2007... When discussing his work, David Chipperfield ensures that the prosaic and poetic are given equal airtime. In consideration of the Museum of Modern Literature at Marbach am Neckar, when describing challenges of designing a destination museum in...

Celtic Tiger, subtle cat: McCullough Mulvin's new cultural centre invigorates a small town in rural Ireland.
October 1, 2007... Thurles is a busy rural town with remnants of a fortified medieval plan and such architectural elements as a Roman Catholic cathedral complete with Italianate baptistery and campanile. To the north-east, at a bridge across the River Suir, the...

Stones, scrolls and scholars: I.M. Pei makes a poignant return to his native Suzhou.
October 1, 2007... Although the city of Suzhou was founded in the sixth century, during the Ming and Qing dynasties of the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries it flourished as the Florence of China, according to the architect Ieoh Ming Pei. Painters, scholars...

Walking on water: Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa apply their reductivist rigour to Almere's new arts centre.
October 1, 2007... By all the laws of nature, God and physics, Almere should not exist. A city of 150000 souls, it sits on land heroically clawed back from the muddy waters of the Zuider Zee. Through centuries of the Protestant work ethic and hydro engineering,...

From Rocha with love: fashion designer John Rocha's Mayfair flagship is a subtle remodelling of a historic hostelry.(interior design)
October 1, 2007... In Mayfair, the apparently simple act of shopping for clothes has become a kind of modern religion. Defined by Bond Street, Conduit Street and Dover Street, London's Golden Triangle of apparel temples is a high-end testament to the priestly...

Copper in Architecture Awards 13.
October 1, 2007... This is the 13th iteration of a design-led competition celebrating the use of copper in architecture in all its various forms. Although started in the UK, over the last few years it has developed to recognise the best recently completed...

Specifier's information.
October 1, 2007... Corus Architecture practice RPS Burks Green specified Colorcoat HPS200[R] from Corus in Wedgwood Blue (roof) Merlin Grey and White (walls). The product was used as part of a Euroclad SF500 system for the roof. The colours chosen for the...

Modern Greek.(Book review)
October 1, 2007... CONSTANTINOS A. DOXIADIS: TEXTS, DESIGN DRAWINGS, SETTLEMENTS Edited by Alexandros-Andreas Kyrtsis. Athens: Ikaros Publications. 2007. [euro]84 Head of a global architectural and urban planning consultancy unrivalled in its quality and...

Elegiac spirit.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... EVOCATIONS OF PLACE: THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF EDWIN SMITH By Robert Elwall. Merrell, 2007. 176pp. [pounds sterling]35 The title of this book is well chosen because Edwin Smith's photos are imbued with the spirit of place. On the cover is an...

Case study analysis.(Book review)
October 1, 2007... MODERN ARCHITECTURE THROUGH CASE STUDIES, 1945-1990 By Peter Blundell Jones and Eamonn Canniffe. Oxford: Architectural Press, 2007. [pounds sterling]29.99 The first volume of Peter Blundell Jones's Modern Architecture Through Case...

Networking.(Network Practices: New Strategies in Architecture and Design)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... NETWORK PRACTICES--NEW STRATEGIES IN ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN Edited by Anthony Burke and Therese Tierney. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. 2007. [pounds sterling]18 The architectural world needs to develop tactics of networked...

The Lost Vanguard.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... The Lost Vanguard documents the work of Modernist architects in the Soviet Union during the years following the 1917 revolution. Introduced by Phyllis Lambert, beautifully depicted by Richard Pare's powerful photographs, and written by...

China's Terracotta Army: the life and afterlife of China's First Emperor at the British Museum.(reviews)(The First Emperor: China's Terracotta Army)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... In 1974, Mr Yang, a farmer in Xi'an, was digging a well when he struck the clay head of a terracotta warrior. This turned out to be the most spectacular archaeological discovery of the twentieth century (or arguably ever). The warriors, in...

As autumn draws on, Sutherland Lyall goes bobbing for cyber apples.(browser)(www.cilyscape.be)(Cityscape)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Belgian www.cilyscape.be is about a gigantic tangle of wood by local artist Arne Quinze which is to stand for a year on a building site in the luxury district of Brussels. Cityscape, as it's called, is an amorphous shape 40m long, 25m wide, 18m...

Cool communicator.(browser)(Bibliotheque Nationale de France)(www.perraullarchitecte.com)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Bibliotheque Nationale de France architect, Dominique Perrault, has his site at www.perraullarchitecte.com. Click on English at the top right where, like a proper gent, he has a credits pull-down for the web team. It has to be said that this is...

Steamroller.(browser)(www.adparchitecls.co.uk)(Architects Design Partnership)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Architects Design Partnership's site at www.adparchitecls.co.uk is a very complete site. You go from Home, through News, Profile, Projects, People and Contact to Careers. There arc drop-downs associated with many of these including the four...

Judging books by their covers.(browser)(www.bloglikeyougiveadamn)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... I almost passed over www.bloglikeyougiveadamn.blogspot.com/ on the grounds that I didn't. It is the blog for Architecture for Humanity Minneapolis run by Colin Kloecker who runs a photo of only quarter of his face. Be a man, face up to it you...

What's in a name?(browser)(http://architechnophilia.blogspot.com)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... It's difficult not to enjoy architectural site names. How could you resist Architechnophilia at http://architechnophilia.blogspot.com? When I looked at it in September it looked like the beginning of an architectural plan book but a bit of...

Diary.(Pinakothek der Moderne)(Royal Academy of the Arts)(SCI-Arc Gallery)(Diary entry)
October 1, 2007... AR'S CHOICE OF INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITIONS FROM WWW.ARPLUS.COM GERMANY ARCHITECTURE, PEOPLE AND RESOURCES: BAUMSCHLAGER & EBERLE 2002-2007 Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich From II October to 13 January Exhibition of work by...

Delight: in a Tokyo Department Store, Japanese artist Eriko Horiki explores the potential of washi.
October 1, 2007... Kyoto-based designer Eriko Horiki has described her design philosophy as reawakening the sense of wonder and appreciation of the beauty of paper. Writing in 1964, in his seminal work The Japanese House, Heinrich Engel observed that 'It is the...