Archinect - News

Zaha Hadid: Britain must do more to help encourage its women architects

2013-02-17T10:31:00-05:00

In a damning indictment of the prevailing culture of her own profession, Dame Zaha Hadid, the world's leading female architect, says she has faced "more misogynist behaviour" in London than anywhere else in Europe and that things are not improving at all for women in architecture.

Bristol's architect mayor wants the city to be a 'laboratory for change'

2013-01-21T14:11:00-05:00

"I'm going to be intolerant of bad architecture," he says, describing how the former head of planning was a highways engineer who "let anything and everything through – including office blocks stacked on top of multistorey car parks. "My idea of good architecture is about creating place. It's not about providing glitzy iconic buildings, competing one against the other, but how we use the best of what we've got."

The UK’s Most ‘Outstanding’ Green Building

2012-12-20T20:23:00-05:00

The building, known as 1 Angel Square, has been designed to deliver a 50 per cent reduction in energy consumption compared to The Co-operative’s current Manchester complex and an 80 per cent reduction in carbon. This will lead to operating costs being lowered by up to 30 per cent.

David Adjaye is number one this year on the list of Britain's most influential black people

2012-11-01T19:14:00-04:00

This year, David Adjaye, whom President Obama refers to as his favourite architect, is at number one on the list, selected by a panel of independent judges working from a definition of influence as "the ability to alter events and change lives in a positive way".

UK Government bans curved, glass and folding walls and orders concrete ceilings and render cladding to cut costs

2012-10-02T19:09:00-04:00

Curves are to be banned in a new generation of no-frills school buildings, according to a government crackdown on what it believes is wasteful extravagance in educational architecture. Design templates unveiled for 261 replacement school buildings also prohibit folding internal partitions to subdivide classrooms, roof terraces that can be used as play areas, glazed walls and translucent plastic roofs.

Cutty Sark wins award as worst new building in Britain

2012-09-13T13:37:00-04:00

The architects, Grimshaw, have taken something delicate and beautiful and surrounded it with a building that looks like a 1980s bus station. Clumsy and ineptly detailed, their new glass greenhouse around the Cutty Sark totally ruins her thrilling lines, obscures much of her exquisite gilding and cynically forces anyone who actually wants to see her to pay their £12 and go inside.

2012 RIBA Award Winners Announced

2012-06-25T14:45:00-04:00

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has announced the winners of the 2012 RIBA Awards. Honored for architectural excellence are 50 buildings in the UK and 9 buildings elsewhere in the EU. The shortlist for the RIBA Stirling Prize for the building of the year will be drawn from the 59 RIBA Award winners.

Residential skyscrapers come of age in Britain

2012-04-12T12:23:00-04:00

Because towers take so long to plan and construct, the current crop reflect a vision up to a decade old, reckons Nick Offer of Arup, an engineering firm. Economic conditions and the scale of such projects mean that only the very brave will invest now... In 2010 the coalition scrapped the previous, Labour government’s density targets, which were designed to encourage developers to build more units. Instead it has endorsed “garden cities”

The Story of Straw... and how to use straw in a modern building.

2012-02-04T20:33:00-05:00

Construction was completed on a new straw bale building for the University of Nottingham which brings together the School of Biosciences and the School of Veterinary and Medical Sciences. The project is the first stage of a 20-year visionary masterplan for the university's Sutton Bonington Campus.

View The University of Nottingham - The Gateway Building in Make's Archinect profile.

Big RIBA Award Winners Roundup on Bustler

2011-10-03T18:03:39-04:00

Last Saturday, October 1, the Royal Institute of Architects, RIBA, not only awarded the 2011 Stirling Prize to Zaha Hadid Architects for the best new European building built or designed in the United Kingdom—the office's second consecutive Stirling Prize win—but also presented this year's winners of the prestigious RIBA Lubetkin Prize, Stephen Lawrence Prize, and RIBA Client of the Year.

On our sister site Bustler, we introduce the award winners in detail:

Check the image gallery below for images of the 2011 award winners.

British architecture: from Georgian to the present day

2011-09-13T12:21:24-04:00

The rise of housing followed the rise of a prosperous middle class driven by the Industrial Revolution, an event that helped to reshape architecture from the 18th century until now.

Carbuncle Cup 2011: MediaCityUK is crowned Britain's ugliest new building

2011-09-01T13:46:20-04:00

There were other strong contenders, but the 2011 Carbuncle Cup for Britain's "ugliest new building" has been awarded to the £600m MediaCityUK. This concatenation of anaemic buildings is the controversial new regional headquarters of the BBC, and home to the media studies faculty of Salford University.

Get set for druids in golf buggies at Stonehenge

2011-08-31T14:56:46-04:00

Now the British government is preparing to close the road around [Stonehenge], restoring the stones' heathland setting, while a new visitors' centre is constructed 2.5km away. In the new design, hundreds of thousands of sightseers will reach the site via the centre on a lightweight transit system. Expect druids in golf buggies.

Constructive criticism: the week in architecture

2011-08-12T16:03:54-04:00

In a week dominated by images of buildings burning to the ground, there have been at least a few people out there still building the things. The press was granted a preview of King's Cross station's new concourse, ahead of its opening in time for the Olympics next year. Designed by architect John McAslan, it is a majestically conceived space which stands alongside the Grade 1-listed sheds and replaces the cramped and grotty 1960s extension that currently serves as the station's entrance.

Five International Buildings Shortlisted for the 2011 RIBA Lubetkin Prize

2011-07-25T14:50:10-04:00

More breaking award news from the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA): the shortlist for the 2011 RIBA Lubetkin Prize, given to the best international building outside the European Union, has been announced.

RIBA Stirling Prize 2011 Shortlist Announced

2011-07-25T13:57:34-04:00

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has unveiled the shortlist for the prestigious £20,000 ($32.5K) RIBA Stirling Prize. This year is the first time the shortlist includes practices who have all previously been shortlisted for the RIBA Stirling Prize; and also includes two RIBA Stirling Prize winners: David Chipperfield Architects and Zaha Hadid Architects.

3XN-Designed Museum of Liverpool to Launch July 19th

2011-07-14T14:22:00-04:00

The new Museum of Liverpool, designed by Copenhagen-based 3XN, will open its doors to the public next week Tuesday, July 19. The dynamic low-rise structure is the largest National Museum to be built in the UK in over 100 years and is situated on a UNESCO World Heritage Site next to Liverpool’s famous ’Three Graces’.

Peter Zumthor’s Serpentine Gallery Pavilion Opens this Friday

2011-06-29T13:29:00-04:00

Peter Zumthor's first completed building in the UK opens this Friday, July 1: the 2011 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion. The concept for this year’s Pavilion is the hortus conclusus, a contemplative room, a garden within a garden. One enters the building from the lawn and begins the transition into the central garden, a place abstracted from the world of noise and traffic and the smells of London – an interior space within which to sit, to walk, to observe the flowers.

The Four Quadrants of Architecture at the RA Summer Exhibition

2011-06-22T13:52:00-04:00

If you're in London this summer, don't miss to check out this year’s Architecture Room at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition, curated by Piers Gough of CZWG and Alan Stanton of Stanton Williams. The exhibition opened on June 7 and runs through August 15, 2011.

RIBA Award Winner Windmill Hill Launches in June

2011-06-10T15:50:56-04:00

June 2011 sees the launch of Windmill Hill, a new building complex on the Waddesdon Estate, northwest of London, that will serve as a research and archive center for Waddesdon and a home for the philanthropic work of the Rothschild Foundation. Designed by Stephen Marshall Architects, Windmill Hill had just been recognized for its architectural excellence with a RIBA award and will open to the public on June 18.

buried treasure

2011-05-27T19:39:54-04:00

This lovely underground home is slated to be the first zero-carbon home in the North West of England. Designed by Make Architects, this 4-bedroom oasis leaves the views of nature in tact above the ground while creating spaces filled with light and space below the ground plane.

RIBA Award Winners 2011 Announced

2011-05-20T20:11:09-04:00

Yesterday, we published the RIBA International Award Winners for 2011. Today, we also have the winners of the 2011 RIBA Awards, recently announced by the Royal Institute of British Architects. These awards for architectural excellence will be presented to 97 buildings in the UK and Europe (89 in the UK and 8 in the rest of the EU).

RIBA Manser Medal 2011 Longlist Announced for the Best New House in the UK

2011-05-19T19:34:05-04:00

Seventeen exceptional new homes form the longlist for the RIBA Manser Medal 2011 for the best new house or major extension in the UK in association with HSBC Private Bank. From small urban homes squeezed into tight city sites to woodland hideaways and dramatic beachfront villas, the 2011 longlist reveals some of the most cutting-edge trends in housing design and lifestyle choices and recognizes some of the UK’s most talented architects.

Roger Scruton: red rag to an architectural bull

2011-04-14T14:34:01-04:00

While Scruton maybe "pleased as punch" with himself, his column in the Times have a few in Britain "cream crackered." Both the Guardian and BdOnline have prepared their own commentary to Scruton's salacious, if not shallow, reading of contemporary architecture. As reported in this Bdonline.co.uk article "Philosopher mauls 'starchitects'," Scruton's column can be summed up by a few quotes:

"'New architecture… is designed to stand out as the work of some inspired artist who does not build for people but sculpts space for his own expressive ends.'

He claimed the resulting designs resembled 'vegetables, vehicles, hairdryers, washing machines or backyard junk' and added: 'The typical starchitect building is without a facade or an orientation that it shares with its neighbours.'

'It is designed as waste: throwaway architecture, involving vast quantities of energy-intensive materials, which will be demolished within 20 years.'"

Of course, a cage rattle of this severity usually does not ...