Archinect - News

Zaha Hadid beyond buildings: architect launches new design gallery

2013-05-23T13:01:00-04:00

She has become a global brand so desirable that her buildings in China are now being pirated – before they are even finished. So what territory is left to conquer? The answer might be found by peering through the windows of an innocuous looking building on Clerkenwell Road in east London, which opened this week as the Zaha Hadid Design Gallery, part of Clerkenwell Design Week.

Charles Correa's influence and style

2013-05-14T10:17:00-04:00

His eye-catching buildings have helped define the architecture of post-independence India.

A new exhibition at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London - which has been gifted Correa's archive - celebrates his decades-long career. The BBC's took a look with the designer, fellow architect David Adjaye.

The specter of ghost buildings in London

2013-04-06T11:33:00-04:00

The salesclerk at a Belgravia clothing boutique, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity because she did not want to get in trouble, said that at some times of the year the area was virtually abandoned. “We’ll shut for the whole of August,” she said.

Earlier this week Sarah Lyall explored how some neighborhoods in London have become "So Exclusive Even the Owners Are Visitors". This is because the owners are increasingly, superwealthy foreigners from places like Russia, Kazakhstan, Southeast Asia and India, who are purchasing a residence either as an investment or as Yolande Barnes of the real estate firm Savills explains "It’s more like buying their own private hotel" for their occasional visit to London.

As Bruce Sterling (h/t) commented over at his blog "the Gothic High-Tech soulless barns of the offshored ultra-wealthy. A city that once thrived by financialization is seeing its citizens replaced by money. It would be even more interesting if the entities owning these structures were themselves financial instruments, and never human to begin with. Maybe these 'ultraprime' structures could be purchased and owned by quant algorithms, stockmarket style"

Architects imagine a Battersea Power Station rollercoaster conversion

2013-03-11T13:40:00-04:00

Even though its current owner has boring plans to turn it into flats and a shopping complex, architects can't resist imagining new uses for Battersea Power Station. Architecture firm Atelier Zündel Cristea (AZC) is the latest, rendering a future station that's both a museum of architecture and a giant rollercoaster.

Building boom: the London developments revamping the skyline

2013-02-25T14:36:00-05:00

The London skyline has traditionally been a slow-moving beast. While cities in Asia or the United States throw up dozens of new buildings virtually overnight, the capital’s horizon evolves at a more sedate pace. That’s all changing. A clutch of thrilling new buildings is revamping the skyline and helping to fulfil the desperate demand for housing. It’s taking place all over the city, but particularly in a southern stretch between London Bridge and Lambeth.

Surface Design Award Winner: Kebony KREOD Sculpture

2013-02-21T15:27:00-05:00

KREOD, a portable wooden structure revealed in London last September, has recently been recognized with a Surface Design Award for Temporary Structure.

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.

Sou Fujimoto to Design Cloud of Steel for 2013 Serpentine Pavilion

2013-02-14T11:17:00-05:00

London’s Serpentine Gallery has selected Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto to design the 2013 Serpentine Pavilion, a temporary structure open for four months starting in June. Fujimoto’s proposal for the Kensington Gardens site continues the architect’s exploration of transparent and organically generated forms with a cloud-like structure composed of 20-mm steel poles that intersect and form a delicate linear latticework to shelter a cafe and events space below.

Construction Update of Reading Station Area Redevelopment by Grimshaw Architects

2013-02-06T12:59:00-05:00

Major construction is currently under way in Reading, England as part of the Reading Station Area Redevelopment. In this new construction update video, Mark Middleton, partner at Grimshaw Architects, is on site at Reading Station and explains how the redevelopment will double its capacity and relieve a major bottleneck in the rail network west of London.

Construction begin on Zaha's Softbridge Building at Oxford University

2013-01-31T16:33:00-05:00

Zaha Hadid visited Oxford to celebrate the start of construction works at St Antony's College.

Dubbed the 'Softbridge', the new building will be known as the The Investcorp Building on completion in the summer of 2014.

The building has been made possible through a generous donation of £11 million funded by the international alternative asset management firm, Investcorp. The guest of honour at the ground-breaking ceremony was Investcorp's Executive Chairman and CEO, Mr Nemir Kirdar.

The three-storey Softbridge building will form a suspended 'bridge' between numbers 66 and 68 Woodstock Road and provides 1,200 square metres of floor-space. Its new lecture theatre, replacing the cramped rooms where public seminars are currently held, offers 125 seats and disabled access. The building will also house a new library and purpose-built archive facility, doubling the amount of space currently available.

Mr Nemir Kirdar said: 'Investcorp was founded to create a bridge betwee...

Herzog & de Meuron to build one of London's tallest residential towers

2013-01-24T19:48:00-05:00

The Swiss practice is one of three that have been commissioned by Canary Wharf Group to design the first phase of the Wood Wharf development. Allies & Morrison has been appointed to design two new office buildings which will sit either side of the western end of the high street. The offices, aimed at IT services and new media companies, will sit above two storeys of retail.

Renzo Piano: my inspiration for the Shard

2012-12-31T12:18:00-05:00

Piano apparently sketched his idea on a restaurant napkin while meeting property developer Irvine Sellar in March 2000. According to Piano's architectural firm, RPBW, Sellar keeps the famous napkin in his offices. "He saw the beauty of the river and the railways and the way their energy blended and began to sketch in green felt pen on a napkin what he saw as a giant sail or an iceberg," Sellar recalled in a recent interview.

William Matthews, Shard Project Architect, will leave Piano to start new practice

2012-12-21T14:21:00-05:00

He has split his time between London and the French capital for the past decade but next year will open a new office in the central London architecture hotspot of Clerkenwell where his neighbours will include Zaha Hadid Architects and Wilkinson Eyre. Before he goes, Matthews has agreed to complete all his work on the Shard including the viewing gallery, due to open in February, and the restaurants on floors 31, 32 and 33 which are expected to open in the spring.

Architecture in 2012: review of the year in buildings

2012-12-18T15:06:00-05:00

In a year that saw severe funding cuts to schools, libraries and arts buildings and the delivery of new housing rattling along at its lowest level since records began in the Twenties, there weren’t too many rays of light for British architecture. And yet one, at least, shone brightly.

London future skyline is put on ice

2012-11-19T12:38:00-05:00

At least six landmark projects - worth hundreds of millions of pounds - have been put on ice or cancelled altogether. These include the 172m (564ft) 100 Bishopsgate skyscraper, on hold until developers secure enough advance tenants to make it viable. Also on hold is the so-called Can of Ham, on St Mary's Axe.

Watch Koolhaas; Hadid; Rogers Stirk Harbour; and Foster pitch their proposals for the new L&L Tower

2012-11-19T12:32:00-05:00

The series of videos below offers a fascinating insight into how this generation of "starchitects" behaves under pressure, as they each pitch to win one of the most high-profile competitions in recent years: a new tower for L&L Holding Company on Park Avenue in New York. The site has such daunting neighbours as Mies van der Rohe's Seagram building, and it will be the first full-block office tower to be built on the street in almost half a century.

Plans Unveiled for London’s Linear Park

2012-11-18T23:37:00-05:00

London’s love affair with the urban planning masterpiece that is New York’s High Line is intensifying as plans for the city’s newest urban garden space are revealed. The newly-unveiled Linear Park marks the city’s latest foray into urban parkland design. The unveiling took place at a major event hosted by landscape architects Camlins and property developers Ballymore.

Garages to provide 'pop-up' housing for homeless people

2012-11-12T12:04:00-05:00

The Pop-up HAWSE (Homes through Apprenticeships With Skills for Employment) is a proposal to convert disused lock-up garages in London's Hackney into temporary accommodation for homeless people. Conceived by Levitt Bernstein Architects for the Building Trust's Home competition, the scheme would allow an 11.5sq m bedsit to be created within a disused garage for around £13,000.

London's hidden interiors – in pictures

2012-10-29T17:37:00-04:00

From the grandeur of Whitehall to an unremarkable high street in south London, a peek behind the capital's less well-known facades reveals an amazing architectural heritage that rivals some of its most visited and celebrated sites, as these images from a new English Heritage book illustrate

Squarepusher and the Geometry of Sound

2012-10-14T23:16:00-04:00

Taking Kubrick’s 2001: Space Odyssey as an inspiration for the mood of the Sound Portal, Arup created an intimidating black rubber shape that sits in the centre of Trafalgar Square but opens up to reveal light and sky within. The facility provides the perfect environment for some of the most thoughtful and innovative recording artists in the world, including one of my favourite Tom Jenkinson a.k.a. Squarepusher I spoke to him about using ambisonic arrays and exploring sound in three dimensions.

Wild Potter Grayson Perry & FAT Design Shrine-like Cottage in Essex

2012-10-03T11:32:00-04:00

The new cottage will be decorated with sculptures, furniture, ceramics, and tapestries, all narrating her story: "a difficult childhood, young love, a truncated education, children, divorce and finally fulfilment in her career and love life," explained Perry. "The idea behind the project relates to buildings put up as memorials to loved ones, to follies, to eccentric home-built structures, to shrines, lighthouses and fairytales," the artist explained.

Frieze Masters: Architecture announced

2012-09-20T16:42:40-04:00

Frieze announced details of the architecture that will house the inaugural edition of Frieze Masters. Employing a design that aims to both literally and figuratively show art in a new light, Frieze Masters is designed by New York-based Selldorf Architects. Frieze Masters will take place 11–14 October 2012 on Gloucester Green, Regent’s Park, London.

SkyCycle: Artist's impression gives vision of Boris' planned elevated London bike network

2012-09-05T13:11:00-04:00

Drawings showing a futuristic raised glass open-top tunnel, that have drawn comparisons with New York's High Line, could become a reality as soon as 2015. Sam Martin, 43, the landscape architect who came up with the idea with a colleague two years ago, said discussions between the Mayor and Network Rail were 'going well' since an initial meeting in May and that feasibility studies over potential sites were already underway.

The architecture of London 2012 official Olympic sponsorship

2012-08-14T19:31:00-04:00

Give Coca-Cola points for architectural originality. It has built what looks like a series of red and white plastic blocks that have just been hit with buckshot and are exploding into shards. What is this thing? It is the Coca-Cola Beat Box, a “building that you can play,” as the company’s many young docents will exuberantly explain.

David Segal took readers on a tour of the corporate sponsorship pavilions at London's Olympic Park. Mr. Segal found corporate self-promotion run amok. Along with a range of architectural follies.

London 2012 BMW Pavilion by Serie Architects

2012-08-13T17:16:00-04:00

With the London 2012 Olympic Games still fondly in our memories, here is another architectural attraction you may have missed while watching the recent sporting events: the London 2012 BMW Group Pavilion designed by Serie Architects.

Olympics 2012: What happens next?

2012-08-08T13:18:00-04:00

London’s surprising win that morning was attributed to its focus on urban regeneration and legacy: perhaps the first time an Olympic bid had specifically presented the Games as merely the warm up for a longer-term rejuvenation.

Diving ticket-holders informed of obstructed views in Zaha-designed Aquatics Centre

2012-07-26T14:01:00-04:00

The 600 seats in question only concern 10-meter platform events, which start Monday. Small portions of the dives may not be visible. The Zaha Hadid-designed Aquatics Centre features a dipping roof that limits viewing from the highest seats.

The reUNION Public House

2012-07-13T21:27:00-04:00

Remember how four years ago French architecture collective EXYZT and filmmaker Sara Muzio created the acclaimed Southwark Lido, a temporary bath in the heart of London? Well, they're certainly back - this summer with...BEER! The reUNION Public House sets out to celebrate a "cornerstone of British life" and will be serving a selection of London's finest micro-brewed beers while hosting neighborhood feasts, live music, and film screenings.

According to the organizers, "The reUNION will go further in testing the economic sustainability of pop-ups, and their potential influence on permanent urban development."

The reUNION is free and open to everyone. Check the event website for opening hours and directions.

Click here to revisit the Southwark Lido Showcase Feature from July 2008.

Home truths: architects tackle the housing crisis

2012-07-12T19:41:00-04:00

As Britain's housing shortage deepens, we asked top architects for their solutions to the affordable living dilemma

UK's The Guardian taps Charles Holland from FAT architects, Glenn Howells of Glenn Howells Architects, Sarah Wigglesworth of Sarah Wigglesworth Architects, Lynsey Hanley, author of Estates: An Intimate History (Granta), Kevin McCloud, designer, presenter of TV's Grand Designs, and Dickon Robinson, Chairman of Living Architecture and Building Futures at RIBA, for some ideas.

Renzo Piano's The Shard in London, Europe's tallest building, is officially open

2012-07-05T18:01:00-04:00

The tower, designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano, will contain offices, exclusive residences, a luxury hotel, restaurants and a viewing gallery across 72 floors which can be occupied. There are a further 15 levels which make up the 'spire' - six of which have the potential to be used, with another nine exposed to the elements. The 1,016ft skyscraper was inaugurated by the prime minister and minister of foreign affairs of Qatar, Hamad Bin Jassim Bin Jabr Al-Thani, and The Duke of York.