Archinect - News

Adjaye Associates' Cleveland waterfront master plan is now being 'evaluated' as other clients cut ties

2023-07-06T20:36:00-04:00

The fallout from David Adjaye’s sexual misconduct scandal is beginning to be felt by his firm, as now the New York Times and other national outlets are beginning to report on clients who have cut ties with the architect in light of this week’s allegations.

The city of Cleveland’s 35-acre waterfront development to which Adjaye Associates was attached in April of 2022 is the largest project to appear to be in jeopardy following the publication of the Financial Times' piece Saturday. Cleveland.com reported earlier today that Bedrock, the developer behind the plan, is now “evaluating” its “business association” with the firm going forward.

Adjaye’s design, which was finally unveiled in December, would radically alter the city’s once-faltering downtown area with 2,000 residential units, 850,000 square feet of office space, and a brand new Tower City Center anchoring its "central spine."

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An 'abuse of metaphors': Rowan Moore on Thomas Heatherwick’s tree-inspired jubilee design (and other UK public monument debates)

2022-05-02T16:03:00-04:00

I’ll pass by the abuse of metaphors (do milestones have hearts?) but not of trees, this being another case of certain designers’ mania for picking them up, moving them around and putting them where they don’t want to be. Those words from the studio also take liberties with the idea of art. They call the Tree of Trees a “sculpture”. Boris Johnson may once have compared Heatherwick to Michelangelo, but David it is not.

The Observer critic joined a plethora of online commentators that picked apart Heatherwick Studio’s “Tree Of Trees” Earth Day announcement by comparing it to last year’s fiasco surrounding the MVRDV-designed Marble Arch Mound, which he described as a “cartoon version of nature is placed in a London ceremonial space by people who don’t seem to have thought much about what it is that makes trees lovely.”

Moore has been critical of Heatherwick’s design inspiration in the past, referring to The Vessel designer as a “pied piper [of the] very rich” in a 2017 missive and famously citing his work as an example of the migration away from “grown-up architecture” in a 2019 piece, in which he derided cloying gimmicks that offer “at most two-liners.”

Moore also touched on the controversial (and recently-rejected) UK Holocaust Memorial proposal, laying its failure on the decision to include a learning center and stating that the government should now “take the opportunity of its verdict to apply...

UK court blocks Adjaye’s controversial Holocaust Memorial

2022-04-08T11:44:00-04:00

David Adjaye and Ron Arad’s design for a UK Holocaust Memorial has been halted by the country’s High Court following a legal challenge. As reported by UK outlet Building Design, the £100 million ($130 million) proposal was ruled to have been in breach of a one-hundred-year-old law which protected the site from development.

The case was brought to court by the London Historic Parks and Gardens Trust, who appealed a previous decision by the UK government that the project could proceed. Opponents of the scheme included senior religious figures, local community groups, and some Jewish leaders and Holocaust survivors.

The scheme was due to be constructed in London’s Victoria Tower Gardens. Those who filed the legal challenge claimed that the plans did not comply with the London County Council (Improvements) Act 1900, which prohibited Victoria Tower Gardens from containing an...

More legal holdup for David Adjaye and Ron Arad’s planned UK Holocaust Memorial in London

2021-11-23T14:35:00-05:00

The Ron Arad and David Adjaye-designed UK Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre in London is facing another legal challenge this week after years of back-and-forth between a slate of opposition groups and the UK government.

The Times of Israel is reporting that a High Court judge has granted permission to an appeal effort authored by a group called the London Historic Parks and Gardens Trust.

The plan had previously been given the all-clear back in July following a public inquiry begun by opponents whose qualms stem mainly from the memorial’s design and proposed location in the historic Victoria Towers Gardens. Adjaye has said he was “stunned” by the backlash, indicating that he felt the proposed design revolves around educational access and an intended “crescendo” effect at a public inquiry held last October. The architect also insisted the updated proposals left much of the park’s landscape altered but still available for its previous public use.

The same group initiated that pu...

David Adjaye's controversial UK Holocaust Memorial gets final approval

2021-07-30T08:00:00-04:00

David Adjaye’s proposed UK Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre in Westminster, London is going forward after gaining approval from the Minister of State for Housing Christopher Pincher this week.

The memorial has drawn a considerable amount of backlash in the Commonwealth since being announced in 2017. After a campaign against it by non-profits like the Royal Parks charity, the plan was officially recalled by Pincher’s predecessor in November of 2019 and rejected unanimously by the Westminster City Council four months later over its supposed intrusiveness and unsettling tone.

A public inquiry into the project was then held by an independent planning inspector whose recommendations were thus handed to Pincher’s office for approval in early spring. Adjaye said before the inquiry process that he felt anti-Semitism was behind some of the criticism of his £50 million ($70 million) plan.

Previously on Archinect: UK Holocaust memorial plan faces resistance from Royal Parks

Adjaye Assoc...

UK Holocaust memorial plan faces resistance from Royal Parks

2019-02-11T15:04:00-05:00

A Holocaust memorial proposed for outside Parliament would have a "significant harmful impact" on the area, the Royal Parks have said. The landmark is planned to be built at Victoria Tower Gardens on Millbank, alongside the River Thames. Royal Parks, which looks after the space, said it could not support the plans as the Grade II listed park was a "highly sensitive location".

A star-studded design competition ended in October 2017 with the selection of Adjaye Associates and Ron Arad Architects as the winning team to plan the UK Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre.

South view. © Adjaye Associates and Ron Arad Architects

"Adjaye himself said last week that 'disrupting the pleasure of being in a park is key to the thinking' of the project," writes The Observer architecture critic, Rowan Moore, in his commentary published by The Guardian. "Certainly a memorial to the Holocaust should have impact. It should not slip by unnoticed. But there is a difference between the intended disruption of a work of art and the clumsiness of a bad brief."

Landscape architecture firm Gustafson Porter + Bowman, Plan A, and DHA Designs also contributed to the winning scheme which is now being rejected by the Royal Parks charity.

Shortlisted concepts for UK Holocaust Memorial revealed

2017-01-27T18:39:00-05:00

On the somber occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the 10 shortlisted proposals for the UK Holocaust Memorial Design Competition have been publicly revealed. The proposals were designed by the 10 star-studded teams who were invited to submit concepts this past fall.

Here are the 10 shortlisted concepts for the Memorial and the Learning Centre.

↓ Adjaye Associates and Ron Arad Architects
With Gustafson Porter + Bowman, Plan A and DHA Designs

↓ Allied Works
With Robert Montgomery, The Olin Studio, Ralph Appelbaum Associates, Allied Info Works, Arup, Curl la Tourelle Head Architecture, PFB Construction Management Services Ltd, BuroHappold and Nathaniel Lichfield & Partners

↓ Anish Kapoor and Zaha Hadid Architects
With Sophie Walker Studio, Arup Lighting, Event London, Lord Cultural Resources, Max Fordham, Michael Hadi Associates, Gardiner & Theobald, Whybrow, Access=Design and Goddard Consulting

↓ Caruso St John Architects, Marcus Taylor and Rachel Whiteread
With Vogt Landscape Architects, Arup Lighting and David Bonnett Associates

↓ Diamond Schmitt Architects
With Ralph Appelbaum Associates, Martha Schwartz Partners and Arup

↓ Foster + Partners and Michal Rovner
With Simon Schama, Avner Shalev, Local Projects, Samantha Heywood, David Bonnett Asso...

The search is on for the UK Holocaust Memorial design team

2016-09-20T18:32:00-04:00

Britain may soon have its own national memorial dedicated to Holocaust victims and survivors. Prime Minister Theresa May recently announced the official launch of the [UK] Holocaust Memorial international competition...The winning team will design the new Memorial and a below-ground public Learning Centre located beside Parliament in London's Victoria Tower Gardens. Plans for the memorial competition were first revealed by David Cameron this past January.