Archinect - News

University of Bristol appoints Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects, Hawkins\Brown, and BuroHappold for new University Library

2017-12-11T11:49:00-05:00

The University of Bristol, in the South West of England, is set to recieve a new £80 million library development on its Clifton campus by 2021. The team for the project is formed of Hawkins\Brown, Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects and BuroHappold. The architect-led team has extensive previous experience in the education sector and libraries, including the new Bartlett building, the Sir Duncan Rice Library, and the University of Exeter’s Forum respectively.

Image: University of Bristol

The contemporary design was selected from international competition entries, beating submissions from AHMM, Wilkinson Eyre Architects, Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios and Atkins with Snøhetta. The design was commended for its acknowledgement of context; it takes into account the conservation setting and builds on the university’s high sustainability standards and goals.

The building will form a welcoming gate into the Clifton campus, which will be rejuvenated and redeveloped over the coming 5 years, e...

In order to avoid historic listing, developer destroys Jacobean ceiling

2017-09-01T14:19:00-04:00

In order to avoid being listed by Historic England, a developer recently demolished an ornate Jacobean pendant ceiling at one of their sites. Previously a hotel and bar, the owners, Midas Properties/G&E Baio Ltd, had a planning application to subdivide and convert the building into student flats that was currently under review.

The property—15 Small Street—is located in Bristol, a town best known for its examples of Georgian and Victorian architecture though having been a medieval and 17th-century city as well, there are fine examples of Jacobean works deserving of preservation. Bristol's Conservation Advisory Panel had applied last week for the building to become spot-listed.

Historic England was in the process of assessing the building, but had been unable to arrange access with the owners, who were also deferring scheduled site visits by Bristol City Council planning officers. In the interim, the developer was able to demolish the almost 400-year old ceiling.

Historic England d...

A milkman's drawings capture Bristol through 8 decades

2016-06-02T16:38:00-04:00

[Garth England's] extraordinary drawings, made in Hengrove Lodge care home between 2006 and 2013 and published in a beautiful book called Murdered with Straight Lines, capture the changing city through the eyes of this post-war everyman. Born in Bristol general hospital in 1935, England spent most of his 79 years in the city’s suburban south: in Knowle West, Hengrove, Bedminster and Totterdown...

The essence of a city isn't just contained in its physical brick and mortar, but in the memory of its denizens. Garth England, who managed to see virtually every type of structure in Bristol in his work as a milk delivery man, began to draw his artistic recollections while in a retirement home, many of which are not only of historical architectural value, but incorporate stories of how certain objects and structures played a role in daily, intimate life:

As the piece notes, “There is something very truthful to Bristol’s suburban development in the details, almost like a social history,” says architectural historian Andrew Foyle, who lives in south Bristol. “What struck me was how extraordinarily accurate to specific houses a lot of Garth’s work is. If you put the Grange at 258 Wells Road, Knowle into Google Maps, for example, you can see he’s completely there.”"

For more on the intersection between art and architecture, check out these original Archinect features:

paraSITE: the bandage...

New public artwork gathers 10,000 tree species spanning the history of the planet

2016-05-13T11:42:00-04:00

Th University of Bristol has revealed a new public artwork to mark the opening of the University's new Life Sciences building. After three years research, over 10,00 unique tree species have been gathered from across the planet.

The sculptural pavilion is a collaboration between the artist Katie Paterson and the architects Zeller & Moye.

Katie Paterson recalls:“Some samples are incredibly rare–fossils of unfathomable age, and fantastical trees such as Cedar of Lebanon, the Phoenix Palm,and the Methuselah tree thought to be one of the oldest trees in the World at 4, 847 years of age, as well as a railroad tie taken from the Panama Canal Railway, which claimed the lives of between 5,000 to 10,000 workers over its 50 year construction and wood is salvaged from the remnants of the iconic Atlantic city boardwalk devastated by hurricane Sandy in 2012.”

The artwork will be permanently sited in the historic Royal Fort Gardens in Bristol.

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Shortlist announced for UK's top museum prize

2016-05-09T10:27:00-04:00

The Art Fund’s Museum of the Year shortlist was announced...with Bristol’s Arnolfini; the Bethlem Museum of the Mind in south London; Jupiter Artland near Edinburgh; London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) and the York Art Gallery in the north of England being nominated for the £100,000 prize.

Relating articles:

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."

SPACEPLATES Greenhouse Bristol by N55 + Anne Romme

2012-05-25T19:54:00-04:00

We have received images of the fascinating project, SPACEPLATES Greenhouse Bristol, a class room and growing space for the horticulture students and their teachers at the South Bristol Skills Academy in Bristol, UK. The project is a collaboration of Danish artists' group N55 with Copenhagen architect Anne Romme.