Archinect - News

Criticism of the 2022 Stirling Prize adds another wrinkle ahead of next week's announcement

2022-10-05T17:06:00-04:00

The debate surrounding sustainability and the Stirling Prize is heating up again in the lead-up to RIBA’s October 13th announcement of the coveted annual award.

Just eight weeks after the Institute's new president Muyiwa Oki was swept into office on a platform of change, UK-based critic Kunle Barker took to the Architects’ Journal to answer some of the organization’s more vocal critics, including the group Architects’ Climate Action Network (or ACAN), who have derided the so-called “greenwashing” presented in certain shortlisted projects and, they say, promoted tacitly by RIBA’s decision to endorse them.

Orchard Gardens, another shortlist project that drew criticism. Image: Enrique Verdugo.

“ACAN is correct on all points. However, I’m not sure its criticism has been levelled at the right party,” he wrote, stating that “we have to remember that the Stirling Prize is ostensibly an architecture competition and not a sustainability one.”

“It is impractical and unrealistic to suddenly ex...

Angry letter from Architects Climate Action Network ignites controversy over 'greenwashing' and the 2022 Stirling Prize shortlist

2022-07-29T12:35:00-04:00

A public rebuke from the UK-based activist group Architects Climate Action Network (ACAN) has triggered an enlivened debate online around greenwashing and the 2022 RIBA Stirling Prize shortlist after the initial group of projects was revealed last week.

Two London area residential projects included in the six-project shortlist — Panter Hudspith’s Orchard Gardens and Hopkins Architects’ 100 Liverpool Street — were given as examples of what the environmental group called “architecture that pollutes the planet.”

ACAN called out the former over its involvement in the demolition of the Heygate Estate as part of developer Lendlease’s Elephant Park ‘regeneration’ scheme, which helped displace some 80 percent of council housing residents in the SE17 postal code. In response, Panter Hudspith said: “It’s the job of the RIBA to judge buildings on their architectural quality with environmental credentials being an ever-increasing criteria in their assessment. So it seems unreasonable to suggest...

Occupying institutional space with light: The Illuminator

2018-10-31T16:29:00-04:00

Enter the Illuminator, a New York-based art activist collective, whose shifting membership has mastered the legal grey zone that regulates projection in public. [...] the Illuminator takes the normally stationary technology out of the classroom and onto the streets, affixing a high-powered, 12,000-lumens projector atop a van — or, when special nimbleness is required, a trolley — to ignite urban façades with political statements that are as bold as they are temporary.

Image: The Illuminator Collective.

For this recent Urban Omnibus feature, digital media scholar Eli Horwatt interviews art-activist collective The Illuminator. Since capturing the public attention with their Occupy-inspired 99% Bat Signal projection in 2011, the collective has been, quite literally, making headlines with large-scale interventions on institutional facades such as the "We’re all sitting ducks" slogan beamed on the outside of the United Nations building during a Nuclear Non-Proliferation conference in 2015 as well as smaller installations like the Edward Snowden hologram.

Image: The Illuminator Collective.

"When we project directly onto the facade of an institution whose policies and actions we stand against, we know that we are working within a set of constraints that require precise planning and rapid adaptability. We know that if they become aware of our actions, institutions will work quickly to remove any type of critical messaging from association with their buildi...