Archinect - News

British TV personality and architect George Clarke launches housing degree program with UK school of architecture

2019-09-18T14:30:00-04:00

Known most notably as the host of the British television series Amazing Spaces, George Clarke has now moved from the TV screen into the classroom. Clarke has helped create a degree in housing design to be run by Birmingham City University, reports Architect's Journal (AJ). The three-year program, entitled Design for Future Living, will consist of workshops led by Clarke and other members of his charity, Ministry of Building Innovation + Education (Mobie).

According to AJ, the program will exist within the existing School of Architecture and will also be taught by some of its professors, but will not be accredited by RIBA or count toward the professional qualification required to become an architect.

The hopes are that this new degree program will create graduates who are uniquely equipped to address the housing needs "within a range of organizations." The head of the school Kevin Singh told AJ, "We are trying to be quite disruptive here. Developers, house-builders, local authoritie...

British architectural historian Gavin Stamp has died at age 69

2018-01-02T14:21:00-05:00

Gavin Stamp, the architectural historian, who has died aged 69, was “Piloti” who wrote the “Nooks and Corners” column in Private Eye magazine; a television presenter of great charm and humour; a conservationist who personally saved one of the finest Arts and Crafts buildings in London; a photographer, draughtsman and writer of prodigious talent.

The architecture community lost historian, writer and broadcaster Gavin Stamp on December 30 2017 due to prostate cancer. Stamp had an immense impact on British architecture and authored several important architectural history books. He was also a television series presenter, co-founder of the Twentieth Century Society, and a key player in the Victorian Society.

Here are some noteworthy social-media tributes:

Dispatch from the Venice Biennale: Uruguay's underground, Germany's construction site, Britain's housekeeping and more from the national pavilions

2016-05-27T13:40:00-04:00

May 26, 2016

Aravena’s Biennale for architecture to give a damn might imply a specific kind of project, but, after one day on the ground, it is clear that there is no one way for it to respond. For one thing, there is a truly incomprehensible quantity of material to cover. The volume alone speaks to the complex of energy and passion coming worldwide from the discipline. After an incomplete first pass around the Giardini and a tactical visit to the Arsenale, Venice’s two main Biennale sites, I am struck by the inconsistency and individuality across and within these many contributions. Noteworthy trends may, at some point, emerge from the crowd, but, for now, I can list a few, non-representative soundbites only:

The US Pavilion, “The Architectural Imagination,” gives us architecture as we have come to expect it. Through twelve proposals for four Detroit sites, it posits the speculative as the instrument of societal uplift, offering up wild thinking as the means of igniting change. It do...

Sex Pistols graffiti secures famous Tin Pan Alley building Grade 2* listed status

2016-03-22T13:23:00-04:00

The cartoon drawings and graffiti scrawled all over the 1970s hangout of the Sex Pistols - a former silversmith’s workshop attached to a townhouse in London’s Denmark Street – have helped the building be awarded Grade 2* Listed Status. The decision by the Department of Culture, Media & Sport, on advice from Historic England, is a major victory in the campaign to maintain Denmark Street, known as “Tin Pan Alley”, which is widely seen as a spiritual home for British popular music.