With the new mayor focusing our attention on smart development and social equality, 2016 will be a banner year for the London Festival of Architecture. Election watchers will be familiar with many of this year’s hot topics: community spaces, social housing, docklands renewal. But considering the theme this year is ‘community’, there will be something for every tribe of Londoner. Out of 300 events, we’ve picked the 10 must-sees. — thespaces.com
See related news here: This week's picks for London architecture and design events London's Natural History Museum to create outdoor exhibition spaces Zaha Hadid's repertoire is a stunning display in Venice's Palazzo Franchetti View full entry
In any city, space is a commodity. In South African cities space is historical and emotional. A new photo series by an American living in Cape Town captures the dramatic inequality of South Africa’s most beloved city. From an aerial view, Cape Town’s scenic beauty gives way to a stark reminder of the country’s past and the continued racial segregation. [...]
“Looking straight down from a height of several hundred meters, incredible scenes of inequality emerge,” he writes on his website.
— qz.com
On his website, Unequal Scenes, the creator of the aerial imagery, Johnny Miller, writes:"Discrepancies in how people live are sometimes hard to see from the ground. The beauty of being able to fly is to see things from a new perspective - to see things as they really are. Looking straight down... View full entry
“I set about programming algorithms to generate an imaginary city...One that I could populate with buildings and structures without having to draw or 3-D model.”
[Daniel] Brown begins by plugging random numbers into the program, which uses fractal mathematics to create unique shapes that resemble a 3-D graph. He spends several hours “exploring” the terrain until he finds an interesting form. Brown isolates the shape, and tweaks it until he arrives at something he likes.
— wired.com
You might also like:Console narratives: how games incorporate architectural storytellingFeast your eyes on these sci fi-inspired photos of Belgrade's Brutalist buildingsArtist creates real-life "Inception" style photographyArchitectural Photography without Architecture View full entry
In case you haven't checked out Archinect's Pinterest boards in a while, we have compiled ten recently pinned images from outstanding projects on various Archinect Firm and People profiles.(Tip: use the handy FOLLOW feature to easily keep up-to-date with all your favorite Archinect... View full entry
In case you haven't checked out Archinect's Pinterest boards in a while, we have compiled ten recently pinned images from outstanding projects on various Archinect Firm and People profiles.(Tip: use the handy FOLLOW feature to easily keep up-to-date with all your favorite Archinect... View full entry
It's not exactly a staircase to heaven (more of a "symbolic arising of the city after World War II"), but the intimate rooftop views provided by MVRDV's "The Stairs" of Rotterdam are spectacular. Plus, the gleeful discussion of temporariness by architectural video duo #donotsettle's Wahyu Pratomo... View full entry
Hyper-Reality is a concept film by Keiichi Matsuda. It presents a provocative and kaleidoscopic new vision of the future, where physical and virtual realities have merged, and the city is saturated in media. — hyper-reality.co
"Our physical and virtual realities are becoming increasingly intertwined. Technologies such as VR, augmented reality, wearables, and the internet of things are pointing to a world where technology will envelop every aspect of our lives. It will be the glue between every interaction and... View full entry
Whether it be the Middle East, the favelas of Rio, slums of Kenya, New York, Le Havre or Shanghai, JR’s works leave no one indifferent, because they return our gaze and cut to the very heart of our innermost selves. [...]
Invited by the “biggest museum in the world”—which also generates the most selfies—JR has set his sights on one of the Louvre’s symbols, the Pyramid, which he intends to transform with a surprising anamorphic image.
— the Louvre
The artist JR, best known for his series of giant portraits wheat-pasted in cities around the world, has been commissioned to create a piece for the Louvre. Documenting the progress on his Instagram account, JR has been covering I.M. Pei's iconic glass Pyramid with an anamorphic image of the... View full entry
It’s that time of year when London's design district opens its doors to the public for Clerkenwell Design Week and shows the rest of London and the design industry what it has to offer. An impressive showcase of distinct and accomplished talent the three-day event spans; furniture and product... View full entry
Set to open on 17 June, the Tate Modern Switch House – named after the part of the power station that the new galleries occupy – expands the museum by 60% to accommodate the surging numbers of visitors, which reached 5.7 million last year, well over double the number the building was designed to cope with when it opened in 2000. But the arresting brick ziggurat is also a physical symbol of the effect the Tate has had on its surroundings. — theguardian.com
Read more relating article here:Future sustainable skyscrapers will be made of...wood?Fabricated robot installation at the V&A unveiled as part of their first Engineering SeasonHerzog and de Meuron in conversation with Rowan Moore View full entry
The museum is planning to move from its present landlocked home within the Barbican with no entrance at street level, into a cathedral-sized space, using the abandoned Victorian general market at Smithfield, next door to the famous meat market.
“Our job is to make this the best museum in the world,” Ament said, carefully stepping around pigeon droppings and pools of water in the old market, which has been empty for the last 30 years while developers and conservationists fought over its fate.
— theguardian.com
The Museum of London have high expectations and high hopes for this monumental space, set to open it's doors in 2021. There is even a working train line running through the central space, a feature Ament is desperately keen to keep. Read more on London projects here:Shortlist for new Museum of... View full entry
In case you haven't checked out Archinect's Pinterest boards in a while, we have compiled ten recently pinned images from outstanding student projects on various Archinect People profiles.(Tip: use the handy FOLLOW feature to easily keep up-to-date with all your favorite Archinect... View full entry
The Los Angeles Business Journal reports in this week's issue that the filmmaker, Steven Slomkowski, sought to get out of the project after the suicide of Mark Stahl, one of three siblings who control the property, also renowned in architecture lore as Case Study Home #22. Slomkowski sued in 2014, alleging that the surviving siblings, Bruce and Shari Stahl, got cold feet over depictions of Mark and their late father, Buck. The Stahls countersued... — LA Observed
When it's not involved in documentary-driven legal feuds, the iconic Stahl House frequently serves as a backdrop for a variety of fictional films, including Atom Egoyan's "Where The Truth Lies," and "Galaxy Quest:"For more on the intersection between architecture and cinema:"The Dessau Bauhaus"... View full entry
Green Light is an artistic workshops that responds to the current situation in Europe, in which countless refugees are caught up in legal and political limbo. Together with TBA21 in Vienna, Olafur Eliasson has invited people from different backgrounds – refugees and locals – to take part in... View full entry
beneath the surface of the city, a new sound has begun to emerge, one which refuses to airbrush poverty, illiteracy and police brutality. Driven by a similar sense of disenfranchisement that characterised the development of hip-hop in 1970s New York, a new generation of musicians is creating India’s own homegrown rap scene – labelled by some as “gully rap”, slang for gutter or from the streets. — the guardian
“The popular rappers in Bollywood just talk about girls and booze and parties, they are only talking about glamour and trying to sell a fake dream. I wanted to make music that spoke about fighting, and the murders and the violence that were a part of my life growing up – and is the same for... View full entry
