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If perhaps you thought after last week's busy schedule at Clerkenwell Design Week you might get to have a rest this week, we are sorry to say (not that sorry), that will have to wait; this week marks the opening of the much celebrated annual event, the London Festival of Architecture.As always... View full entry
This post is brought to you by AA Summer DLAB 2016. Summer DLAB experiments with the integration of algorithmic / generative design methodologies and large scale digital fabrication tools. Continuing its color based agenda, Summer DLAB immerses in ‘orange’ for its 2016 cycle, as a starting... View full entry
A Labour MP has formally asked the government’s independent spending watchdog to investigate how the trust behind London’s proposed garden bridge has spent almost two-thirds of the government funding for the project before construction has begun.
“We’ve had millions of pounds of public money spent and we have no idea what it’s actually been spent on, and it was spent before it even got full planning permission,” Hoey said.
— theguardian.com
Although Khan originally showed reservations, it was revealed last week that he would back the project pertaining to certain conditions. Read more on the controversial project here:Why are Heatherwick's proposals succeeding in New York but tanking in London?Sadiq Khan investigates troublesome... View full entry
London-based manufacturer Sto has collaborated with architecture and design practice Sam Jacob Studio to create a oversized replica of an ordinary garden shed by 3D scanning its facade and reproducing it using a product called Verolith. The oversized shed is covered in Verolith panels, a chalky... View full entry
Almost two-thirds of homes in the Tower, a 50-storey apartment complex in London, are in foreign ownership, with a quarter held through secretive offshore companies based in tax havens, a Guardian investigation has revealed.
The first residents of the landmark development arrived in October 2013, but many of the homes are barely occupied, with some residents saying they only use them for a fraction of the year.
— The Guardian
The kind of wealth that turns a home into a status symbol—and an underused status symbol at that, with occupancy rates of only a few weeks a year—is not easing London's housing crisis. As the city's housing rates push actual citizens to decamp to cheaper suburbs or simply leave the area... 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 conjunction with this years Clerkenwell Design Week, we are giving away two free tickets to Reimagining a design icon: The transformation of the Commonwealth Institute into the new Design Museum talk as part of Conversations at Clerkenwell. The new Design Museum will reopen its doors on the... View full entry
Benoy has been shortlisted along with three other British design firms including HOK, Grimshaw and Zaha Hadid to create a a new concept for the country's global gateway. The architects were asked by Heathrow to consider the purpose and potential of an airport with the resulting designs... View full entry
The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) invited six contemporary architecture practices to create speculative responses to the UK’s housing crisis for the exhibition, At Home in Britain: Designing the House of Tomorrow.
Drawing on materials from the RIBA archives, the studios from the UK, France and the Netherlands produced designs that re-examine the familiar housing typologies of the cottage, terrace and flat.
— thespaces.com
Read relating article here:Architects advice to London's new mayor Sadiq Khan£950 for a mouldy 'central' flat? Welcome to London.The root of London's housing crisis lies beyond its bordersLondon's Bleak Housing View full entry
To mark the beginning of it's first ever Engineering Season, the V&A has revealed a new large-scale installation in the John Madjeski Garden; Elytra Filament Pavilion. The pavilion's components have been fabricated by a robot at the University of Stuttgart and then assembled on site... View full entry
Archinect and Bustler have compiled a quick list of architecture and design events in London that are not to be missed! In addition to our ongoing New York City and Los Angeles lists, below is a handpicked selection of engaging lectures, discussions, upcoming exhibitions as well as ongoing... View full entry
As Herzog explains, piling some refined Swiss biscuits on the table in front of him to illustrate his point, an earlier design envisaged stacked-up glass cubes, but the material was too similar to the developers’ stuff. “We realised that in order to survive we have to strengthen it,” he says [..]
Yet the precedent of the original Tate Modern – also severe on the outside, lively inside – shows that a building doesn’t have to gurn and wheedle to be popular.
— The Guardian
"In this and other works, Herzog and De Meuron like to present a protestant moment of denial before pleasure, to forbid before welcoming, to be severe before generous. It is part of their worldview, different from most architects’, in which delight and beauty co-exist with more troubling or... View full entry
[Mayor Sadiq Khan] has already begun scrutinising Boris Johnson’s decisions relating to the controversial project, to which £60m of public money has been allocated in circumstances previously criticised by parliamentary spending officials as unorthodox. [...]
The proposed bridge has secured vast sums of public money despite being initially promoted as entirely private-funded. It has recently been bedevilled by accusations that its designer was selected before the actual tender process began.
— theguardian.com
The Guardian also points out that former London Mayor Boris Johnson met with Thomas Heatherwick five times, and is quoted as being "keen" on Heatherwick's design, before the selection process for the bridge's designer even began. Also somewhat worrisome was one of Johnson's last acts before... View full entry
