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As workers prepare to remove the charred debris from Grenfell Tower, the specially erected scaffolding and netting around the building that will block the view of their work from the public may be used as a kind of projection screen for local children's painting and art. At least, that's what site... View full entry
Herzog & de Meuron, the Swiss architecture firm behind the ambitious Tate Modern extension, took a reduced fee for work on the building project after costs went £45m over budget.
According to documents obtained by the Architect’s Journal under the Freedom of Information act, Herzog & de Meuron was asked not to take its full fee for extra work on the 10-storey building, which went from costing £215m in 2012 to £260m in 2015.
— theartnewspaper.com
The Art Newspaper cites the minutes from a 2015 Tate board of trustees meeting: "Conversation at a senior level indicates that [Herzog & de Meuron] will look sympathetically on this position, but that costs have already been incurred to a certain level, which will require some recompense... View full entry
The Antepavilion program, a joint venture between the Architecture Foundation and the Arthouse Foundation, launched an international competition to design a £25,000 pop-up rooftop at Columbia and Brunswick Wharf in Hackney, north-east London. The goal was to invite architects, artists and... View full entry
Lord Davies, the chair of the trust, wrote to Khan outlining the reasons why the trust had taken the decision. He said it was “with great regret that trustees have concluded that without mayoral support, the project cannot be delivered”. — The Guardian
Back in April, London mayor Sadiq Khan announced that he would not spend any more taxpayer money on the controversial garden bridge plan. The project, propelled by Khan's predecessor, Boris Johnson, has been criticized for its inability to raise the private funds promised and its subsequent... View full entry
The point is, skaters made that area safe; in the old days it was cardboard city. That is what skating does: it fills the cracks in society left by capitalist development … that is where skating exists. It’s like a fungus, it’s like moss, it just grows in the corners where no one else wants to be. — The Guardian
Back in 2004, two-thirds of a popular skateboarding site at the Southbank Centre in London was destroyed. In 2014, the final third of the site was on its way to closure when the property management changed hands. Seeing the turnover as an opportunity, a campaign—Long Live Southbank—began that... View full entry
Each of the settings on display in the exhibit capture that promise of the future balanced with the starkness of reality. The settings also celebrate a disappearing craft—hand-drawn animation. The anime industry long resisted the shift to computer-generated art that took hold in the West starting in the 1990s, but as technology has advanced, fewer and fewer artists practice the craft traditionally, making the art on display especially striking. — The Smithsonian
London's House of Illustration is currently displaying “Anime Architecture: Backgrounds of Japan”, an exhibition that showcases over 100 of the intricate paintings and drawings used in the production of iconic dystopian anime films like “Ghost in the Shell” and “Akira”. View full entry
Eighty-two buildings have failed a new fire safety test set up in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire, ministers say.
The test examines the safety of building cladding and insulation in combination.
It comes as an independent review of building regulations and fire safety has also been announced by the government.
It will look at current building regulations and fire safety, focusing on high-rise residential buildings.
— BBC
"The new fire safety test is the first of a wave of more comprehensive assessments, which come after previous tests were carried out on hundreds of cladding samples in recent months - many of these failed standards for flammability," the BBC reports and outlines key examination goals of the... View full entry
The manufacturing site of the first London bus in E17 has been converted to celebrate London’s maker culture in SIDESHOW, an installation with interactive, family friendly elements opening mid-August. The project was undertaken by U+I and Blackhorse Workshop, the latter a ‘pioneer in the... View full entry
Another day, another city, another high line—this time in London. While in America, we use crowdfunding to help supplement health care costs or to actualize an invention, in England, Spacehive is using this form of alternative financing to help back projects that make local places better... View full entry
The price, a record for a single U.K. office property, is remarkable given that the building will face ongoing maintenance costs, JPMorgan Chase & Co. analysts including Tim Leckie wrote in a client note. LKK, which sells Chinese herbal medicines, paid a 13 percent premium to book value for the property even as Land Securities’s shares trade at a 26 percent discount, he said. — Bloomberg
Land Securities Group Plc and Canary Wharf Group Plc agreed to sell the Rafael Viñoly-designed Walkie Talkie for 1.28 billion pounds ($1.7 billion) to Hong Kong-based LKK Health Products Group, founded in 1992 by the Lee Kum Kee family, whose primary business sells a variety of condiments... View full entry
Pseudo-public spaces – large squares, parks and thoroughfares that appear to be public but are actually owned and controlled by developers and their private backers – are on the rise in London and many other British cities, as local authorities argue they cannot afford to create or maintain such spaces themselves. — The Guardian
The abundance of pseudo-public spaces, namely outdoor, open and publicly accessible locations owned and maintained by private companies in London is alarming. To this day it's largely unclear what regulations people passing through privately-owned 'public' land are subject to, and where members... View full entry
Peckham’s famous multi-storey car park has a new addition; a new viewing gallery created by Cooke Fawcett. The young practice, based in London’s creative Clerkenwell, was formed just two years ago, by directors Oliver Cooke and Francis Fawcett, after working on the Tate’s Switch House at... View full entry
The full scope of work includes architecture, civil and structural engineering, building services engineering, interior design, landscape architecture, lighting design, acoustics and planning.
Since its construction in the mid-1800s, many systems in the palace have never undergone a major renovation, and the heating, ventilation, water, drainage and electrical systems are antiquated.
— GCR
BDP's London studio beat Allies and Morrison, Foster + Partners and HOK in the competition and has been awarded a full interdisciplinary contract for client advisory services for the refurbishment of the Palace of Westminster, the meeting place for the two houses of the UK parliament. The firm... View full entry
Based in Madrid and operating globally, The Norman Foster Foundation is a non-profit promoting holistic education and interdisciplinary thinking and research. Followed from the Future is Now forum held in Madrid's Royal Theater on the 1st of June, Mayor of Madrid and Lord Foster brought... View full entry
The viability of building a major new concert hall in London has been widely debated, and the future of the Center was thrown into doubt last November, when the British government withdrew its commitment to contribute 5 million pounds (about $6.4 million) to pay for a business plan. The City of London Corporation stepped in with 2.5 million pounds (about $3.2 million) to allow project to go ahead. — NY Times
The shortlist for the future home for the London Symphony Orchestra and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama was announced on Monday and consists of AL_A, Foster + Partners, Renzo Piano, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Gehry Partners, Snohetta, all of which have extensive experience working on... View full entry
