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100%DESIGN is packing an extra punch of color this time around. Since its humble beginnings in a tent along London's King's Road back in 1995, 100%DESIGN has grown year after year into the UK's largest trade show that promotes global top-notch design and creativity. Over 20,000 attendees in the... View full entry
Although the cranes swing, much of the new living zones now being created range from the ho-hum to the outright catastrophic. The skyline is being plundered for profit, but without creating towers to be proud of or making new neighbourhoods with any positive qualities whatsoever. If London is an enormous party, millions of people are on the wrong side of its velvet rope. — theguardian.com
Rowan Moore sets a signpost in London's rampant development, checking in on the industries and businesses struggling in the midst of city-wide growth. Moore points out that while things like a bevy of cranes and a thriving multicultural food scene may look like more feathers in London's urban hat... View full entry
Seen exclusively by the Guardian, the document sheds new light on why so little affordable housing is being built across England; why planning policy consistently fails to be enforced; and why property developers are now enjoying profits that exceed even those of the pre-crash housing bubble. — theguardian.com
And the affordable housing crisis is certainly not restricted to the greater London area as many recent headlines on Archinect show:No room for affordable housing in SF? Build it in Oakland"We've got enough millionaires": George Lucas wants to build affordable housing on his own landDevelopers in... View full entry
Lots of summer blockbuster news to discuss on this week's podcast. The winner of the Helsinki Guggenheim competition was announced (a young husband-wife firm from Paris took the cake), SelgasCano's "psychedelic chrysalis" Serpentine Pavilion opened, and Andres Jaque's COSMO for MoMA PS1's "Warm... View full entry
In this first year of Build Your Own Pavilion, young people aged 8 to 14 are invited to submit their Pavilion designs online and at workshops across the UK during the summer of 2015. The platform and workshops give an insight to the basic principles of architectural design and workshop students will be given the Pavilion brief and a toolkit that begins with sketching by hand, working with simple modeling materials and progressing to 3D design and print technologies. — serpentinegalleries.org
Earlier this week, London's Serpentine Galleries launched the much anticipated 2015 summer pavilion — a vibrant and playful space slug designed by SelgasCano.To celebrate fifteen years of pavilions (and continuing the theme of "playfulness"), the Galleries also launched Build Your Own Pavilion... View full entry
When Lord Rogers launched a campaign to save one of London’s most notorious housing estates from demolition, he was adamant that it was a desirable place to live. [...]
It is a claim he may regret. Unhappy residents of the estate have challenged the peer to be true to his word and swap his £12 million Chelsea townhouse for a few nights in one of their blighted flats.
— telegraph.co.uk
Previously: Robin Hood Gardens Set For Demolition View full entry
As the central theme of the London Festival of Architecture (LFA) in its 2015 edition, “Work in Progress” welcomes a discussion on the changing nature of the workplace and its impact on the city. The Festival, which opened on June 1st, hosts a series of events in both cultural and academic... View full entry
[...] has ordered a review of the procurement process for London’s garden bridge design after the Architects’ Journal revealed apparent irregularities in the tendering process. [...]
Heatherwick’s £173,000 fee was more than three times more expensive than the £49,939 offer by Wilkinson Eyre, and more than 11 times that of the £15,125 offer by Marks Barfield.
[...] cost of the project could fund 30 new London parks or 30 times the amount of open space the bridge would provide.
— theguardian.com
Previously View full entry
A few weeks after the Royal Institute of British Architects announced the winners of the 2015 regional London Award, the competition continues with the announcement of the National Award winners. Thirty-seven projects from throughout the UK including England, Northern Ireland, Wales, and Scotland... View full entry
Over the years, the Serpentine pavilion programme quickly became established as an annual christening of starchitects’ baubles, and most pavilions have been sold off to private collectors...The people who buy the pavilions do so in enormously good faith. They need to have a lot of land, as well as the ability to pay for dismantling the structure, moving it and resurrecting it, as well as fulfilling all of the statutory requirements of planning permission. — The Guardian
On that note, SelgasCano's polygonic 2015 Serpentine Pavilion will open to the public later this month.Previously on Archinect View full entry
Google's ambitious £1 billion King's Cross development, which will be the technology giant's European headquarters, has faced repeated delays since it was first announced back in 2013. The project currently has "no target completion date." — Business Insider
This news came to Business Insider via "a source close to Heatherwick", although neither Google nor Heatherwick has commented on it at this time. Heatherwick is already pinned to the expansion of Google's Mountain View headquarters, along with Bjarke Ingels of BIG. Previous designs by local firm... View full entry
As controversy carries on over the notorious Garden Bridge by Heatherwick Studio proposed for London's South Bank, some opposers of the project are expressing their discontent with good ol' British satire in the soon-to-be-launched "Folly for London" competition. If you have a cheeky sense of humor, you'll have fun in this one. — bustler.net
Previously on ArchinectUPDATE, June 15, 2015: Will Jennings, artist and initiator of the "Folly for London" competition, sent us this statement to further explain the cause until the design ideas contest officially opens for entries.Details of the competition will be announced in due course and we... View full entry
A groundbreaking ceremony yesterday marked the beginning of construction for the new Maggie's Centre Barts that's coming to Northeast London next year. The 18 Maggie's Centres across the UK offer free practical, emotional and social support for people with cancer and their loved ones. During the... View full entry
The United States Embassy in Grosvenor Square, a Modernist concrete building in the heart of Mayfair, London’s most exclusive neighborhood, has been a potential terrorist target for years, creating anxiety for both employees and neighbors...So a new embassy [by KieranTimberlake] is under construction for a move by 2017, and the residents of Mayfair are relieved. But this being Britain, the new embassy has become the object of debate and, in some quarters, ridicule. — The New York Times
Related:KieranTimberlake’s U.S. Embassy in London celebrates groundbreaking View full entry
On September 2, 1666, a fire began in a bakery on Pudding Lane in London. By the next day, the flames had fanned out north and west, engulfing much of the city’s medieval center. The fire, later knowns as the Great Fire of London, destroyed much of the old cathedral of St. Paul as well as the... View full entry