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The owners of the 222-metre (734ft) “Cheesegrater” building, the second tallest building in the City of London, are to replace dozens of long bolts on its structure after it was revealed that another one had fractured.
The bolts, among 3,000 on the building’s 15,000-tonne frame, are each just under a metre long. Two snapped in November, with some debris falling to the ground from the fifth floor. Nobody was hurt, but an area below the tower is still cordoned off.
— theguardian.com
Previously: Bolt part falls off Cheesegrater skyscraper in the City of LondonRelated: Another big concrete panel falls off Zaha Hadid-designed library View full entry
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill can update their track record of AIA awards with the recent win of their sixth AIA Twenty-Five Year Award for the Exchange House at the Broadgate development in central London. Since 1969, the AIA bestows its sought-after Twenty-Five Year Award to a completed... View full entry
Resembling the surrounding tree trunks in London's Hooke Park forest, the Callipod installation was created by a group of 18 students who participated in the AA School of Architecture's Summer DLAB::WHITE at AA London and AA Hooke Parke for nearly three weeks last summer. Students in the yearly... View full entry
Archinect's Architecture School Lecture Guide for Winter-Spring 2015Archinect's Get Lectured is back in session! Get Lectured is an ongoing series where we feature a school's lecture series—and their snazzy posters—for the current term. Check back frequently to keep track of any upcoming... View full entry
In a warren of rooms inside a 400-year-old townhouse on the Essex-Suffolk border, a counter-revolution against the most dramatic rebuilding of the London skyline in decades is gathering strength.
Eschewing computer power for sharp pencils and tracing paper, father and son architect team Quinlan and Francis Terry are drafting classically inspired designs for some of the capital’s most prominent sites in a fightback against plans for hundreds of new skyscrapers.
— theguardian.com
Damien Hirst’s new art complex in south London, which will house Modern and contemporary works drawn from the artist’s collection as well as natural history objects, will be free of charge when it opens to the public in 2015. After more than a decade in development, the gallery, which runs the length of Newport Street in Vauxhall, is due to open in the summer.
[...] design by Caruso St John Architects, which converts and extends three Grade II-listed theatre carpentry workshops, in 2005.
— theartnewspaper.com
Previously: Damien Hirst's London art space due to open next spring View full entry
It is to serve this world that Second Home has come into being, a former carpet factory off Brick Lane in east London within whose seductive interiors a fragment of Superstudio’s techno-nomadism has, possibly, come to pass. [...]
The architects are José Selgas and Lucía Cano [...] who have just been announced as the designers of next year’s Serpentine pavilion. They bring to this, their first UK project, lightness and grace as well as invention, and an awareness of when to stop.
— theguardian.com
Related on Archinect:SelgasCano to design 2015 Serpentine PavilionAftershock #2: "Serendipity Machines" and the Future of Workplace Design View full entry
The British Museum’s round Reading Room might not fully reopen until 2020. One of London’s grandest interiors, it was used by generations of scholars, including Karl Marx, when it housed the British Library. The historic reading desks are currently covered by a platform built in 2007, when the room was temporarily converted into a space for the museum’s major exhibitions. — theartnewspaper.com
The Qatari royal family is planning to convert three of London’s most prestigious addresses into a single mega-mansion valued at over £200 million. The family, which already owns famous London landmarks including the Shard, Harrods and the Olympic Park, has submitted plans to convert three properties in Regent’s Park [...] The Qatari royal family now owns more of London than the Crown Estate. — RT
The Photon Space is becoming known as the first all-glass modular structure of its kind that addresses the health benefits of exposure to natural light and the importance of those benefits in our contemporary lifestyle — where many of us spend it indoors — and its everyday stresses.Recently... View full entry
SelgasCano of Madrid will be designing the fifteenth Serpentine Galleries Pavilion in London's Kensington Gardens. For the past 15 years, the Serpentine Galleries has invited architects like Sou Fujimoto, Jean Nouvel, Herzog & de Meuron with Ai Wei Wei, Peter Zumthor, SANAA, Zaha Hadid, and most recently Smiljan Radic to design the temporary outdoor structure, which continues to be an anticipated summer event every year. — bustler.net
Like every year, the outdoor structure must be a flexible multi-functional social space with a cafe. SelgasCano have yet to submit their design plans.Here's a glimpse into some of their previous works:Plasencia Auditorium and Congress Centre, Cáseres, Spain 2005/2013Factory Mérida, Badajoz... View full entry
The first images of Bjarke Ingels Group's public square [officially titled Malaysia Square] for the £8 billion Battersea Power Station redevelopment in London have been revealed just a few weeks after BIG was appointed as the competition-winning designer. The public square, which will be BIG's first U.K. project, is only a part of the Battersea Power Station's redevelopment plan. — bustler.net
Head over to Bustler for more details. View full entry
[...] British architect Sir David Chipperfield has said that he regards private investment’s hold over new architecture in London as an “absolutely terrible” means of building a city.
In Berlin, where he employs an office of 90, “there is still an idea of the public realm. We have given that up in London. We have declared the public realm dead; the question is how to get stuff out of the private sector. We are unbelievably sophisticated at that.”
— theguardian.com
Landscape architect Kathryn Gustafson of Seattle-based Gustafson Guthrie Nichol and London's Gustafson Porter recently received the eighth annual Obayashi Prize in Tokyo. Established by the Obayashi Foundation, the prize is awarded to a recipient whose work is in tune with the Foundation's mission of supporting interdisciplinary design research in relation to cities and urbanism. — bustler.net
Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC by GUSTAFSON GUTHRIE NICHOLDiana, Princess of Wales Memorial in Hyde Park, London UK by GUSTAFSON PORTERFind out more on Bustler. View full entry
A newly completed 125 ft high mural painted by Stik on a condemned council owned tower block in Acton, West London is the tallest street artwork in the UK.
The artwork depicts a mother and child looking forlornly from their condemned council block at the luxury apartment complexes being built around them. [...]
Charles Hocking House was built for low income families in 1967 and is earmarked to be torn down in 2016.
— streetartnews.net