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Snap, snap! Here are the winning photos of the 2013 Arcaid Images Architectural Photography Awards. First displayed at the most recent World Architecture Festival, the photos will be on exhibition in London this month.
Architectural photographers had to show the best of their shooting skills under four categories: Exterior, Interior, Sense of Place, and Buildings in Use. This year's judges featured Zaha Hadid, Catherine Slessor, Eva Jiricna, Ivan Harbour and Graham Stirk.
— bustler.net
Have a look at some of the winning photos.Overall winner: Ken Schluchtmann (Germany)Interior - Project: Shanghai Museum of Glass (CHINA) by Coordination AsiaExterior - Project: Reindeer Pavilion (NORWAY) by SnøhettaOverall runner-up: Duccio Malagamba (Spain)Project: Dalian Congress Centre... View full entry
The face of London is about to change.
[...] The development surge, fueled by wealthy foreigners looking for a safe place to invest, has spawned concern that the city is sacrificing its heritage for the sake of luxury homes.
"London is in danger of becoming a sort of Abu Dhabi, a sort of Hong Kong," warned Nigel Barker of English Heritage, a body devoted to protecting the nation's inheritance.
— npr.org
Related: Boris Johnson's abuse of planning power is an assault on democracy View full entry
By intervening in the local planning process, the mayor of London is creating a more exclusive, divided city of private enclaves, designed only for the needs of the rich. [...]
While the Mount Pleasant case might be dismissed as the usual cast of nimbys set against the inevitable steamroller of market forces, it in fact reveals some disturbing truths about how the mayor's planning machine is actively working to make the city a more divided, exclusive place.
— theguardian.com
Related: Luxury Home Boom To Change Face Of London View full entry
A third of the mansions on the most expensive stretch of London's "Billionaires Row" are standing empty, including several huge houses that have fallen into ruin after standing almost completely vacant for a quarter of a century. — Guardian
Robert Booth visits the North London street where billionaires can buy homes, never live in them, let them rot and still make millionsh/t @bruces View full entry
One obvious answer to these conundrums is increased focus on "sustainability", along with the questionable notion that because something has a lot of vegetation on it, it must be good for the environment. Accordingly, urban farms are part of this peculiar trend. As early as the mid-1980s, Prince Charles advocated turning the depopulated streets of central Liverpool into farmland, something which seemed connected to his war against modern architecture around the same time... — theguardian.com
To any of our readers in the London area, you can still get a chance to stop by The Bartlett's Innovation in Technology Prizewinners' Exhibition at The Lobby Gallery now until next Friday, Jan. 31. The event is free and open to the public!
The exhibition highlights five award-winning projects all by students in The Bartlett's BSc and MArch Architecture programs.
— bustler.net
Here's a glimpse of the projects if you can't check out the exhibition in person:Pictured above: Superimposed Landscapes – Fragments of misperception by Andrew Walker, MArch Architecture Year 4, 2013, Unit 14.MAMM Pavilion, Medellín, Colombia, 2013By Unit 22, MArch Architecture, Years... View full entry
Architecture is usually the product of multiple, conflicting constraints, so how does it fare in the context of a gallery? Shielded from the realities of climate and context, client and user, planning and building regs, what of architecture is left? Liberated from the obligations and contingencies of a real building, can it jump free and take on a greater sensory power – or is it hollowed of all meaning and left to fall flat? — theguardian.com
"The results in the Sensing Spaces exhibition lie somewhere between these two camps." View full entry
With the help of young UK architects, London housing association Peabody is already looking to the future of social housing with their "Small Projects Panel" competition launched this past November.
Peabody recently announced 20 shortlisted proposals that have advanced to the last stage. Each team will be interviewed before the jury picks 6-8 firms by the end of January. The winning firms will help Peabody develop new housing schemes that have a maximum of 20 homes.
— bustler.net
Check out some of the shortlisted projects. Project author: Coffey Architects Project author: Studio Octopi Project author: Stephen Taylor Architects Project author: Allsop Gollings Architects Project author: Studio Sam Causer and Geraldine Dening Project author: Paul Archer Design See more of... View full entry
Archinect's Architecture School Lecture Guide for Winter/Spring 2014 Archinect's Get Lectured is up and running again for the Winter/Spring '14 term! As a refresher from our Fall 2013 guide, every week we'll feature a school's lecture series — and their snazzy posters — for the... View full entry
The Scottish designer, a former colleague of Richard Rogers, is to open what is believed to be the first architect's studio on Tottenham High Road, opposite the police station where protests spilled over into riots in 2011 that spread across English cities.
McAslan's vision is simple: he wants to train local youngsters as architectural apprentices and give them control over their home areas.
— theguardian.com
"In the process, he hopes to help rectify a major imbalance in the make-up of the UK's architectural profession that has hardly improved since the murder two decades ago of Stephen Lawrence, the black teenager who wanted to study architecture." View full entry
Gliding through the air on a bike might so far be confined to the fantasy realms of singing nannies and aliens in baskets, but riding over rooftops could one day form part of your regular commute to work, if Norman Foster has his way.
Unveiled this week, in an appropriately light-headed vision for the holiday season, SkyCycle proposes a network of elevated bike paths hoisted aloft above railway lines, allowing you to zip through town blissfully liberated from the roads.
— theguardian.com
Have a seat and grab some popcorn, the results are out for Combo Competitions' London Cinema Challenge. Limited to only their imaginations, designers from all disciplines created their own movie-viewing spaces set on Central London's Newman Street. Entrants also had to include a unique twist in their submission. — bustler.net
Three winners and four honorable mentions were selected:First prize - Cine'stival by Etienne Fabre and Jean-Emmanuel DavidSecond prize - Symbiotic Venue by Nada Alqallaf and Jaime SevillaThird prize - Peep(le) Show by Shuping Liu and Jackie Krasnokutskaya Click the thumbnails below to see the... View full entry
More than 81 people have been injured, seven seriously, when part of a theatre in London's West End collapsed onto a packed audience during a performance.
Fire crews had to rescue people from the Apollo theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue, which was showing a performance of the hit show The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time.
— theguardian.com
UPDATE: Apollo theatre collapse due to 'old' materials View full entry
Following on from the completion of a number of architecturally significant projects, directors Sean Griffiths, Charles Holland and Sam Jacob believe that, with the conclusion of these final projects, FAT will have achieved all it set out to do when the practice first emerged in the 1990's. FAT was always conceived as a project in itself, a vehicle for critically opening up the culture of architecture rather than purely a conventional architectural practice. — fashionarchitecturetaste.com
Called Lumiere, it's a four-day festival expected to attract tens of thousands of spectators to see the city's historic cathedrals, walls, bridges and squares illuminated by splashes of light. Projects range from LED and neon sculptures to large-scale projections by leading artists and lighting designers from Ireland and beyond. — cnn.com