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London is ready to join the design biennale club as it begins working toward launching its very first international design biennale at the Somerset House on September 7-27, 2016**. Modeled after the biannual Venice architecture and art events, London plans to gather up to 40 countries that will... View full entry
The time has come again for RIBA's 2015 Stirling Prize, the institute's highest accolade for "best new building" in the United Kingdom. Starting out with the regional London Awards followed by the National Awards earlier this year, RIBA announced today the six buildings that are still in the... View full entry
There's still time to apply for the AA School of Architecture 2015 Summer DLAB :: RED workshop. Starting July 27 through August 14, the summer program emphasizes the integration of algorithmic / generative design methodologies and large scale digital fabrication tools. Student participants get to... View full entry
At best, the work in the student shows is committed, hard-worked, brave, skilled, thoughtful and/or imaginative. At worst, the exhibitions offer bad sci-fi, lazy politics (“Let’s all hate America”) and cod poetry. There are cliches that have been going round the schools for decades, such as the idea that the student’s work is a quasi-science (a “surgical operation”, a “laboratory”). Certain buzzwords float around (there’s a lot of “liminal”). — theguardian.com
Architecture critic Rowan Moore goes on to ask: "At root is the central question of architectural education: is it about preparing students for the realities of practice or is it about taking a freedom they will never have again, to dream and speculate?"This has been discussed on Archinect before... View full entry
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
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
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
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
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
Tristan da Cunha is an island in the South Atlantic Ocean, located about 1,750 miles southwest of Cape Town. Described as the remotest inhabited island in the world, Tristan da Cunha is internally self-governed and actually consists of four islands: Tristan (the main island), Nightingale and... View full entry
As the issue of bee population decline continues to gain more public attention, the United Kingdom's Milan Expo 2015 pavilion, "The Hive", pays tribute to the hard-working honeybees and their essential role of pollination in helping produce the food we eat. Once the 1,910 m2 pavilion officially... View full entry
Terry, 77, is Prince Charles’ favourite architect, a purveyor of classical confections from his drawing board in the quaint Essex village of Dedham. Scruton, 71, a philosopher of aesthetics, is a vocal enemy of modern architecture and author of The Classical Vernacular: Architectural Principles in an Age of Nihilism (as well as I Drink Therefore I Am: A Philosopher’s Guide to Wine). — The Guardian
Oh, man. Prince Charles: the new urban dictionary entry meaning "zero architectural innovation." View full entry
Beginning as the New Bodleian Library, the Weston Library at Oxford University was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott and constructed in the 1930s. Although construction finished in 1940, wartime purposes delayed the building's official opening in 1946. For the most part, the building remained... View full entry