Tall Forest

The Shard and me 9!

2012-01-24T09:37:00.000Z

Panormaic view from the top of the shard. Utterly mesmerising...

Via Will Pearson

Christo and Jeanne-Claude in W1?

2012-01-12T09:07:00.001Z

Christo and Jeanne-Claude inspired covering to a retail kiosk, corner of Oxford Street and Marylebone Lane W1.

Petrol Station Apocalypse

2012-01-06T13:35:00.001Z

Derelict petrol station, Walworth Road, London SE17

The Shard and me 8

2011-12-31T13:12:00.000Z

Cruising around SE1 in the drop-top NYE 2011

FILM by Tacita Dean, Tate Modern

2011-11-28T10:23:00.002Z

FILM is an 11-minute silent 35mm film projected onto a gigantic white monolith standing 13 metres tall at the end of a darkened Turbine Hall. It is the first work in The Unilever Series devoted to the moving image, and celebrates the masterful techniques of analogue film-making as opposed to digital. The work evokes the monumental mysterious black monolith from the classic science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey. The film feels like a surreal visual poem, including images from the natural world among others, with the epic wall of the Turbine Hall showing through, in a montage of black and white, colour, and hand-tinted film.

The Shard and me 7

2011-11-19T14:37:00.000Z

Beautiful crisp light this morning. Some close up shots from the base of the building. Crucifix Lane on the way to yoga.

The Shard and me 6

2011-10-29T10:35:00.001+01:00

Cladding nearly complete on the Shard. Sunlight starting to catch it. Entire planes of the facade shine in iridescent white. Others eery blue.

From the corner of Bermondsey Street and Crucifix Lane, on the way to yoga.

The White Cube Gallery, Bermondsey Street, London

2011-10-15T19:15:00.001+01:00

The White Cube Gallery, Bermondsey Street, London

Unité d'Habitation, Moscow?

2011-10-05T06:30:00.002+01:00

Source: AMURE
I'm at Sheremetyevo airport, Moscow, waiting for my flight back to London after a long week here. The hotel I was staying in was opposite this building and all week I have been staring at it wondering what it might be like up close. Who lives there and what is it like to be inside?

Source: Dim@Ar
We've been too busy to go on any kind of investigatory excursions but, as if he knew, on our way to the airport the taxi driver makes a mistake, and we basically end up driving underneath the building's gargantuan, War-of-the-Worlds-esque legs.

Source: Valiot
Of course, I'm now squirming around in the back of the car to try to get a good view and couldn't help but smile as the legs of the building swooped past us and the weird turret like stairs popped into view.

Source: Dim@Ar

It seems that in every city, all over the world, there are buildings like this. In every case, there is always a fine line between the success and worldwide admiration of a building like Unité d'Habitation, Marseille, and the condmenation of countless forgotten council owned mass housing projects. And almost always that fine line is crossed because of a lack of investment in maintenance and community projects.

At first glance this building slides our of your consciousness as you just dismiss it as yet another concrete monstrosity, a petulant descendant of mother modernism, but as we passed by you cant help but get a little jiggle of joy from the architecture. It is not forsaken.

It just needs a bit of 'TLC'. As do we all from time to time.

RIBA Stirling Prize 2011

2011-10-02T07:33:00.001+01:00

RIBA Stirling Prize 2011 videos

Whilst I was sleeping in Moscow, the RIBA Stirling Prize 2011 was announced last night. And the winner, and the winner and the winner is....

Evelyn Grace Academy, London by Zaha Hadid Architects

A bit of surprise winner? The building is certainly powerful and there are some exhuberant gestures but it was the joy and juicy exquisiteness of Hopkin's Velodrome, winner of RIBA's people's poll, that most people thought would win. Judge for yourself and see the other shortlisted entries here:

Olympic Velodrome London 2012 by Hopkins Architects

Other contenders:

An Gaelaras, Derry by O'Donnell and Tuomey

The Angel Building, London by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris

Folkwang Museum, Essen, Germany by David Chipperfield Architects

Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford by Bennetts Associates

Source for video content: http://www.architecture.com/Awards/RIBAStirlingPrize/RIBAStirlingPrize2011/RIBAStirlingPrize2011videos.aspx#rst

Gloop and gloom

2011-07-06T20:41:00.001+01:00

From: The architects' blog
Posted by: Tarek Merlin

6 July 2011

As the flutter of opening parties for the Serpentine Pavilion started last week, and it became apparent that my invite seemed to have ‘got lost in the post’, I felt terribly dejected that I wouldn’t be able to see this summer’s eagerly awaited Serpentine Pavilion by Peter Zumthor for another week.

A last minute chance to jump on the back of someone else’s ticket lifted my spirits and last Friday night I gleefully trotted along to a private view, even snubbing the Bartlett show in my hasty delight.

On arrival at the pavilion, however, glee and delight were not the first words I would use to describe the feeling amongst the group I had infiltrated. As we approached the rather foreboding black block, and steered our course to an ambiguous opening in the wall, all the Friday night chatter seemed to die down and a more sombre mood descended upon us.

In fact sombre and moody might be more appropriate adjectives to describe this year’s pavilion.

Looking sombre & moody at the Serpentine pavilion last Friday night

And the trouble with sombre and moody is, if you don’t get it right, perfect even, in terms of finishes and details it can come across as somewhat surly and petulant instead.

Perhaps it was the budget or the programme, perhaps it was the challenges of translating sweet Swiss minimalism into burly British builder parlance, or perhaps it was simply the wrong choice of cladding material; but for whatever reason the finishes and detailing ended up somewhat wanting in the quality department.

The initial perspective view down the central courtyard is quite stunning but as you sit (on the hard painted timber benches) and sip (warm) beer in a (plastic) cup, your eyes can’t help but wander over to the imperfections in plain sight.

Close up view of courtyard roof

The black cladding material, (what is it anyway some kind of roofing-deck material?), has a gauze-like texture seemingly designed to highlight every unsightly imperfection, and comes in panels that are bonded together with some sort of black gloop that seemed to be splodged everywhere with abandon, some gloops still hanging out over the edges and corners of the otherwise beautifully framed sky.

Detail of courtyard roof gloops

Detail of cladding material

It wasn’t all doom and gloom however, the perimeter passageway, cleverly without any artificial lighting, actually captures some wonderful moments of light and shadow play as the sunlight pushes through the darkness and people emerge and disappear from view.

Picture of the perimeter passage

I am gleefully trotting along to the Bartlett show later this week so hopefully spirits will be appropriately revived.

RCA SHOW 2011

2011-06-28T22:42:00.002+01:00

From: The architects' blog
Posted by: Tarek Merlin
27 June 2011

The RCA SHOW 2011 preview last Thursday was a lot of fun. The summer show at Kensington is always an inspirational event, bringing together new talent from architecture, fashion, glassware and communications design into one spectacular spectacular.

An unknown exhibitor caught my eye as soon as we stepped in and seemed to set the appropriate tone for the evening.

Lauren Bowker, self styled “textile innovator”, was exhibiting a beautiful piece in feather and some bone-like structural element, reminding me first of McQueen and then Calatrava.

Lauren Bowker

She refused to let her work be photographed, or herself for that matter, which seemed an odd position to take seeing as we’re here to discover and celebrate new talent…(and a shame because she was dressed in an eye-catching canary yellow sort-of caftan dress, sporting Elvira-esque hair (with central fascinator) and Brigitte Bardot inspired eye make-up).

PHNX piece by Lauren Bowker, Printed Textiles

PHNX piece by Lauren Bowker, Printed Textiles 

In lieu of photographs Lauren directed me to her website which, as it turns out is irritatingly poor, but does include a mesmerising film which seeks to illustrate how, through the use of dynamic chromic imaging, the piece could constantly evolve, continually changing colour.

PHNX from phnx on Vimeo.

The architecture component of the show was as fascinating as always. Augmented Urban Theatre-scape by Benjamin Koslowski piqued the imagination. The proposal is for a theatrical urban landscape acting as the stage for sexual desire, with mobile communications and networked social activity as the generator. Sort of Grinder for Architecture.

Augmented Urban Theatre-scape – View, Benjamin Koslowski, Mixed media

While Benjamin was working on initial proposals last year, he and I had talked briefly about a project by Richard Macara in 2001, which looked at how the mobile phone could act as a tool for people to communicate with each other through ‘mobile dating’ and meet up. Bear in mind this was pre any smart-phone technology so was reasonably visionary for its time.

The strength of Benjamin’s proposal is fortified by the reality of today’s “sexual networking” phenomena although, as he himself readily admits, the potency of the theatrical landscape he created was perhaps more powerful than the architectural proposition surrounding it.

Other projects of note included these beautifully crafted models of St Paul’s by Robert Ware:

Repository of the Eternal Now (south elevation), Robert Ware

Some poli/social commentary on the challenges of suburban nimbyism from Bethan Kay:

Billboard Aesthetics, Bethan Kay, Mixed-media model

And some laser-cut pagoda-type architecture in brass from Tom Lasbrey, which admittedly are painfully pretty, but is it time to call time on the frilly laser-cut model? The proposal itself seems more profound, taking its premise from looming cuts in government public spending, safeguarding public facilities and re-interpreting their use.

After the Rain (detail), Helen Moore, Porcelain and glaze

The cartoonish colours of these porcelain pieces by Helen Moore, beguile the surprisingly delicate craftsmanship and finish in reality.

Transition, Paul Stopler, 41 x 18 x 18 cm, Kiln-formed glass

At first glance these pieces by Paul Stopler (above)look a little acrylic-ish but are in fact kiln-formed glass. I like the idea that these are “vessels without voids”; containers whose content is the transparent glass mass itself.

Scope I (from the Scope series), Liam Reeves, 50 x 50 x 6 cm, Free-blown glass

Amazing glassware from the Vector Series by Liam Reeves, Ceramics & Glass.

Laura McGrath, Gilding metal and watercolour painting, Goldsmithing, Silversmithing, Metalwork & Jewellery,

I loved this by Laura McGrath:

Untitled (frame), Laura McGrath, Gilding metal and watercolour painting

She was telling me all about the intricacies of the, admittedly beautiful, metal frame but my mind was busy trying to figure out what was going on inside the crumpled space of the watercolour painting it is framing.

And finally, these erm, hairy balls by James Page caused a thrill,“erotic stimulation and the temporal condition of our physical state”apparently.

Untitled, James Page, 180 x 12 x 90 cm, Hair, steel, brass and bronze

Doing the rounds, there was lots of talk about Nigel Coates’s imminent departure and the list of rumoured successors. One can only hope that the playful perversity and delicate rigour he has engendered throughout all the design disciplines during his tenure, lives on. It’s what brings me back year after year anyway.

Electric Dreams

2011-05-27T18:33:00.003+01:00

From: The architects' blog
Posted by: Tarek Merlin
27 May 2011

Ever since I stuck my finger into an electric socket when I was about nine, (I was ‘helping’ my dad rewire the house and, although he had specifically told me not to, he had left the room for a second and well, I wanted to see what electricity felt like), I have been fascinated with the stuff.

My dad, (a retired Geophysicist who, it should be noted, worked in the oil industry), would often explain how fossil fuels are finite and will inevitably one day run out, and that we would have to find a viable alternative.

I’m sure it didn’t really sink in at the time, nonetheless the act of burning a raw material until it’s gone has always struck me as a rather stupid thing to do but because there is/was so much of it, it didn’t seem to matter.

And besides, the alternatives are not without sin. Some methods of generating electricity are actually powered by the burning of fossil fuels, which surely must be the definition of stupidity, but the methods that don’t, involve giant turbines and wind farms which can actually disturb natural the habitats they displace, not to mention the obvious aesthetic and even potential physical dangers to the inimitable nimbys that they coexist with. Electricity remains, however, essentially a viable and renewable energy source.

The fact that the strength of electricity diminishes the further it has to travel has also always been a bemusing peculiarity to me when you look at the lengths in which we have gone to do deliver it from power source to home. The procession of the electricity pylons marching across the countryside and into our towns and cities is now a sight we take for granted.

The original, designed in 1927 by Sir Reginald Bloomfield (from an initial concept by the Milliken brothers), has enjoyed free reign over the land ever since, marauding around the country like an army of big friendly giants spewing out electricity like spaghetti.

This is not to say that the iconic lattice design is without its admirers. Just like any eccentrically British design it has its eccentric cult following; there is an official ‘Pylon Appreciation Society’ and a website called ‘Pylon of the Month’ - which features…a pylon of the month. My personal favourite is this from September 2010 an, albeit unbuilt, example from Choi + Shine Architects.

Choi & Shine’s pylon proposal

That childlike fascination with electricity, the invisible energy, hasn’t waned for me but the reality of its production, to the huge visual and physical impact of pylons, right down to the electric powered vehicles and products on the market now, offer up serious design challenges. And if we don’t get them right we all have to live the consequences.

The rather unfortunately designed G-Wiz, for example, which just looks like it would be like driving inside your mum’s hairdryer, now thankfully has some serious contenders with everyone from Mini to Peugeot producing all electric models, most notable perhaps is the recent addition of the all-electric Hummer, which I am very excited about in quite a childish way.

The electric hummer

I will dream tonight about electricity - what the pylon could be, how to design a credible electric car and try to remember what electricity feels like.

The Shard and me 5

2011-04-16T18:20:00.000+01:00

There's something about site photos that have that weird car crash rubberneck rawness about them, a harsh reality of metal pressed upon metal - bits of building hanging out in mid-air that will eventually all be cleaned up and make it behind a magical curtain of the finished building.

These photographs taken by a friend on site visit organised by the facades and cladding contractor, offer up a fascinating vertiginous behind the scenes look at the secrets behind the shard's cladding. Some intimate on-site moments of the cladding panels being installed, interior pics that give us an idea of what its going to be like inside and detail shots of connection details protruding out into thin air against the unassuming London skyline.

Seasonal adjustment

2011-04-14T12:35:00.000+01:00

From: The architects' blog
Posted by: Tarek Merlin Thu, 14 Apr 2011

The Serpentine Gallery has, year after year, successfully curated exciting summer pavilions, commissioning some of the world’s most famous and infamous architects to design their version of the perfect temporary garden pavilion.

The architect is chosen by the Serpentine with only one rule: the architect must not have built a building in Britain before.

The Serpentine Pavilion story is one of those great British stories; it began not with a grand 10-year plan to curate a series of works but rather with a crazy idea for an impromptu summer party, a one-night-only fund-raiser which turned out to be so successful that it instigated the idea for the annual event.

The first pavilion, by Zaha Hadid in 2000, (when she had hardly built anything at all, let alone in Britain), was a simple tent-like structure taking the form of triangulated panels extending to the ground. It was a marquee but just, not as you know it.

Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2000 by Zaha Hadid

The following year the gallery’s director, Julia Peyton-Jones approached the Polish-American architect Daniel Libeskind to design the second.

That year, 2001, the architecture and planning world was embroiled in polarised opinion over Libeskind’s proposals for the spiralling V&A extension. His designs for the pavilion, although staunchly “Liebeskind”, were surprisingly playful, reflecting the greenery of the park and the brick building of the gallery in sheer metallic panels.

Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2001

The rest is now history, (the full list and images of Summer Pavilions can be found here) and love them, or love to hate them, they have never failed to excite.

Designs for the latest pavilion, by Peter Zumthor, were released last week. It only took one visit to one of his buildings (a uni field trip to the Thermal Baths in Vals) to turn me into a fan of his work, and although some of the images of the pavilion are rather “Cambridge School Of Architecture”, they do evoke some of the intricate plays of light and framing of views that caused delight at Vals.

Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2011 by Peter Zumthor

The exciting thing about the Serpentine Pavilion for me, however, is not whether it’s designed by your all-time favourite architect. Nor does it lie somewhere in the high-brow architectural theory that may, or may not be behind the original intent, but actually, it’s just in the faces of the general public who pass by; it’s in that afternoon you had a picnic there with your friends; a fleeting moment when a strange temporary structure changed an ordinary day into something extra ordinary.

Thermal Baths Vals 1996 by Peter Zumthor

From the joyful beginnings of summer until its sad end, we are all engaged with the fleeting, weird and wonderful spectacle that takes place in this public park year after year.

But has the premise of the original idea run its course?

The initial thrill in seeing works by starchitects who have never built in Britain before has waned somewhat. I mean how many more can there be exactly? Something that seemed so courageous at the time, does now seem a little out-dated.

In these hard times for young architects should the serpentine summer pavilion be given to emerging practices rather than stroking the ego of internationally renowned ones?
In fact next year, how about the only rule being that the architect must be British and must have not built a building in Britain before? A new decade of pavilions built by unknown practices, their first project forming part of the Serpentine Pavilion legacy.

When architecture treads the boards

2011-04-06T21:52:00.004+01:00

From: The architects' blog
Posted by: Tarek Merlin

6 April 2011

I was once asked if I thought architecture was really just theatre in disguise.

It was at an interview for an architecture school when I was about 18. I never really answered the question properly at the time, but it’s one of those (many) things that has been echoing around in my head ever since.

A recent trip to watch FAR, a piece of contemporary dance at the Laban Centre, brought back some of the conflicted responses I had to the question at the time.

Yes architecture can create drama and suspense in the way it reveals itself to the ‘audience’ but it’s not as temporary or as fleeting as the act of a play. And yes, set design can definitely be ‘architectural’ but it’s not as three-dimensional an experience as a building. Or is it?

Trailer for Far by Wayne McGregor

FAR: choreography: Wayne McGregor, set design: rAndom International, lighting design: Lucy Carter

FAR places 10 dancers on a distinctly simple stage against a dynamic backdrop; a large, landscape format, white alucabond panel comprising 100 metal rods incorporating 3,200 LEDs. The light sources rotate, producing infinite light movements and subsequently cast shadows on the neighbouring rods to dramatic effect. The lighting algorithm responds to the music as well as the dancers’ movement. The whole panel itself moves up and down, creating different atmospheres and spaces for the dancers to respond to; sometimes blasting them with light, turning them into silhouette, sometimes dimmed to almost imperceptible levels.

Designers rAndom International and Lucy Carter are not architects but the intent is distinctly architectural.

So what happens when architects design stage sets?

“Chroma2: Choreography: Wayne McGregor, Set Design: John Pawson Lighting Design: Lucy Carter

John Pawson collaborated with Wayne McGregor in 2006 for Chroma at the Royal Opera House. A typically minimal set design creates giant openings and plays on the architectural motifs of openings - entrances/exits and offers up an overtly austere framework to be disrupted by the dancers’ movement.

Herzog & de Meuron designed the set for The Met’s 2010 production of Verdi’s Atilla, involving ghostly scenery floating above the chorus, and some rather deconstructivist-looking ruins.

Atilla, set design: Herzog & de Meuron

In 2009 the New York City Ballet actually dedicated an entire season to exploring the “Architecture of Dance”, commissioning Santiago Calatrava to create five scenic designs for a series of world premiere productions in the company’s spring season.

Mirage, set design: Santiago Calatrava

Echoing some of the filigree work (from some of his better architectural work) the stage set for ‘Mirage’ comprises a fan-like structure but and this is perhaps where stage set design can take over from the built environment, the structure changes form, opening and closing, rising and lowering, expanding and contracting to create the space within which the dance takes place.

Also 2009, Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas designed the sets for the dramatic season of the National Institute of Ancient Drama, Syracuse Italy. The scenography involved a giant mirror reflecting the Greek emblems (and the actors) on the stage, back at the audience.

Medea and Edipo a Colono, set design Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas

Metapolis II, 2007, a collaborative work by choreographer Frédéric Flamand and Zaha Hadid, sees the dancers scrambling over languid limbs of architectural artifice.

Metapolis II, set design: Zaha Hadid

I still struggle to answer that question that was put to me over 15 years ago. It gets awfully complicated when you start talking about architecture and artifice. But there is something about the idea of subtle deception which, dare we admit it, is what excites us about the drama to be found in the best examples of architecture.

Read more: http://www.bdonline.co.uk/when-architecture-treads-the-boards/5016275.blog#ixzz1ImKHG57s
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Architects have moved on from this outdated caricature

2011-03-30T12:28:00.000+01:00

From: The architects' blog

Posted by: Tarek Merlin

30 March 2011

Last week we were invited to be on the panel for a Building Futures discussion, rather precariously entitled, “The Future for Architects; How is the New Generation Changing Practice?”

Yes, I thought the same thing, are the emerging generation REALLY changing the face of architectural practice or is it just the recession that’s changing us all?

In any event, it was a very high-spirited debate, surprisingly packed, involving some great heckling and good one-liners, and we benefited from having some non-architects on the panel, who, everyone seemed to conclude, were the only ones making any sense.

But once it was all over, I couldn’t help but feel a slight unease. What was the bad taste in my mouth all about?

I was ready for the discussion about what this recession has done to risk-averse clients.

I was ready for the accusation from those clients as to how we need to “add-value” to the process more.

I was ready for the heated debate about working for free – this self-defeating phenomenon really does not sit well with me, but many others in the room were talking of a (perhaps more sophisticated) way of speculative working that partners you in financially with the client or contractor.

I was ready for the idea that architects should be more like developers, scouring for sites and “doing it for ourselves”. All well and good but, as I’ve discovered myself, the obvious insurmountable stumbling block of not having sufficient working capital seems to scupper that one every time.

I was ready for the D-word, but diversification into what exactly? No one seemed to know.

I was even ready for the vacuous debate about new technologies and how “tweeting and online publications are really good for marketing you know”.

What really surprised me, however and what I wasn’t ready for, was the rather sour view people seemed to take of the notion of the “profession” and what the term “architect” seemed to mean for them.

After a particularly acerbic round of architect bashing, I couldn’t help but feel that people seemed to think that we’re all a bunch of cack-handed Hooray Henrys, unable to get to grips with business management or construction. We all just spend our days lolling around on fluffy carpets, dreaming up ideas for new shapes, taking time out only to ignore the client and think up new ways to prolong the design process, and in general make things more complicated and expensive for everyone.

If ever there was an out-dated caricature of the architect then this is it.

Anyone who has been working as an architect over the last few years will know different and it certainly does not describe my experience over the last 10 years. Maybe these accusations can be levied at the starchitects amongst us but they aren’t really amongst us – they are a minority and besides, they are an older generation and the architecture profession is changing, remember?

All of my experience has always been about being as fresh and inventive for the client as possible; to find new ways to increase viability and profitability on sites that others have not; to take incredibly tight budgets and squeeze out every last penny of cost efficiency; to work with a seemingly ever-growing number of consultants and keep it all together; to work with contractors on new methods of construction that weave in economies of scale and process; to deliver something that is over and above the client ’s initial aspirations; to minimise time; to minimise cost; to maximise quality.

The emerging generation ARE changing the face of architectural practice, but it’s not in some big flowery new way. We are just doing our jobs. We (all of us as consultants in construction) need to work harder in a recession to keep our businesses energised, but we mustn’t throw out our core services while exploring new ways to make that service as valuable as possible to our clients.

Read more: http://www.bdonline.co.uk/architects-have-moved-on-from-this-outdated-caricature/5015876.blog#ixzz1ID92eiWF
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High Street living

2011-03-23T22:58:00.003Z

From: The architects' blog

Posted by: Tarek Merlin Wed, 23 Mar 2011

When I was a child I used to dream about living in South Croydon bus garage.

We used to pass it on the way to school every day and my brother and I would dream of buying it one day and turning into our apartment. It’s not the most welcoming of space; purpose built by the LGOC (London General Omnibus Company or LGOC) in 1915 it is, as you can imagine, a bit utilitarian - a vast column free warehouse of space - but it would have been perfect. Imagine riding your BMX from the kitchen to the living room and taking the skateboard from TV to bed.

I also always wondered what it would be like to live in a shop.

Flower Shop for sale Hoxton Street

Something about the very public idea of having a shop front as part of a home stirred the imagination - that the strangeness to having a public face to a private space would be a wonderful addition. A celebration of living somehow.

And who wouldn’t dream of living in an office?

Empty office space

The cool steel space of empty office interiors always resonated with me. Deep long plans, the raised floors with their unassuming galvanised steel plates, the panoramic ribbon windows.

As I grew older and grasped the reality of planning laws, commercial rates and the principles zoning in urban planning those, childhood ambitions were slowly but steadfastly thwarted. I still, however, often pass disused commercial spaces and stop and wonder.

The news this week that the government might change its rules to allow vacant commercial units to be turned into housing without the need for planning permission, piqued the imagination all over again.

The idea comes from a think tank, Policy Exchange, which has written the report More Homes: Fewer Empty Buildings, full report here.

It is essentially calling for a reform of the use classes order which would make it much easier to switch from Use Class A (retail) and B (employment) to C3 (dwelling houses). It could have far and wide reaching implications but one of the most engaging quotes from Alex Morton (co-author of the report): “Just because a building has always been a shop or offices shouldn’t have to mean it stays that way forever,” very clearly sets down the idea that change is not only good but it is something that we should open our imagination to and as the report makes abundantly clear, that it is desperately needed.

At least 17% of offices in the South East alone, are currently vacant and are often left empty or even derelict because planning policy impedes their conversion to housing.

So what would it be like to live on a high street?

Well right now it might be a bit bleak. The recession has put pay to the high street hay day of the past and giant supermarkets have out played the butcher and the baker altogether. Perhaps even the very idea of a high street is an antiquated notion. The majority of us do at least 10% of our spending online, and the high street now seems resigned to charity shops, pound shops and betting shops. Which all raises the very important question what do you want your high street of the future to be like?

What intrigued me when I was ten, as it still does today, was the quite obvious bizarre quality of living somewhere where you are not supposed to. If the entire high street changed completely to residential then the inherent bizarreness would disappear too. So what is important, if this idea ever turns into legislation and is carried through the planning process, is that the semblance of a high street is maintained. Indeed the report sets out ways to ensure that thriving and much loved staples of the British high street, such as the Village Shop and the Pub on the corner can be safeguarded and maintained.

For all the internet shopping and supermarkets, what most people actually want, and indeed go to great lengths to seek out, is a good quality butcher, a great local green grocers and perhaps even a little one-off boutique.

And wouldn’t living amongst them all be a thrill?

Read more: http://www.bdonline.co.uk/comment/blogs/the-architects-blog#ixzz1HkW8ypzV
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Gardener's World

2011-03-16T09:03:00.003Z

From: The architects' blog

Posted by: Tarek Merlin Wed, 16 Mar 2011

When was the last time you spent a full day outside your house?

This weekend I was tackling the front garden and spent the entire weekend (two full eight-hour days) outside the house; something I have never had reason to do before. It was enlightening watching the comings and goings of the street I have lived on for just over five years, never before having spent so much time out there, watching, interacting. It’s weird but I felt somehow closer to the neighbourhood because of it, and fully entertained by the surprisingly engaging occurrences over the two days.

Before

Saturday
09:48 Get locked out the flat answering the door to the Homebase guy delivering my decking, a slightly premature purchase anyway seeing as I haven’t even started ripping out the five big bushes, one tree and about a million daffodils and weeds.

09:53 Have to wake up the next door neighbour to see if he minds me hedgehopping through his back garden over to mine in the vain hope I have left the back door open. Always a shock that; going into your next door neighbour’s house – never quite what you expect. I note with strange interest, as I hastily scurry through, the Philippe Starck lemon squeezer in his kitchen, a little piece of shiny designer product design nestled in among the detritus of unpolished middle-aged bachelor life. Back door is open.

10:23 A visit to my local DIY store to purchase gloves and get tips from the rather knowledgeable shopkeeper who has helped me through DIY disasters of the past. Tell him all about it. “A machete’s what you need,” he says. “A MACHETE?! I’ll chop my leg off!” I fearfully reply. Purchase it anyway, he is quite persuasive that this is what I need, and he turns out to be right, again.

11:37 The upstairs neighbour comes out to talk about my plans. He’s a keen gardener and planted the apparently never ending supply of daffodil bulbs in my garden that I am busily ripping out at that particular point in time. Rather than be sore about it, he gives me some helpful tips on how to remove the unexpectedly large tree stump that remains after my early morning start. After the chat, and lending me a saw, he retreats back upstairs to watch me from the safety of his front room while “working at his desk”.

12:23 Postie on his rounds. I have to move the logs and twigs out the way to let him and his wheelie trolley past. I stop to note who is getting post and who isn’t. I receive none. Glad not to have received junk mail, which goes straight into the recycling along with the bank statements.

13:35 The man who lives two doors down (and who I have regularly nodded at as he has a fag outside his front door) comes over to talk to me about the suspicious guy he saw creeping about the other night, apparently taking quite an interest in my scooter (which I now keep tethered to the steel handrail with a large unfriendly looking chain).

13:52 A man in a Volvo, with two children in the back, screeches to a halt in the middle of the road. I look over to check whether he wants to park in the space that I am occupying with my tree offcuts, and he’s shouting something out the window. “ARE THOSE YOUR LOGS?” he yelps in excitement. “Yes,” I say. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH THEM?” he shrieks. I tell him with some pride that I’m recycling them in the brown garden waste bags I procured the previous night from Peckham Library. I am going to start telling him all about the project but he interrupts me. “Oh, could I have them for my school play,” he says, now having calmed down and got out of his car, leaving both the car, and the children within, in the middle of the road. He goes on to tell me how the witches in his not-Shakespeare-but-a-bit-like-Shakespeare play, need to pick up some fire logs on stage and how he was about to go down to Dulwich nursery to buy some. “Go for your life,” I say, “save me the trip to the tip (and when I say tip, I meanRecycling Centre of course) and don’t you want some bushes and rubble for the background?”

14:26 Some scruffy-looking ladies are approaching, clutching clumps of bright blue leaflets in their mitted hands. Junk mail. I always wondered. I watch carefully to see if they dare venture over to my door but they pass sheepishly by. One of them stops as if she is about to ask if I want a leaflet, but decides against it.

14:35 Some scruffy-looking early twenties arty types approach. “ARE THOSE YOUR TWIGS?” they squeal in excitement. Learning from the Volvo experience and twigging from the other arty types that have been toing and froing over the day, armed with art suppliers and cameras, I shorten the potential dialogue “You’re from Camberwell College of Arts and you want them for your art project? Help yourself.”

16:30 Strange sound coming from the flat two doors down. I have in fact heard it before around the same time but never really had the time to investigate. It’s been going on for a little while now… a slow repeating sort of moan in a rhythmic pattern…. it couldn’t be… oh god, oh god it is. Turn up the radio.

Sunday
Far less eventful and progress moves a lot faster with a friend to help.

Most interaction with others limited to the sudden screams from passers-by who turn the corner to see me wielding an axe furiously above my head at the stubborn roots of that tree stump; and the inquisitive coos from the elderly neighbours enquiring when I might be free to have a go at their garden next.

In action

The whole thing was weird. Maybe it was just because I was clearing up the front garden that gave me this strange warm fuzzy feeling inside, something that some might describe as a sense of local civic pride. Or maybe it was because I had spoken to more people that live nearby in this one weekend than I had the entire five years I have been there, that made me feel like I am part of a, what do you call it, community?

What is it about a front garden that does this? It’s quite a peculiar and unique space. A place where people pass but paths do not cross. It’s a safe haven from which conversations can be held with strangers quite happily and without invitation. Very different to the idea of arranging to meet a neighbour somewhere for a chat or, worse still, inviting them round for sherries, worrying all the time that they might otherwise outstay their welcome. It’s that privacy in public thing – that it’s yours and you can do what you want with it, but that it’s completely on show and overlooked by all.

Whatever it is you do with your front garden (if you’re lucky enough to have one), put down decking or plant daffodils, it’s all fine just as long as you love it and most importantly that you get out there and enjoy it, hang out and watch the local wildlife go by.

After

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Lost in the supermarket

2011-03-09T09:20:00.002Z

From: The architects' blog

Posted by: Tarek Merlin
9 March 2011

What is wrong with our Supermarkets? The very idea of shopping for food fills me with dread these days. The process seems to have been distilled down to an almost mechanised assembly line and has become so far removed from the idea of “a market” that it has turned into just yet another horrible task you have to get through before you get home.

Source: Daily Mail

A typical British Supermarket

Maybe it’s the banal monotony of the general experience, the thought of all the other people doing the same thing as me, consuming then repeating the same exercise week after week.

Maybe it’s the idea of the packaging, so much packaging that takes you as long to deal with when you get home as the original act of purchasing the products. It’s no longer surprising anymore to see individual apples in their own cardboard tray with cellophane shrink-wrap. The vacuum-packed salad leaves that seem to go brown as soon as you open the packet and release what must be genetically modified air that was protecting them from real life.

Maybe it’s the thought of the persistent supply of plastic bags and their 100-year decay process. The insolent way they fill up the junk cupboard in the kitchen with gleeful abandon, smiling with indignation at the “bags for life” forgotten at the back. Italy has actually banned plastic bags. Hooray for them, why oh why can’t we do the same? Someone please explain it to me.

Maybe it’s the idea of a never ending selection of produce and special offers which only seek to confuse you into a state of bewilderment, leaving you standing there with two similar but oh so slightly different products in your hands seemingly unable to make anything close to something resembling a decision.

Maybe it’s the guilt of knowing that the produce has probably made its way from god knows where all over the world, stamping down carbon footprints in its wake, and losing anything akin to taste along the way.

Maybe it’s because no one knows which food types are in season anymore or where anything was grown or prepared. There doesn’t seem to be any uniqueness of service, or product anymore.

Why is there no natural day light, or views? Why is the interior design so stuck in an eighties nightmare? I understand the philosophy of “design by entrapment” – that once you’re inside you will get so lost you won’t be able to stop yourself from buying everything you come across, but this is just insulting. It’s the same thought process that drove terrible mall design through the nineties but even that seems to have turned a corner. Imagine a supermarket with natural daylight, views of the outside, interesting configurations and open spaces instead of aisle after aisle labyrinths. Even if this was 10 times less efficient in terms of space planning I would gladly spend 10 times as much time in there than I do currently, as long as I was enjoying it.

Source: Flickr

Yasilev Supermarket, Moscow, Russia

I think what is so galling about supermarkets, is that no matter how much you hate the experience or the quality of the food, there is no alternative. You can’t shop at the corner shop all the time, they only ever seem to stock pot noodles and cheese brands you have never heard of. You can’t realistically do the farmers market every week unless you want a kitchen full of overpriced mushrooms, focaccia and gooey olive oil. You are trapped and as much as you try to stop yourself, you have to keep going back.

I almost fell off my chair the other night watching TV, when The People’s Supermarket came on. It’s a “don’t-call-it-the-Big-Society” Big Society project. A community-based supermarket run by members of the public. You pay £25 to join plus pledge a few hours of work a month and you can have your say in everything from what type of food they sell to how it all works as a business. They buy British produce where possible from trusted suppliers local to London – food for the people by the people. I mean it’s basically a good old co-op but saying that there hasn’t really been a notion of a co-op since the good old days. (Apart from the obvious Co-op branded banks and supermarkets, which don’t feel at all like co-ops to me.) The business definition sounds rather lovely: “business organisation owned and operated by a group of individuals for their mutual benefit”. As the programme showed, however, running a successful supermarket is incredibly difficult and more akin to running a business than a service to a community. Is it any wonder that those big businesses have slowly developed their little shops into giant commercial park SUPERmarkets?

The special thing about The People’s Supermarket for me is not the actual supermarket itself but just simply the notion that ordinary people could actually do this. An idea that hitherto seemed so alien, suddenly seems possible. I feel like one of those characters in Wall-E, stupefied by the machines feeding them and transporting them around on their floating chairs, suddenly re-awakened by a very human idea of empowerment.

I think it’s one of the most courageous and interestingly simple ideas I have seen recently but it does feel like an extreme measure. Why should we actually have to take over the supermarket in order to make it better? The super brands need to take note of what is happening and update their offer to really make it a place worthwhile visiting, something that fills us with delight rather than dread.

Read more: http://www.bdonline.co.uk/lost-in-the-supermarket/5014593.blog#ixzz1GBdikviR
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How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr Foster?

2011-02-23T18:32:00.010Z

Foster comes across better than his buildings

From: The architects' blog

Posted by: Tarek Merlin

23 February 2011

Last week I was invited to a screening of How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr Foster? at the ICA, a documentary profile of the award-winning architect Norman Foster.

More congratulatory bio-epic than probing documentary, this film will leave you reeling from the fog of flatulent flattery bestowed upon the work of the office, but in the end I couldn’t help leaving with a sense of appreciation for, and better understanding of the man.

As a piece of film though it is just far too sycophantic, and although I suppose I was prepared for some of that, because of the conspicuous lack of any serious critique, the constant praise lavished upon the albeit beautifully shot, cinematic slow-mo sequences of the featured buildings, actually comes across as somewhat disingenuous — like an obsequious promo-video rather than an in depth analysis of a creative body of work.

And to be fair to the work, it was sometimes just the narration style which, due the overuse of flowery, unnecessarily flattering adjectives and obscure analogies, at times left me feeling slightly nauseous and quite often had me rolling my eyes in disbelief.

As we left the auditorium however, it was of course the work that dominated the conversation. My host for the evening (a non-architect) seemed to come to similar conclusions that were rattling around in my head; that the projects, for all their beauty in refinement and detailing, just end up being a little boring, bereft of joy or creativity.

The Gherkin and the Hearst building, for example, share a similar genius in the engineering solution, and even though they both cause that instant piqued excitement as “objects”, neither ultimately inspires as an architectural proposition. What connects these two, as with most projects, is a seemingly relentless pursuit of perfection, but did something get lost along the way?

Having said all of this, and whether you love or loathe the projects, what I found most insightful, and took most inspiration from in the end, was finding out more about the life of Norman Foster, and as much as I tried to resist, I couldn’t help but feel something akin to admiration.

I didn’t know he came from the wrong side of the tracks in Manchester, and that he used to draw the view of these tracks from his bedroom window. I didn’t know he had battled through a cancer diagnosis and at one point been told he only had three months to live. I didn’t know that he was in the Royal Air Force and that he knows how to fly a plane. I didn’t know that he loves skiing and that even in his seventies he still does the Swiss Ski Marathon, which is a visually stunning sight – the hundreds of skiers in convoy across the snow, not, Norman in his ski pants.

Source: Exodus.co.uk

It was this insight into his personal character, to which it seems he owes much of his success (and the drive to complete a ski marathon I would imagine), that was most enjoyable part of the film, revealing the dogmatic, the unrelenting, the passionate, the obsessive Mr Foster.

Read more: http://www.bdonline.co.uk/foster-comes-across-better-than-his-buildings/5013783.blog#ixzz1EodKvqHY
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Weekends away

2011-02-17T14:00:00.005Z

From: The architects' blog

Posted by: Tarek Merlin
17 February 2011

Planning a weekend get away for a bunch of architect friends can be a bit of a poisoned chalice. Get it wrong and you’ll end up with endless jibes and derisory comments at austere dinner parties of the future. Get it right though, and you can be hero.

You kind of want somewhere that’s not so far that it takes you all weekend to get there but not so close that you feel like you haven’t gone anywhere. Somewhere that takes you away from your daily life but that gives you enough to take a little bit of it back home with you.

The idea of the traditional English break at Blackpool or Skegness has never held much appeal, (can’t get the thought out of my head of soggy sandals, seaside doughnuts, the smell of beer and fag butts wafting out from nearby dodgy pubs), but there have been some interesting developments in the concept of the traditional UK holiday let.

Skegness Caravan Park

Enter Alain de Botton’s Living Architecture, which has swiftly rebranded the whole idea to into some kind of cultural affair, commissioning some of the most exciting names in architecture to produce one-off houses available for short-term rent. More pilgrimage to architectural Mecca than slog through soggy caravan park.

Source: Living Architecture

The Balancing Barn by MVRDV in Suffolk (my secret favourite and serious contender on our list), is booked out for months in advance and at £1,613 for a dirty weekend in September (sleeps eight) is maybe at the top end of the price options.

Next year will see the Living Architecture’s latest incarnation: A Room for London, a pop-up hotel on top of the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank, which was subject of an outrageously oversubscribed competition (attracting more than 500 entries). The winner, David Kohn Architects with artist Fiona Banner, has just been announced. I’m loath to say it, as I am a fan of all involved, but the idea of a boat seemingly plonked on top of the Southbank feels more like tacky tourist attraction than high-end architectural retreat.

Next in the Living Architecture pipeline is A Temple for Everyone, conceived by artist Grayson Perry who will be collaborating with Fat to see it through, the idea of which warms the cockles.

Source: bdonline

The Living Architecture proposition “holidays in modern architecture” sort of takes up where the Landmark Trust left off with its “holidays in historical buildings”, but the latter is not be ignored. From quirky little follies built by eccentric landowners that sleep one or two; or castles with enough room for a wedding party, there are some real gems in there and a fantastic way to celebrate true Britishness when it comes to weekends away.

But for all this talk of localism, the dream frontrunner, if I can convince everyone to jump abroad, is the Harads Tree Hotel in Sweden; a collection unique architect designed tree-houses. Seven in total are planned, and four of them, by four different architects, are already available in the first phase: the Mirrorcube; the Birds Nest; the Blue Cone (the red one obviously) and the Cabin. I can just see us all hooting at each other from across the tree tops from our very own little Ewok village empire. Bagsy the Birds Nest.

Source: deconet.com

(Written from the train, Exeter St. Davids - London Paddington, after a weekend away at Exmouth.)

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Is this the end of playtime?

2011-02-09T22:15:00.008Z

From: The architects' blog
Posted by: Tarek Merlin

9 February 2011

Interior design for creative agencies has always been about bean bags and breakout spaces, and Google’s recently completed office design in London by Scott Brownrigg (January 2011) is no exception. But has the joke got a little tired? Are we still laughing with them or at them?

Source: Dezeen

Scott Brownrigg’s Google office interior

There’s the giant logo in the lobby (the two Os in “Google” are actually doors into beach scened rooms), there are the obligatory beach huts (actually meeting rooms), telephone booths and dodgem cars (actually “work” spaces) and giant dice (actually video screens). And, of course, there’s a gym/shower facility with massage and a spa for when it all gets too much, as well as an Asian fusion/sushi restaurant that is free for all staff.

It’s almost as if they’ve just bundled together all the tired ideas from the late nineties, (when the offices of the dotcom boomers were defined by ping pong tables and pizza and everyone was coming to work down fireman’s poles and getting around the office in slides), and just expected it to turn out well.

Instead, it just looks a bit silly. A discombobulated collection of stuff and bloody nonsense, it looks more like a set for Play School than an office for an internet trendsetter (“and today, children, we’ll be going through the roundwindow”). Ironically, the efforts to provide a creative office design have resulted in an (over)eagerness to appear young and wacky, and it immediately looks dated and out of sync. A bit like watching your dad trying to dance to Lady Gaga.

Source: FAT

Fat’s KesselsKramer interior

I blame Fat’s design for KesselsKramer (Amsterdam, 1998) for all of this. It was one of the best interpretations of that un-interior design movement and has been copied many times over (badly). It features all the elements you would expect: a wooden fort, a garden shed and a watch tower, to name but a few. There is something about it, however, that separates it from run-of-the-mill wackiness. There’s a simple play on scale and an almost sinister distortion of the recognisable objects that turns them into something more than what they are – something more than the obvious bizarreness of finding these things out of their usual context. The way the various components have been tampered with, chopped off and arranged still gives that childish thrill, but at the same time has a grown-up sensibility.

Source: Dezeen

Another view of Scott Brownrigg’s Google office interior

The new Google office in London doesn’t seem to share the sense of mischievous appropriation that is needed to lift the obviously wacky refurb from Disney cartoon to more manga fantasy. Simply shoving a beach hut into an office just doesn’t cut it anymore. This is not a criticism of creativity or fun in interior design – to the contrary, you should know by now that I am a staunch supporter of the weird and wonderful, which is to be encouraged.

It’s just that with the sheer number of similar iterations, the designer needs to work a lot harder these days otherwise the end result runs the risk of being, well, just a bit old hat. And Google in particular, needs to be careful that it doesn’t fall foul of its own self-made self-parody pastiche. Its offices in Zurich by Camenzind Evolution (2008) already went to the ends of the imagination to bring us Igloo Satellite Cabins (with penguins outside) and ski-gondolas (with fluffy snow/clouds on a blue floor outside) – and of course fireman’s poles and those now all too predictable slides.

Please do take a moment to watch this video of snapshots from the Google office, Zurich. Maybe it’s the pan-pipe muzak, but I think it’s the expression on that lady’s face as she’s swanning down the slide into the cafeteria, that makes my toes curl and has me giggling with embarrassment.

Maybe, just maybe, the whole idea of the office as children’s playground has had its day and it’s time to put away such childish things. Besides, despite all the rhetoric that abounds about increasing productivity and making people feel “happier” in the workplace; I can’t help but feel that these wacky refurbs are actually less about the people that work there and more about the company itself, desperately trying to say to the world “Hey! Look at us, look how creative we are!”

And, just like the dad-dancing, there’s nothing more embarrassing than that.

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After a Fashion

2011-02-02T20:27:00.002Z

From: The architects' blog

Posted by: Tarek Merlin

2 February 2011

As Paris Fashion Week (#PFW for those hashtagging) comes to a close this week and we eagerly await the upcoming London Fashion Week (#LFW, February 18-23), I thought we should take quick look at the reciprocal relationship between architecture and fashion.

Paco Rabbane disc dress

Perhaps one of the most famously architecturally influential dresses is the Paco Rabanne Disc Dress (1968), an inspiration to Future Systems and their disc building for Selfridges, Birmingham. It’s no stretch of the imagination to compare the undulating curves of the building to the curve of a woman’s waist, and the building’s apparent billowing shape to the way fabric balloons in the wind.

Selfridges, Birmingham, by Future Systems

While I was working on the Middlehaven Masterplan in 2005, Nigel Coates’ office (one of the collaborating architects) dreamt up the Mini-Crini building for one of the “Prada Skirts”, a moniker we had given to the three buildings located next to the dock. The building bulges out like crinoline fabric, reminiscent of Vivienne Westwood’s bell-shaped crinoline skirts (from the Mini-Crini collection S/S 1985), which were no doubt bouncing around in the backyard of Nigel’s subconscious at the time. *A “mini-crini” combines the tutu with a mini-skirt version of the Victorian crinoline gown.

Branson-Coates, mini-crini building

A Vivienne Westwood mini-crini

We should mention The Big Frock (by Alsop for Toronto Interior Design Show 2005) – quite literally a 10.6m-tall fabric dress, creating a hooped-skirted canopy to an exhibition space below, placing the activity directly within the protection of its bell-shaped cosiness.

Alsop’s big frock

Shigeru Ban’s Curtain Wall House in Tokyo (1995), where the drama of the architecture relies implicitly on the drapery and folds of the fabric and its playful movement in the wind, is another example.

Curtain Wall House by Shigeru Ban

Japanese fashion, in fact, was irrefutably at the forefront of the more overtly architectural shapes and structures in fabric: see Issey Miyake for the crimped, folded and hooped skirts (a fashion favourite of Zaha Hadid’s); Rei Kawakubo for the deconstruction of fashion in general at Comme des Garcons in the late seventies and early eighties; Junya Watanabe (Rei’s protege) for his wired circle skirts (1998-99, also for Comme des Garcons); and, finally, Yohji Yamamoto for his oversized, almost obese, silhouettes and asymmetrical sharpness in the late nineties and early naughties.

There is a crop of new designers today who see themselves as neither fashion nor architectural designers. Lianna Sheppard, a recent MA graduate from Kingston University, describes herself as a “body architect”, positioning her work in the bit in-between fashion and three-dimensional design. Modu Gram, for example, is a series of wearable, 3D structures. Originally based on origami folding techniques, they become 3D objects at a scale that allows users to adapt and transform them as they wish.

Modu_gram from Lianna Sheppard on Vimeo.

And there is some amazing new work coming out from the more progressive practices looking at how techniques from the fashion industry (weaving, pleating, sectioning etc.) can be directly applied to architectural installations by embracing digital technologies like CNC routing. See Atelier Manferdini’s West Coast Pavilion 2006 and their S/S 2007 collection.

Atelier Manferdini pavilion

Atelier Manferdini s/s 07

There are, however, a few instances when all this incestuous synergy doesn’t quite work. Interestingly, it seems to be when architects suddenly become have-a-go fashion designers and, in the most offensive examples, shoe designers. The Ultra Mobius, by Dutch architect Rem D. Koolhaas (nephew of Mr OMA) in collaboration with shoemaker Galahad JD Clark for United Nude, comes across as some sort of high-heeled Dr Scholl sandal, and I can’t help but bring to mind that pungent foot smell and associated involuntary gag reflex.

Koolhaas Mobius shoe

And there’s the Mojito shoe by the inimitable Julian Hakes, which, for all its courageous design innovation, just ends up being mildly irritating as an actual shoe.

Julian Hakes’ Mojito Shoes

Zaha’s jellyfied jelly shoe, for Brazilian eco-shoe company Melissa, just comes off looking like (exactly what they asked for probably) a cheap replica of one of her (many similar) buildings. Not exactly the kind of marriage of the arts disciplines we were after.

Zaha Mellissa shoe

Further reading/viewing:
Exhibition: Drawing Fashion Design Museum (November 3 2010-March 6 2011). I originally went to see the now-closed John Pawson exhibition (Plain Space, September 22 2010-January 30 2011) but fell in love with this partner exhibition: a unique collection of some of the most remarkable fashion illustrations from the 20th and 21st centuries. And it’s still on!

Exhibition: 2008 Somerset House Exhibition Skin + Bones: Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture (Embankment Galleries). Check out their great guide booklet: http://www.somersethouse.org.uk/documents/skinbones_exhibition_guide.pdf
Exhibition: Last chance to see! Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion (October 15 2010-February 6 2011) at the Barbican Art Gallery showcases avant-garde Japanese fashion. The accompanying talk, Framing Fashion and Architecture, on December 9 2010 looked at the reciprocal relationship between Japanese fashion and architecture in structure, and featured architect (and designer of Future Beauty) Sou Fujimoto and Deyan Sudjic, among others.

Book: The Fashion of Architecture by Bradley Quinn (Berg Publishers, 2003), a comprehensive investigation into the contemporary relationship between architecture and fashion.

Book: Digital Fabrications: Architectural and Material Techniques by Lisa Iwamoto (Architecture Briefs, Princeton Architectural Press, 2009)

Read more: http://www.bdonline.co.uk/after-a-fashion/5012607.blog#ixzz1DDEcz1Ln
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The Trespafication of The Nation | Blog

2011-01-25T14:13:00.010Z

In the first of many opinionated blogs for BDonline, I take a look at the cladding material Trespa; its use, misuse and overuse:

The Trespafication of The Nation
Posted by: Tarek Merlin
24 January 2011
From: The architect's blog

"Is it just me or is almost every new building clad in Trespa these days? It is one of the more ’cost-effective’ options when it comes to cladding so it’s not that surprising that it seems to have catapulted itself from the poor-man’s cladding option to the every-man solution. All very well and good for Trespa, and great that new buildings are being built at all of course, but is it symptomatic of something more sinister; a dumber and dumber approach to architectural facadism which will lead us into an unavoidable future of uncheerful cheapness."

Read more: http://www.bdonline.co.uk/the-trespafication-of-the-nation/5012160.blog#ixzz1C3aml3U8

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MUGLER

2011-01-23T14:51:00.007Z

Via JAK & JIL BLOG MUGLER MENSWEAR FALL/WINTER 2011/12//

The stand out moment from Mugler menswear Fall/Winter 2011/2012: the muscular walk by this model, pounding side to side, countered by the illuminescent fabric transforming him into some kind of ethereal electric jellyfish. Love it. Please can we do a building like this one day?

And here's the youtube video. Love the world wobble at 1:56 and don't forget to look out for the magical jellyfish moment at 3:26

The Shard and me 4

2011-01-08T19:12:00.011Z

In commemoration of the mini blast of sunshine this morning and the first yoga session of 2011, I thought it was time for a Shard update.

The Shard, as seen from the corner of Bermondsey Street and Crucifix Lane, on the way to yoga.

We have reached a few milestones; the concrete core has arrived at its final height, standing at 240m, and on the 24th November 2010 the Shard officially overtook Nr. 1 Canada Square as the tallest structure in London, tallest UK 'building' on the 9th December 2010. Here are a few close up shots taken earlier today...

The Shard, as seen from out of the sunroof of daddies car, Crucifix Lane.

...and instead of a live webcam link this time, I thought you might enjoy this fly by aerial shoot instead, the music is *very* dramatic.

Before we all start squealing about how clever we are at building tall, take note: the Shard, at a mere 310m, pails in comparison to other skyscrapers currently under construction around the world; in this list of the Top 30 tallest skyscrapers on site, (via @LondonShard) the Shard doesn't even make the cut!

The tallest on the list is the India Tower, Mumbai at 725m. Spiteful!

For all its simplicity, I quite like the Sino-Steel Tower, Tianjin, China at 358m:

Do spare a thought for Dubai, UAE who will have to put up with the Emirates Park Towers, at 376m which looks like something out of SimCity. No wait, that's mean, the poor Sims.

Finally, as our minds consider the future of the skysrcaper, take a moment to imagine the future of London's skyline as it will be, circa 2015. Excited yet>?

Via @future_timeline

Previous Shard posts:

Tall Forest: The Shard and me three

30 Oct 2010

Tall Forest: The Shard and me too

28 Aug 2010
The Shard and me
05 Jul 2010

Château Gâteau

2010-12-16T12:26:00.004Z

It's not for life, it's just for Christmas

Paper model, cornice samples courtesy of Hodkin & Jones

Just because we can...does it mean we should?

2010-11-09T20:17:00.004Z

On the 3rd of November, Kengo Kuma were announced as winners of the V&A Dundee competition. The shortlist comprised of six entries from some of the world's celebrated architects; a heady mix of contemporary design, all different shapes and sizes, materials and forms, each one unique in it's own way, and yet with all this difference I couldn't help but feeling that they all seemed to have merged into one?

The winning entry from Kengo Kuma

REX's design

Snohetta

Steven Holl

Delugan Meissl

And Sutherland Hussey

What I find strange is that I could imagine any one of the above actually being announced the winner and not batting an eyelid. I would still feel this same disconcerting sense of apathy. What would it matter? What is it that sets them all apart exactly? Honestly, without being facetious, what is the difference between an upside down pyamid and a shiny diamond; a low block and a high block; a tottering pebble and a block with blocks cut out of it? It's not that there's anything wrong with all these things, these shapes, they are all wonderful in their own way, but I simply struggle to understand, what is the criteria you use to start to justify your preference for one over the other? Please tell me there's more to it than simply the shape you like the most, or because one has a hazy glow; or that the other one is white and you don't like white. The judges, I trust, had more information to go on.

Back in the day a competition shortlist would include an obviously poor effort, a couple of mediocre ones and two outlandish proposals that, at first glance don't seem to make sense, but upon closer inspection appear genius, inspiring. Now we are faced with an international language of iconography, the thrill and excitement that the unsual and whimsical shape used to engender, has, due to incessant in-breeding, dissipated into indifference.

Allow me to clarify, so that I am not misunderstood; I do not criticise the fact that all of the six are strong dynamic proposals, I am certainly not saying that we should be looking at a more mediocre shortlist, nor that they should be less fantastical in any way, it's just that what I find disturbing is that whilst they are all so very different from each other, paradoxically exactly because of this difference in fact, they feel simultaneously all the same.

And to just delve a bit further into the frippery of the graphics if I may; what doesn't help is that it doesn't feel like there is an understanding of scale, or engagement with anything...human in these images. The people that are in the images seem to be propelled by some unknown force towards the buildings like drones, turgidly stomping towards any given Blade-Runneresque form in the distant haze. Which, could be miles away as far as we can tell from some of the images. Furthermore, there doesn't seem to be any depiction of how this scene relates to Dundee the City. How do you get there, what else is nearby? What does it all mean for Dundee? But, and again without being facetious, this is probably all besides the point. This is the V&A and if ever we were allowed to 'take it there', then this is the competition to do it. And what the hell, maybe it is ok to like a building because of it's shape, or because you like white. But I can't help but feel that there is something more to it than that.

So, what is this all about then? How do you design an iconic building that will resonate with the place is meant to be in and yet provide the instant landmark that the client is asking for? What makes a building local to its place and is it important anyway? If you took the iconic Houses of Parliament and plonked it in Dubai, for example, for many obvious reasons it just wouldn't work. But if you took any of one of these proposals and landed them somewhere else, how would you tell that it wasn't meant to be there? Not to say that this phenomenon of belonging is solely the province of historical architecture, there is something about the Gherkin for all its simplistic iconography, that feels like London - it would still be out of scale and somehow all too European to sit within the skyline of a new middle-eastern city.

Contrary to popular belief, it is extremely difficult to create a successful form-based proposal without falling into a myriad of mishaps along the way that can lead to a dislocated, obnoxious design. Without a distilled approach to context and a consideration of a masterplan, without allowing the persistence of programme to inform the design process, and perhaps most importantly, without a critical editorial eye, (which over the years, has learnt to curtail pure whim), the scheme can all to often end up baseless and come across as watery, lacking substance. Of course there is no formulaic approach, ironically it is in fact the instinctive response to a scheme that is the most valuable.

In a world where we can do anything we want, what criteria do we use to decide if we should?

The Shard and me three

2010-10-30T15:53:00.005+01:00

A giant amongst men, the London Shard is shooting up, and there's still over 100m to go! We're currrently at the 57th floor, but remember this building will be over 80 storeys high and the tip will touch the 300m mark. Here's a handy little diagram to put that into context:

(via CULWALLA at skyscrapercity)

And here's the live webcam!

And the World goes Wyld

2010-10-27T13:40:00.003+01:00

In 1851, a giant 3D map of the world was constructed in Leicester Square by James Wyld a distinguished mapmaker of the time.

It was an entirely accurate depiction of the world as we knew it then (and still as we know it today), with the continents, mountain ranges and rivers all built to scale in three dimensions. The giant globe, which was about 6-storeys high (almost 20m tall), was hollow inside which allowed visitors to travel inside the earth climbing up internal staircases and along platforms to get a closer look. Top left you can just make out the UK and a man in a bowler hat trying to find his home town.

The little known installation was hugely successful and lasted for approximately 12 years, eventually being dismantled in 1862 due to land ownership issues.

As Stephen Fry pointed out, on the episode of QI which featured this last night, what is interesting about the geometry of the earth is that although you are viewing the globe effectively from the inside of a concave bowl, it is actually exactly the same view of the land mass as if you were viewing from it the outside of a convex bowl.

The closest a repeat of this amazing feat of ingenuity has ever come is the Mapparium, a three-storey hollow globe of the earth, this time in glass, in Massachusetts, 1935.

I absolutely love Wyld's original Great Globe and I think it's high time for a revival. Take note.

Viva Aviva: advertising hoardings, Battersea

2010-10-15T22:11:00.003+01:00

It's not often that an insurance company can inspire but these advertising hoardings from Aviva make me happy for some reason.

Not quite so hot from the back, but you can't have everything.

The Strata and me

2010-09-12T15:52:00.011+01:00

I have just returned from a visit to the Strata building. My friend moved in barely a few weeks ago and invited me over to see for myself what the building was like. He, along with the growing number of residents, are slowly inhabiting this unmistakable new part of our city's skyline. The building just won the ugliest building of the year award 2010, but is it as bad as everyone's saying?

In the lobby the concierge proudly resides within his lofty glazed empire, the traffic on the Elephant and Castle roundabout swirls around silently outside, muted by the double/triple glazing. The building's interiors are still in the process of shedding the skin of a construction site; there's still those thick white protective coverings in the lifts, the blue protective foam around the exposed corners of freshly skimmed walls. The communal corridors hum with a kind of warm, naturally ventilated austerity, there's that fuzzy new carpet feeling, the smell of fresh paint and an almost exciting sense of the new.

The apartments themselves are compact and most certainly do nothing to mitigate against the perception of poor quality construction and limp interior design that seems complicit with developer-led mass housing projects. The walls are paper thin, the rooms mediocre in size and the layout poorly considered. One redeemable feature is the ability to open up full height panels in the façade; those 'white panels' are perforated stainless steel panels with an operable solid door behind - once open the wind (and traffic noise from below) floods in. Actually a significant relief to the senses when you consider that there is otherwise no private 'external' experience for the residents.

One owner occupier I spoke to, who purchased his apartment through a shared ownership, tells of a unified community in the building. All the new residents have been having house-warming parties, inviting each other into their respective apartments, comparing, sharing their experiences. They all communicate on a dedicated facebook page resolving teething problems and discussing the building in general. And there seems to be a shared defiance of, and even personal offence taken to, the growing media backlash against the building.

The Strata building was awarded the 2010 Carbuncle Cup last month, BD’s annual award for the ugliest new building in Britain, and in an article in today's Guardian, Rowan Moore cites it amongst the buildings that are responsible for destroying Britain's reputation for cutting edge architecture and apparent fall from grace on the international architecture scene.

The residents, however, are proud of their new building, defensive of the criticisms, which they take very seriously. When critics speak of the 'ugly' they point to the surrounding context; when the critics giggle at the wind turbines they ask how much energy the critics homes are harnessing from the wind? They see the Strata as a beacon of what could be for the area; regeneration and a brighter future for a part of London blighted by concrete, forgotten by the maintenance department and ravaged by the irrepressible traffic.

You can't help but feel some sympathy with their arguments, and we have to remember the Strata is first in a new cluster of buildings that will be of similar height. The area is in a current state of change, this is a transitory moment of stark in-betweenness, sort of like the haircut without the blow-dry.

I think, however, that the underlying reason behind the malcontent in amongst the architectural community comes from an honest disappointment in all too rare opportunity to build something of real value to London. If 'missed opportunity' is a somewhat overused term it is surely valid here.

It is fair to say, I think, that most architects aspire to have a go at the high-rise residential tower. We all have our own ideas of what we would do. I think the reason why this building has failed in so many of our esteemed architect's eyes is that is does very little to be more than itself. It's just a residential building and doesn't seem to do anything to engage with the world around it, seemingly disinterested to the impact it has on the wider context. Why is there no open external space? Why couldn't there be some community component, a public sky garden or a restaurant for us all to share and enjoy? There's absolutely no sense of the public realm - the street scene seems inaccessible, as if irrelevant to the building making it appear impenetrable.

Ultimately, of course, people seem to have a strong aversion to the monochromatic colour scheme and the monotonous material palette. An honest response to a rather harsh and unimaginative use of modern construction materials. Ironically, perhaps the same can be said in comparison to use of concrete in the sixties, a material which many now find abhorrent and synonymous with poverty and even community unrest. A material that many seek to tear down or re-clad in attempts to cover up mistakes of our past. One can only hope that today's efforts in E&C are not tomorrow's repeated mistakes. Only time will out.

See some inspirational photographs of the Strata at SUPERETTE DAILY

Did Croatia steal the show at Venice Biennale 2010?

2010-08-29T13:55:00.004+01:00

photographer's credit: Zelimir Grzancic from e-architect

The 12th international architecture exhibition the Venice Biennale 2010 opened to the public today, after a week long series of previews and industry events. Croatia seems to have stolen the show with its floating mirage pavilion.

Made from 30 tons of welded steel wire mesh the entire pavilion was transported by barge across the Adriatic sea to arrive in Venice in style.

photographer's credit: Zelimir Grzancic from e-architect

photographer's credit: the authors from e-architect

I love the idea of the volume being created by one singular material and construction technique, and that the void between this is actually how the space is created and defined.

photographer's credit: the authors from e-architect

And here's the YouTube video:

The Shard and me too

2010-08-28T18:51:00.009+01:00

On the way to Yoga today, passed by the Shard again. As you probably have all seen the cladding is racing up so thought it was time for an update.

You know how I hate to be a hater, but up close, there's something all too visceral about the construction process that's ruining it a little for me.

In my fantasy mind I have probably concocted a 'shard of glass' more akin to Superman's icy lair rather than, well, what appears to be some sort of office block in a Slough business park. Is it just me or has it turned out a little...pedestrian?

That being said, the fantasy of this image is all there, and I wait with baited breath to see how this view completes the picture.

image courtesy of mitosan from skyscrapercity

And here's the live webcam!

When Architects were sexy

2010-08-16T15:55:00.002+01:00

Playboy Magazine, July 1961.

Left to right: George Nelson, Edward Wormley, Eero Saarinen, Harry Bertoia, Charles Eames and Jens Risom

source: http://www.coffeewithanarchitect.com/2010/08/14/don-draper-can-suck-it/

Vivienne Westwood's new design studio nears completion

2010-08-11T21:00:00.014+01:00

Cultural icon and doyenne of British fashion, Vivienne Westwood, has commissioned a new building to house her new design studio on the site of her former workshop in Battersea, and it's more than a little...unremarkable.

When we think Vivienne Westwood, we think outrageous fashions and inspirational British design. We associate her name with the Punk movement; Malcom McLaren and the Sex Pistols; chains and bondage gear; outrageous make-up and bright orange hair. This is the lady who brought us nine-inch heels (the ones that sent Naomi Campbell famously flying onto her behind); bubble-shaped hooped skirts and thigh-high stockings. She gave us tartans, tweeds and linens like we'd never seen them before and sent bare-chested models down Paris catwalks, effortlessly mixing depravity with decadence. She turned the fashion establishment on it's head whilst simultaneously making them all fall in love with her. It is fair to say that Vivienne Westwood is one of the most recognised and influential designers of the late twentieth century.

Why then, when it came to comissioning a new building to house her new workshop and studio in Battersea did none of the above seem to make it into the architecture?

Painted brick slips, tawdry timber cladding, key-clamp balustrades and cheap metal windows just somehow doesn't seem to 'fit'. We are all too keenly aware of the pressures that the recession has imposed upon us, bringing with new depths of meaning to terms like value engineering, and cost reduction. It's unfair to judge when we don't know of the particular pressures of the project, but a cost-efficient building does not always have to mean a cheap design and what's clear here is that an opportunity has been sorely missed.

Here are some before and after pics judge for yourselves:

Before images courtesy of dezeen Vivienne Westwood Design Studios by Anarchitect September 22nd, 2008

Toronto Street Style: architects, animals and Russians

2010-07-24T14:59:00.003+01:00

Street Style: architects, animals and Russians

Museums dominate Stirling contenders | News | Building Design

2010-07-22T00:08:00.006+01:00

THE STIRLING PRIZE 2010 SHORTLIST
Zaha Hadid’s Maxxi Museum of Art in Rome
Maxxi, Rome’s National Museum of 21st Century Arts, displays a cynical disregard for its purpose, that marks a conceit too far for Zaha Hadid.
Zaha Hadid’s Maxxi centre (video)

Source: Richard Bryant
Rick Mather’s Ashmolean Museum extension in Oxford
Rick Mather’s reinvention of Oxford’s Ashmolean has written a dynamic new chapter in the history of museums.

Source: Christian Richters
David Chipperfield Architects’ Neues Museum in Berlin
David Chipperfield Architects has undertaken a stunningly courageous transformation of Berlin’s ruined Neues Museum.
Chipperfield’s Berlin Neues Museum (video)

Source: Nick Kane
Bateman’s Row in London by Theis & Khan
Combining homes, an office and a gallery, this east London building near Shoreditch High Street revels in setting up rules and then breaking them.

Source: Helene Binet
DSDHA’s Christ’s College school in Guildford
A year after its opening, DSDHA’s special needs school is joined on the site by the practice’s fantastically impressive Christ’s College secondary school.

Source: Jonas Lencer
Clapham Manor primary school in London by dRMM
De Rijke Marsh Morgan’s striking addition to the 19th century Clapham Manor Primary school exemplifies the practice’s love of a technological solution.

Toronto: Walk with Me

2010-07-21T19:43:00.006+01:00

Take a walk with me down some of Toronto's most famous cross streets.

I have just returned from a business trip to Toronto. We were staying in an apartment up at Adelaide and Bathurst, a brisk twenty minute walk down to our offices at Richmond and Church. So, when you leave the apartment in the morning you can choose from one of three major streets that run East in one long straight line to downtown; Adelaide St. W, King St. W and Queen St. W.

Walk with me down each one in the photosets below. Highlights include The London Tap House on Adelaide (secretly my favourite building in Toronto); Mies van der Rohe's Trust Tower on King; and the old and new Town Hall buildings on Queen (the old one looks like a chocolate gateaux, the new one like giant curving bits of paper with a flying saucer in the middle).

Adelaide St. W

King St. W

Queen St. W

Watermelon at the Serpentine Pavilion 2010

2010-07-11T23:47:00.010+01:00

We had a watermelon picnic today at the recently opened Serpentine Pavilion 2010 by Jean Nouvel. The red of the watermelon went perfectly with the colour of the pavilion itself. We were loving how the colour changed through reflection, transparency, and mirror but especially how the green of the grass and the trees popped through all of that.

Photographers credit: Susanna Clapham, Richard Macara

And watch the video of the man himself explaining all here:

Thom Browne Space Odyssey SS2011

2010-07-07T12:31:00.079+01:00

What do you get when you mix colour clash short-suits with killer architecture? The stand out show at Paris Fashion week 2010 of course.

This was Thom Browne's debut show for Spring Summer 2011, and ever since the lights went up on June 27th, the fashion community have not been able to contain their squeals of excitement.

Set in the headquarters for the Parti Communiste Français, designed by Oscar Niemeyer, the visitng fashionistas were seated like dignitaries in the building's domed conference room, their desks adourned with blank Mead notebooks, precisely sharpened yellow No. 2 pencils and sets of miniature U.S. and French desk flags.

The show started with models emerging as Astronauts, to the soundtrack of The Blue Danube waltz by Johann Strauss (from 2001: A space Odyssey) of course. Wearing identical space suits and gold visored helmets, they eventually disrobe to reveal their colour clash short-suits underneath.

Were these actually made with me in mind?

Thom Browne and Oscar Niemeyer; a match made in heaven.

Watch the video here:

Rogers-inspired cable cars over Thames to become reality | News | Architects Journal

2010-07-05T13:34:00.002+01:00

Rogers-inspired cable cars over Thames to become reality News Architects Journal

The Shard and me

2010-07-05T13:30:00.006+01:00

Just thought you might enjoy a little Shard update, here's a view as seen from the corner of Bermondsey Street and Crucifix lane, every Saturday on my way to Yoga.

And here's the live webcam!

http://www.siteeyelive.com/monitor/shard/camputer120.jpg

What is wrong with our malls?

2010-07-01T21:29:00.006+01:00

Why is that every time I visit a mall I leave feeling somewhat deflated, fatigued, perhaps even a little sad?

Our malls are so bereft of any semblance of creativity or life that it leaves one feeling empty, cold and somehow even a little dirty. Being in a mall is like being stuck inside a Vegas hotel except without the fun. You can never find the exit, and once the novelty has worn off you slowly realise that the singular purpose of this place is to part you with your money. And what's worse is that the mall offers you nothing in return other than the basic transaction of the commodity it has deceived you into buying, at least with Vegas there are showgirls and free drinks.

How does it compare to its arch rival alternative, the street?

The greatest thing about shopping on the streets of London, or any other great city for that matter, is the fact that it changes everytime. Our cityscapes are constantly in flux, responding to commercial pressures, fashion tastes and constantly evolving trends; the shopping experience is never the same thing twice.

Seasons change, shop fronts are reborn and fashion is made - of course in the shops - but more importantly on the backs of the strangers you come across on the streets, taking inspiration from what you see as you navigate through the throng of the others around you, all comrades in the all in the communal hunt for something 'new'. Sometimes the very act of the search for that something is more important than finding it in the first place. It is this thrill, transience and un-expectedness of street life that infuses the experience with imagination and whimsy.

The mall experience, however, is just altogether...un-satisfying.

It's clean, and it's convenient to have it all collected under one roof, and yes, there are restaurants and toilets, but there's just one problem; it's not real life. It is like real life but when viewed through a sanitised lens of a pair corporate designer spectacles; plastic, disappointing and already out of mode before you have put them on. The daylight? It's not daylight, it's 'daylight effect lighting'. The air? It's 'air-conditioned' and filtered with the latest fragrance from the latest boutique du jour. The shiny floor and white walls? Only there to hide the myriad of systems, hardware, services and staff all straining in effort to keep this bizarre charade going.

Why isn't there any culture here, no art? Why is it so clinical? Why, in a place that is so vast does it feel like there isn't there any room to breathe?

There is a simple answer to these questions is obvious and stems from an age old consideration for the bottom line. It's cheaper to build malls like this; line 'em up and stack 'em high. They want to confuse you and get you lost, to wear you down so that ultimately you will succumb and just buy more stuff. Pinponging customers from side to side, disorienting them into a stupefied state so that they don't know where the exit is, let alone where they parked the car, is the most effective and efficient way to do that.

But what if it didn't have to be like this? What if there was another way to make people enjoy the experience so much that they actually want to stay?

What if there was a mall that wasn't like a mall at all? Somewhere that allowed for all the necessary requirements that a retail machine of this kind needs, whilst at the same time allowed for the un-anticipated, the unexpected to flourish. A space for live art to take place with an Artist in residence that you could spy on whilst they worked. A music studio that could be used by local talent. A place for urban dance crews to train, with space to sit and watch them. Why is there never any outside space? A giant tree or a small forest even. A skate park where the skaters wouldn't get told off for ruining the marble(-effect) seating.

What if there was a mall that made you happy, excited and actually enriched by the experience, lifting it from just shopping to actually part of living.

Well, the new masters of the mall, The Westfield Group, are trying out something new with their latest venture Westfield Stratford City. They have appointed a new cultural panel called Studio East who will be masterminding a series of commissions in art and design for the monster mall due to open in 2011 residing at the heart of the Olympic Village.

From left to right: Tom Dixon; Michelle Ogundehin; Erin O'Connor; Lucy Siegle; Mary Portas; Lisa Armstrong; Roland Mouret;Tracey Emin; Tony Chambers

Mary Portas, Queen of Shops, heads up the panel with four others Tracey Emin, Tom Dixon, Roland Mouret, Erin O’Connor who will provide bursaries to emerging talent in four key aspects of culture; art, product design, fashion and the environment. They have each selected a winner from each category who are now charged with delivering something special to be integrated into the completed shopping centre.

And the winners are:
Tatiana Echeverri Fernandez for art; Lee Broom for product design, Julian J. Smith for Fashion and Laurence Kemball-Cook for the environmental category.

This is a great initiative and an innovative panel who have made some inspiring choices, I only hope it manages to translate into reality in a meaningful way. The obvious danger is that 'art' translates into a meaningles piece of plonk sculpture, the 'product design' into chairs at the cafe and the 'environment' into a plaque about how the building has offset it's carbon footprint by planting a tree somewhere far, far away.

It seems as if they are going in the right direction though; whilst we all wait with salivated breath for Westfield Stratford City to open, we are invited to enjoy Carmody Groarke's pop-up restaurant sitting on top of the construction site.

The project was commissioned by Studio East and is billed as the “Rolls Royce of pop-ups”, hosting an 800sq m of dining area run by temporary restaurant expert Bistrotheque. It will only exist for three weeks before being dismantled. It is a breathtaking use of space and materials, an eerily beautiful effect is acheived by using simple scaffolding poles and a translucent membrane.

images courtesy of SUPERETTE DAILY

Two Schools: One Night

2010-06-25T23:33:00.026+01:00

Tonight we managed two architecture schools in one night: The Bartlett Summer Show 2010 and AA Projects Review 2010, here are the pictures to prove it.

with Maxine Pringle

Maxine Pringle: A performance piece exploring different transformations in space and form. Winner of The deans prize for 'the best time-based work'.

Tom Hillier: an urban theatre in central Tokyo – based on the metaphor of a mythical, ancient tale, The Emperor’s Castle

Jasmin Sohi: an office of nightmares, expressed through folds of shredded paper

Joanna Szulde

Daniel Baumann

Unit 14

Lik San Chan

Heather Macey

Akis Pattihis re-invents Berlin as an Archipelago of water spaces. See more here...

unknown, fierce scruff

Fred & Gustav

Christian and Yuma

...and I'm spent

photographers credit: Richard Macara

Welcome to the SHOW

2010-06-25T13:37:00.012+01:00

The RCA SHOW 2010, some pics from last night's opening event 24JUN10

Lauren Dutton

with Nigel Coates

Adam Smith

Satyajit Das

Regan Appleton

Simon Watson

Matthew Laws

Andrew Walker

unknown

SHOW TWO 2010 Kensington (Animation; Architecture; Communication Art & Design; Conservation; Curating Contemporary Art; Design Interactions; Design Products; Fashion (Accessories & Footwear); History of Design; Innovation Design Engineering; Textiles and Vehicle Design): 25 June – 4 July, 11am–8pm daily (closed 2 July). Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore London SW7 2EU.

Prince Charles' letter Chelsea Barracks

2010-06-24T12:10:00.010+01:00

The letter Prince Charles wrote to the Qatari prime minister in March 2009, that eventually got Richard Rogers sacked from the Chelsea Barracks scheme can now be read in full. The letter was revealed in the High Court as part of an £81 million breach of contract case over the barracks.

http://i.thisislondon.co.uk/i/pix/2010/06/lettercharles2.pdf

Full story at source: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23848261-revealed-prince-charles-letter-imploring-qataris-to-change-barracks-scheme.do

Albert Bridge forward slash Tower Bridge

2010-06-24T10:47:00.003+01:00

Albert Bridge is channeling Tower Bridge in its new look for S/S10, and it works for her!

Has it really been four years?!

2010-06-19T15:45:00.009+01:00

We gave a little presentation to the office last night; a look back at some of our work since Julia and I first started working together as Feix&Merlin. Four years ago, in the summer of 2006.

There's nothing like an F&M G&T

photographers credit: Cristina Carbajo

Scaffolding: the Ibincan way

2010-06-17T18:45:00.003+01:00

Construction site, Ibiza, Spain 2010; photographers credit: Julian Skinner

Hats off to London

2010-06-16T23:07:00.013+01:00

Tonight saw the launch of hat-itecture, an exhibition exploring the relationship between hats and architecture. There were some beautiful one-off hand-made designs by young artists, architects and designers, all working to design a hat for London.

The A+M Bowler by Austin & Mergold

The Hood by Jane Bowler

The event is part of the London Festival of Architecture LFA2010 and is hosted by milinerry maestro Gabriela Ligenza and design duo you&me.

Iris Papadatou, Alicja Borkowska (you&me); yours truly (F&M) and Gabriela Ligenza (Gabriela Ligenza Hats)

Our hat was inspired by the Lubetkin Penguin Pool at London Zoo, because deep down...we are all just little penguins trying to find our way.

And hats off to the wonderful Andrzej Borkowski who modelled all the hats

Some press coverage: Vogue.com; bdonline; Death by Architecture; Time Out London;

Bring the brick back

2010-06-15T17:36:00.005+01:00

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the designs for the extension of the Tate Modern is not it's 76 metres in height, it's twelve storeys towering over the Thames elevation, nor it's twisted nonsensical form, but it is the fact that it changed from glass to brick between 2006 and 2008 that got pulses racing.

Tate Modern Extension in glass 2006 left; and in brick 2008 right; source: london-se1.co.uk

Of course there have been others that have used brick in contemporary architecture in recent years, but the difference here is that H&dM's vision seeks to use brick to celebrate transparency; to play with the solid and the void so that, only by virtue of the massive scale of the form, the whole thing will create the illusion of a glowing brick latticework.

With an hour to kill in London yesterday, I ambled into the Tate Modern and came across some physical models of the façade detail, that got my pulses racing.

Physical models of the Tate Modern extension, images Tall Forest

The enabling works have started on the Tate Modern extension site so we will soon be able to judge for ourselves. In the meantime you can watch a live webcam here. (Well, it's not quite live, the webcam captures an image of the building site every 15 minutes during the working day but you can watch a time-lapse sequence of the work so far.)

Just little bits of history repeating

2010-06-15T10:49:00.011+01:00

'Temenos', Middlehaven Dock, Middlesbrough 2010, source: architectsjournal.co.uk

'Marsyas', Turbine Hall, Tate Modern 2002, source: berkshirefinearts.com

The word is about, there's something evolving,

whatever may come, the world keeps revolving

They say the next big thing is here,

that the revolution's near,

but to me it seems quite clear

that it's all just a little bit of history repeating

The newspapers shout a new style is growing,

but it don't know if it's coming or going,

there is fashion, there is fad

some is good, some is bad

but the joke is rather sad,

that its all just a little bit of history repeating

.. and I've seen it before

.. and I'll see it again

.. yes I've seen it before

.. just little bits of history repeating

Propellerheads ft Shirley Bassey - History Repeating 1997

When a building is void of scale or context, is it void of meaning?

2010-05-31T13:11:00.019+01:00

On the way to the Lady Gaga gig at the O2 yesterday, I couldn't help but notice FOA's Ravensbourne College nearing completion directly opposite.

Perhaps it was because we were about to witness the wonderfully vacuous façade of Gaga's pop persona, maybe it was the gaggle of Lady Gaga 'monsters' running around in front of us all tousled up in cheap tutu's and bad make-up or maybe it was just the way evening sun was hitting the new building - like a studio light on a Los Angeles film lot, but something about the whole scene came across more than a little....fake.

The college is clad in a skin of tessellating aluminium tiles, the pattern of which is inspired by the multi-directional floral patterns of William Morris et al. of the Victorian arts & crafts tradition. All sounds incredibly well founded and actually a wonderful way to try to tie in the history of Ravensbourne's design roots, lying as they do in this era of design.

The overall effect, however, is terribly disingenuous, the realised building reads as a plasticky lego conflagration of stuff and bloody nonsense. It doesn't relate to its context any way, the scale and proximity seems particularly odd in relation to the O2, and the echo of Morris or arts and crafts seems to have been completely lost along the way, the magic of the studio's first projects disappearing with it too. The great shame of this story is that this building is likely to be one of the last coming out of FOA as they disband into two separate companies following the split of the two founding partners.

Thomas Heatherwick famously espouses that he doesn't differentiate between design, sculpture and architecture. It is an inspirational statement and has been borne out successfully in many of his innovative and exciting projects, particularly the early ones, but it is a statement that is not without it's pitfalls.

UK pavilion at shanghai expo 2010image © designboom
Perhaps this is most prevalently exemplified in his most famous project to date, The British Pavilion for the Shanghai World Exposition, May 2010. It is an awe-inspiring, jaw droppingly beautiful thing, but it is neither design nor is it sculpture and unfortunately it's certainly not architecture. In fact, it could be anything and who would tell the difference? It could be a handbag, it could be a lamp and it would look exactly the same. And as if to emphasise this very point here is the exact same thing, only smaller; Heatherwick's own 'Sitooterie', Barnards Farm, Essex, UK 2003. (This Chinese website actually confuses the two labelling an image for the Sitooterie as the UK pavilion.)

Sitooterie, Essex, UK 2003 source: news.xinhuanet.com

UK Pavilion, Shanghai 2010 source: heatherwick.com

When a building is void of scale or context, maybe it has lost its meaning, but does anybody care?

The Modernists and their Masterplans

2010-05-16T23:29:00.018+01:00

The modernists were very good at designing interesting pieces of furniture and one-off houses, if only they had stopped there.

They successfully invented new techniques in furniture manufacture, borrowing from industrial processes, revolutionising design idioms and influencing a style that has echoed through generations (think tubular steel and the Model B3 chair by Marcel Breuer1925; or steam bending plywood and the Eames Lounger (670) designed by Charles and Ray Eames 1956); and they were great at designing visionary homes engendering evolutionary leaps of faith in the minds of masses (think The Stahl House CSH#22 by Pierre Koenig 1959 and Villa Savoye by Le Corbusier 1928).

They were not, however, all that good at masterplanning. Their obsession with the city and mass housing sparked an horrific legacy, potently manifested in the tower block, a 'machine for living in', that spread across the world like a virus, one that we are still today repairing ourselves from.

I have written before about the implausibility of trying to put in order the mess of dealing with mass populations:

"Perhaps the real truth is that environments such as cities and townscapes cannot actually be designed. By their nature they are transient, evolving through unforeseeable ebbs and flows of culture and commerce."

Read more: http://www.building.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=31&storycode=3093653#ixzz0oBGs8bBq

I wanted to revisit the idea of the masterplanner or worse still the urban planner. Robert Moses, considered by many as the "master builder" of the 20th Century America and credited with the successful redevelopment of New York City post the Great Depression actually caused a lot of destruction along the way. His preference to give credence to the automobile over the pedestrian caused the displacement of many local neighbourhoods and cultural institutions in lieu of transport and infrastructure projects.

There's a well documented fine line between modernism and fascism, a link between the modernist architecture of the west and the regimes of Mussolini who reveled in the austerity and power the modernist aesthetic seemed to evoke. See this link for some rather beautiful, if albeit now defunct, examples of abandoned fascist follies in Italy. The danger, as it has always been, is that the arrogance of the architect/masterplanner overrides the will and desires of the general population resulting in an unsuccessful urban environment that doesn't last the test of time.

In 1925 Le Corbusier proposed his ideas for "Plan Voisin" which involved razing the organic street pattern of the entire Marais district in Paris and replacing it with eighteen, sixty story cruciform towers arranged in an orthogonal grid with open spaces in-between, the height of the towers seemingly without reason other than their technological possibility and the spaces in-between seemingly meaningless other than their consequential presence created by the gaps between buildings. It too gave precedence to the car and demanded that human traffic be carolled into ordered architectural simplicity.

Le Corbusier "Plan Voisin"

Life is just too complicated for that and we have learnt that by enforcing this simplistic way of thinking onto the complex issues of mass housing we can destroy communities and create isolated, unnatural urban spaces. Instead, if we allow for a dense and mixed-use urban environment, and celebrate the unique and natural individuality of urban life, then that very life will happily attach itself onto the architecture it finds there, and indeed adapt it as it sees fit.

Please can we do a building like this one day?

2010-05-11T19:33:00.006+01:00

oooOOoh! Must. Have. One.

2010-04-15T11:31:00.004+01:00

http://superette-daily.blogspot.com/2010/04/ooooooh-must-have-one.html

Every Architect is influenced by A.N. Other

2010-03-26T14:19:00.020Z

And all are somehow inextricably linked.

Throughout the history of architecture if there is one thing that is a constant it is that it is defined by a complex and intertwined web of relationships. Architects and their clients, architects and other consultants, architects and contractors but most interesting perhaps are the relationships that architects have with each other. Somehow stringing the tangled web together is an intriguing thread of incestuous inter-architectural acquaintances: their peers and their predecessors, teachers and students, employers and employees, friends and lovers. All of which, perhaps unwittingly, have had a profound or even career changing affect on each other and indeed generations to follow. Where better to start than with a generation that seemed to change the face of architecture forever, the modernists:

Walter Gropius and Peter Behrens
Walter Gropius, who, along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture and is the founder of the Bauhaus School. After a somewhat testing architectural education (Gropius himself admitted he could not draw and instead employed others to draw for him), he found employment with the firm of Peter Behrens, in 1908. His fellow employees just happened to include Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris (later to be known as Le Corbusier).

Mies van der Rohe and Bruno Paul
Suffice it to say that Mies's employer Behrens, had a profound impact on him but it is said that his earlier experience designing furniture with Bruno Paul had a deep impact which manifested later in his career.

Le Corbusier and Charles L'Eplattenier
L'Eplattenier, whom Corbusier called "mon maître" (my master), was a teacher at the local art school in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland where Corbusier was raised. L'Eplattenier involved his students in his search for a new kind of expression through painting and helped to sustain the local craft industry. He is credited with convincing Corbusier to pursue architecture and indeed arranged for his first commissions.

Oscar Niemeyer and Le Corbusier
Oscar Niemeyer graduated from the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro in 1934 and joined a team of Brazilian architects collaborating with Lucio Costa and Le Corbusier on a new Ministry of Education and Health in Rio de Janeiro, now one of Rio's most famous buildings. He worked closely with the pair for four years until 1938.

So, if Gropius was the father of Bauhaus, Corb and Mies Modernism, let's say Cedric Price was the father of the architecture of joy.

Cedric Price and Arthur Korn
Cedric Price had a phenomenal impact across the world and almost every architect alive today knows of him or cites him as a reference, and yet up to his death in 2003, he had built very little. Price studied at Cambridge University and the Architectural Association School of Architecture, where he encountered, and became influenced by, the modernist architect and urban planner Arthur Korn.

Price worked with Maxwell Fry and Denys Lasdun before setting up his own studio with Joan Littlewood in 1960. One of his most famous projects was the Fun Palace (1961) and although it was never built, its flexible space and fresh approach to 'curating' spaces rather than essentially 'designing' them had a broad and weighty influence amongst architects. It must have hit a note with Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano whose Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris in a way extrapolated many of Price's ideas into built reality. Price is said to have anticipated the inimitable success of the London Eye having once suggested (during his proposed redevelopment of the South Bank in 1984), that a giant Ferris wheel should adorn the shores of the Thames.

From 1958 to 1964 he taught part-time at the Architectural Association.

There was an era at the AA when stars seemed to align and something magical happened. Picture the scene: Rem is giving Zaha a tutorial, Daniel Libeskind and Bernard Tschumi are sharing a beer in the courtyard and Will Alsop is wandering about in the background having a fag. It's the late 1960s/early 1970s, Alvin Boyarski is the director, and who knew then, but in that period the AA was the most fertile place for the architectural imagination and gave birth to a precocious generation of enfants terrible who are now household names.

Bernard Tschumi and Sergei Eisenstein
The Russian Cinematographer Sergei Eisenstein was apparently a big influence on Tschumi, who became fascinated by the machination of the theories and structural diagramming of Eisenstein's film work.

Daniel Libeskind and John Hejduk
When Libeskind first started studying, (at Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City), he met the architect and teacher John Hejduk. John Hejduk was an architect, artist and educator who spent much of his life in New York City and is noted for his use of attractive and often difficult to construct objects and shapes. Concern is currently growing in the architectural community over unsympathetic alterations to the Hejduk's Kreuzberg Tower in Berlin - one of only a handful of buildings he realised during his lifetime, and one of the largest of his built works.

Contrary to popular perception Libeskind has only really just started building; he completed his first project Felix Nussbaum Haus in 1998, at the ripe old age of fifty two.

Will Alsop and Cedric Price
Will went to study at the AA during its heyday in 1968 - he was taught by every member of Archigram whilst he was there and after graduating he worked for Cedric Price for over four years. Cedric's Fun Palace was surely an important part of the story. The connection between the Fun Palace and Centre Georges Pompidou has been made already but interestingly it is little known that Will also entered the competition, coming second to the Rogers/Piano scheme.

It is fair to say, I think, that both Price and Alsop share an approach to architecture that comes from a playful point of view, exploring programme and function by collecting a selection of components together and arranging them within one larger frame work. *A thing within which stuff happens. The Public in West Bromwich is exactly that, so too in fact, although albeit in a completely different arena, is the Blizard building for Queen Mary University where medical research and teaching facilities are bundled together in a 'Box of Delights'.

If Cedric was the architect of joy, then Will is the architect of delight.

* Speaking of a thing within which stuff happens, Will has just launched Testbed1; a new space for art, music performance and conversation in Battersea. It's headed up by a Committee with No Agenda whose members include David Gothard, Donald Smith, Jude Kelly, Bruce McLean and Will himself. He said at the inaugural event that this committee (with no agenda) will also be making no decisions and that the opportunity exists simply to allow people to think, to try, to fail and succeed.

Zaha Hadid and Rem Koolhaas
Zaha Hadid worked with her former teachers, Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, becoming a partner in 1977. It was with Koolhaas that she met the engineer Peter Rice who convinced her that her tangled drawings and perplexing perspective paintings could, one day, be built.

Rem Koolhaas and No One
Rem it seems is influenced by no one, or at least if he is, he won't admit it:
"Influence is a very unpleasant subject and I deal with it in a maybe irresponsible way, which is to really ignore it. It would be a nightmare if we started to really think about it; it would tie our hands, it would tie everyone else's hands." Rem Koolhaas

Footnote: There are of course many, many others. Those listed above are but a few in a long line of architectural acquaintance alumni. Indeed, this post wouldn't be complete without at least name-checking some others; Richard Rogers and Team 4 and indeed Renzo Piano; Renzo Piano and Louis Khan - Piano worked in Kahn's offices for five years in the late 1960s; Jan Kaplický and Norman Foster - Future Systems was founded in 1979 whilst Jan was working at Foster Associates, (Amanda Levete left Richard Rogers circa 1989 to join Jan as partner). Jan also worked with Rogers (and Piano) on the competition winning scheme for Centre Georges Pompidou; Frank Gehry and Rudolph M. Schindler, Rudolph Schindler and Frank Lloyd Wright (who had a quasi partnership for the American work at one point); Nicholas Grimshaw and Terry Farrell - Grimshaw worked with Farrell for 15 years before establishing his own firm. Norman Foster and Paul Rudolph - (the then Dean of the Yale School of Architecture, Foster his student), Rudolph himself studied at Harvard Graduate School of Design in the 1940's with none other than Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius.

You see? When it comes to us architects it's all just one big interconnected, ever-increasing, circle of incestuousness.

Living Bridges

2010-03-20T16:05:00.003Z

These ghostly temporary towers on Battersea Bridge stopped me in my tracks today. What if?...if only.

Tall Forest

The Shard and me 9!

Christo and Jeanne-Claude in W1?

Petrol Station Apocalypse

The Shard and me 8

FILM by Tacita Dean, Tate Modern

The Shard and me 7

The Shard and me 6

The White Cube Gallery, Bermondsey Street, London

Unité d'Habitation, Moscow?

RIBA Stirling Prize 2011

Gloop and gloom

RCA SHOW 2011

Electric Dreams

The Shard and me 5

Seasonal adjustment

When architecture treads the boards

Architects have moved on from this outdated caricature

From: The architects' blog

High Street living

From: The architects' blog

Posted by: Tarek Merlin Wed, 23 Mar 2011

Gardener's World

From: The architects' blog

Posted by: Tarek Merlin Wed, 16 Mar 2011

Lost in the supermarket

From: The architects' blog

How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr Foster?

From: The architects' blog

Weekends away

From: The architects' blog

Is this the end of playtime?

From: The architects' blogPosted by: Tarek Merlin

From: The architects' blogPosted by: Tarek Merlin

After a Fashion

The Trespafication of The Nation | Blog

MUGLER

The Shard and me 4

Château Gâteau

Just because we can...does it mean we should?

The Shard and me three

And the World goes Wyld

Viva Aviva: advertising hoardings, Battersea

The Strata and me

Did Croatia steal the show at Venice Biennale 2010?

The Shard and me too

When Architects were sexy

Vivienne Westwood's new design studio nears completion

Toronto Street Style: architects, animals and Russians

Museums dominate Stirling contenders | News | Building Design

THE STIRLING PRIZE 2010 SHORTLIST

Toronto: Walk with Me

Watermelon at the Serpentine Pavilion 2010

Thom Browne Space Odyssey SS2011

Rogers-inspired cable cars over Thames to become reality | News | Architects Journal

The Shard and me

What is wrong with our malls?

Two Schools: One Night

Welcome to the SHOW

Prince Charles' letter Chelsea Barracks

Albert Bridge forward slash Tower Bridge

Has it really been four years?!

Scaffolding: the Ibincan way

Hats off to London

Bring the brick back

Just little bits of history repeating

When a building is void of scale or context, is it void of meaning?

The Modernists and their Masterplans

Please can we do a building like this one day?

oooOOoh! Must. Have. One.

Every Architect is influenced by A.N. Other

Living Bridges

From: The architects' blog
Posted by: Tarek Merlin

From: The architects' blog
Posted by: Tarek Merlin