Architecture news

• Concertina-like footbridge completed in Leeds’ Climate Innovation District by Gagarin Studio and DP Squared

  01-07-2020 09:44 via architectsjournal.co.uk
  
  Spanning the River Aire, the bridge provides a key pedestrian link while carrying the planned district heat network to the South Bank and City Centre
  
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• HAT reworks Grade II-listed Redbridge Town Hall as studio spaces and public exhibition space

  30-06-2020 09:26 via architectsjournal.co.uk
  
  The light-touch retrofit for studio provider SPACE, designed for a five-year period, forms part of a planned new cultural quarter in Ilford
  
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• HAT rework Grade II-listed Redbridge Town Hall as studio spaces and public exhibition space

  30-06-2020 09:26 via architectsjournal.co.uk
  
  The light-touch retrofit for studio provider SPACE, designed for a five-year period, forms part of a planned new cultural quarter in Ilford
  
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• Put your hands up for Detroit! The city's opulent ruins – in pictures

  30-06-2020 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Detroit’s early 20th-century buildings were astonishingly grand – now they’re being destroyed. Philip Jarmain captured their fading glamour Continue reading...
  
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• Eton College science faculty reworked by CSK Architects

  29-06-2020 09:48 via architectsjournal.co.uk
  
  Three distinct department buildings have been refurbished and extended around a new shared four-storey space 
  
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• From Shirley MacLaine's past lives to a composer's flamingo carpet: the Observer culture quiz

  28-06-2020 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Test your arts knowledge with these questions from our criticsShirley MacLaine is a firm believer in reincarnation. Which of the following does she not claim as one of her past lives?An orphan raised by elephantsThe Moorish peasant girl mistress of the Emperor CharlemagneA Tahitian pearl diver who perished in a shark attackWho was the first African American to win an Academy Award? Dorothy Dandridge for Carmen Jones Paul Robeson for King Solomon's MinesHattie McDaniel for Gone With the WindA UK
  
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• From wrecked cars to catwalk: the fashion HQ born in a row of lock-ups

  26-06-2020 15:35 via theguardian.com
  
  It’s had Huguenot weavers, Jewish traders and Bangladeshi tailors. But east London is not the clothing powerhouse it was. Could a £6m startup built from garages in Poplar see it sashaying back? A clothing rail full of crisp new garments sits where a heap of old tyres and a mouldy old mattress once lay. All it needs is the models and the photoshoot can begin. Nearby, where a rusting car used to languish, rolls of fabric and patterns are laid out on a table ready to be cut, sewn and fi
  
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• From wrecked cars to catwalk: the fashion hothouse born in a row of lock-ups

  26-06-2020 15:35 via theguardian.com
  
  It’s had Huguenot weavers, Jewish traders and Bangladeshi tailors. But east London is not the clothing powerhouse it was. Could a £6m startup built from garages in Poplar see it sashaying back? A clothing rail full of crisp new garments sits where a heap of old tyres and a mouldy old mattress once lay. All it needs is the models and the photoshoot can begin. Nearby, where a rusting car used to languish, rolls of fabric and patterns are laid out on a table ready to be cut, sewn and fi
  
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• Architects Elsie Owusu and Shawn Adams: 'Above the glass ceiling is a concrete ceiling'

  25-06-2020 15:00 via theguardian.com
  
  We all share the built environment – so how come only 1% of British architects are black? Two designers discuss the trouble with statues, town planning, and why it’s time to stop focusing on Le CorbusierIn a context in which just 1% of UK architects are black, Elsie Owusu stands out as a leading light. The 66-year-old architect, who was born in Ghana, co-led the refurbishment of the UK Supreme Court and London’s Green Park tube station, and is currently working on a house in La
  
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• Stolon Studio completes ‘sociable’ housing development of residential and live/work units

  25-06-2020 08:56 via architectsjournal.co.uk
  
  Kaolin Court in Forest Hill, London consists of four houses, two live/work duplexes and three apartments set around a shared courtyard garden 
  
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• 1930s office building reworked with new core by John Robertson Architects

  24-06-2020 08:49 via architectsjournal.co.uk
  
  The extensive structural renovation of Walsingham House for KHI Holdings Group includes the addition of two floors
  
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• Unfinished, abandoned, demolished: how Cairo is losing architecture it never knew it had

  23-06-2020 12:32 via theguardian.com
  
  From grand visions that fail with the departure of a president to everyday buildings knocked down before they can be considered for heritage protection, a new book unpicks what Egypt’s capital might have beenn Looming above the affluent Zamalek neighbourhood in the centre of Cairo, the Forte Tower has stood as the tallest building in Egypt for the last 30 years – yet it remains unfinished and abandoned. A ring of faintly Islamic pointed-arch windows encircles the uppermost floor of t
  
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• Sustainable building, sustainable living: La Borda, Barcelona by Lacol

  23-06-2020 08:53 via architectsjournal.co.uk
  
  Working with the future residents of the La Borda social housing complex in Barcelona, Lacol arquitectura cooperativa designed a tall CLT building that promotes a low-impact way of life. Photography Lacol, Lluc Miralles, Anna Bosch Miralpeix, and Chopo
  
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• From farm to form: Flat house by Practice Architecture

  22-06-2020 09:19 via architectsjournal.co.uk
  
  Film director-turned-hemp farmer Steve Barron commissioned Practice Architecture to help him ‘grow’ a prototype house using his own crop. The result is Flat House, an ultra-low embodied carbon building the team is now looking to reproduce at scale. Rob Wilson interviewed Paloma Gormley, partner at Practice Architecture, to find out more. Photography by Oskar Proctor
  
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• Stephen Marks obituary

  21-06-2020 13:39 via theguardian.com
  
  My friend Stephen Marks, who has died aged 88, was an architect with a great interest in the history of the subject. As a planning inspector, he was keen to conserve the best of the past, while encouraging sensitive new development.In 1984, he oversaw the controversial public inquiry into the plans for an office block, Mansion House Square, in the City of London, the last design of the architect Mies van Der Rohe. This was a time of regression from the values of the modern movement. That year th
  
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• Antonio Citterio: 'A good, truly resilient city is also safe and inclusive'

  21-06-2020 13:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The architect and designer on how projects in Milan are dissolving boundaries between interior and exteriorAs a designer and an architect, my aim is not creating static and immutable furniture or buildings: I want to create something that talks of our daily life. Then creativity becomes a means to solve problems, and I like to solve problems. All design should be done for quality of life. Design isn’t just a statement – it should be something more.Cities around the world are now expe
  
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• Norman Foster: 'Manchester town hall and my local library were the buildings that shaped me'

  21-06-2020 11:30 via theguardian.com
  
  The architect, who left school at 16, on breaking into the business by drawing through the nightWinston Churchill said: “We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us.” The first building that shaped my future was Manchester town hall, where I started work at the age of 16. The Victorian-Gothic architecture was magnificent – it impressed me then and still moves my spirits today. I spent most lunch breaks wandering around buildings in the city, drawn to them for the aesthetic
  
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• Observer culture quiz: from an American werewolf to Van Halen's rider

  21-06-2020 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Test your arts knowledge with these questions from the Observer’s criticsThe closing credits of An American Werewolf in London contain which of the following messages?No animals, apart from werewolves, were harmed in the making of this filmHeartfelt congratulations to Lady Diana Spencer and His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales on the occasion of their marriageAll characters and events in this film are fictitious. Except for oneDuring the making of The Shining, what did Stanley Kubrick do
  
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• Forget Stonehenge. See the solstice in … Milton Keynes

  20-06-2020 12:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Away from its roundabouts and 1970s shopping centre, the new town’s pagan sun temple is the place to witness the longest dayShortly before dawn on the summer solstice, I sleepily vacate my room in a south of England motel and head off to meet author and friend John Higgs. Together we drive a few miles to a pagan sun temple to witness the sunrise. Stonehenge is, of course, where druids and free spirits flock at this time of year (even if only virtually in 2020). We, however, are heading to
  
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• An everyday archive and a virtual trip to Rembrandt's Amsterdam – the week in art

  19-06-2020 16:46 via theguardian.com
  
  Socially distanced exhibition slots are available for Ella Kruglyanskaya and Jim Dine, while online offerings include Amazonian artist Abel Rodriguez – all in your weekly dispatchUnquiet MomentsIf the slower world of lockdown has led you to contemplate the ordinary more closely, this online exhibition may strike a chord. Curated by Courtauld students, it creates an alternative archive of the everyday featuring artists including Rembrandt, Sunil Gupta and Karl Ohiri.
  • Somerset House a
  
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• Conibere Phillips completes ‘Tardis-like’ mid-terrace house in Brockley

  18-06-2020 08:46 via architectsjournal.co.uk
  
  The four-bedroom home, designed for one of the practice’s directors and his family, reworks the Victorian terrace type
  
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• Conibere Phillips complete ‘tardis-like’ mid-terrace house in Brockley, South London

  18-06-2020 08:46 via architectsjournal.co.uk
  
  The four-bedroom home, designed for one of the practice’s directors and his family, reworks the Victorian terrace type
  
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• Evans Vettori complete funeral home in Buxton

  17-06-2020 09:15 via architectsjournal.co.uk
  
  The two-storey pitched-roof building, incorporating a garage, is designed to sit sensitively with the scale of surrounding terraces 
  
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• RIBA president Alan Jones reinstated after admitting to affair

  16-06-2020 19:27 via theguardian.com
  
  The architect with whom he had a relationship had sent the institute a report on inequality within the professionThe president of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), who “temporarily” stepped away from his role at the start of April under a cloud of speculation, has been reinstated after admitting having an affair with a woman he mentored who had told RIBA she had experienced racism in architecture.Alan Jones, who became president in September 2019 amid allegations of i
  
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• Case study: The New Steading by Ian O’Brien Studio

  16-06-2020 08:00 via architectsjournal.co.uk
  
  This family guesthouse in Perthshire, by Ian O’Brien Studio, is built within the ruins of an old steading and clad in boards cut from the clients’ own oak tree. Photography by Keith Hunter
  
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• The Teesside Silicon Valley: Middlesbrough's £250m bid to be digital powerhouse

  15-06-2020 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Shiny skyscrapers, rooftop ping-pong, a wellbeing village and an urban farm … Middlesbrough’s mayor wants to make his town a tech dream. Why are so many people horrified?‘We are going to terrify you,” declared the mayor of Middlesbrough, as he unveiled his grand plan for a trio of 20-storey towers earlier this year, billed as the tallest buildings between Leeds and Glasgow. “This is about us saying we are here to be taken seriously now.”Not many buildings are
  
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• ‘Architecture and design should be for everyone’: Yinka Ilori’s colourful world

  14-06-2020 11:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The British Nigerian designer on thinking big, bright and positiveWalking into Yinka Ilori’s west London studio from the drab suburban business park outside is to enter an oasis. Floor-to-ceiling shelving is lined with the brightly coloured, upcycled chairs, painted or upholstered in West African fabrics, that made Ilori’s name when he first left college. Lush houseplants are dotted around and a portrait of his smiling grandmother sits behind his desk, resplendent in a gele, a tradit
  
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• Let children reclaim the streets for a summer of outdoor play | Rowan Moore

  14-06-2020 08:30 via theguardian.com
  
  The young deserve to have fun and games after their pandemic privations Here’s an outstandingly good idea: close residential streets to traffic this summer so that children can play in them. Give them something positive by which to remember the year 2020 – that time when they could take possession of the usually forbidden ground outside their front doors. Make up for the lockdown’s constriction of space with abundance of it.So far, children have featured in the pandemic discuss
  
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• From Baldrick to trainspotting composers: the Observer's culture quiz

  14-06-2020 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Test your arts knowledge with these questions from our criticsWho or what is Roderick Jaynes?The name that Edward Norton uses when he checks into hotelsThe former basketball player turned actor who played both the Predator in Predator and Harry in Harry and the Hendersons The pseudonym that the Coen brothers use when they edit their filmsIn which country were the oldest known oil paintings made? IndiaBelgiumAfghanistan“Do you ask a car crash for another take? Do you ask a volcano for anoth
  
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• Work completes on Heatherwick Studio’s long-awaited Maggie’s Leeds

  12-06-2020 11:30 via architectsjournal.co.uk
  
  Construction has finished on a new timber-frame Maggie’s centre, designed by Heatherwick Studio, in the grounds of St James’s University Hospital, Leeds 
  
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• Nissen Richards design permanent exhibition gallery for the National Library of Norway

  11-06-2020 09:02 via architectsjournal.co.uk
  
  The thirty objects on display all represent key aspects of the country’s history, brought together for the first time in central Oslo
  
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• Collective complete restoration of Grade 'A' Watt Institution in Greenock

  10-06-2020 10:09 via architectsjournal.co.uk
  
  A tight budget for external conservation has been intelligently stretched to include significant internal improvements to accessibility and natural lighting 
  
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• Geoffrey Collens obituary

  09-06-2020 14:16 via theguardian.com
  
  My uncle, Geoffrey Collens, who has died aged 86, was an architect, a renowned landscape design expert and a generous supporter of the arts.Born in Sevenoaks, Kent, Geoffrey was one of three children of Emily and John Collens, both civil servants. When his father’s Post Office department was evacuated from London in 1940, the family moved with it to Harrogate, north Yorkshire, where one of their neighbours was an architect, which sparked Geoffrey’s interest. Continue reading...
  
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• WilkinsonEyre completes pair of monocoque-structure link bridges in City of London

  09-06-2020 09:22 via architectsjournal.co.uk
  
  The bridges connect the differing levels of Nos. 1 and 2 New Street Square, built 15 years apart, both part of Deloitte’s central London ‘campus’
  
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• Britain's urban fabric comes under spotlight shone by BLM protests

  08-06-2020 18:57 via theguardian.com
  
  Force of history demands re-evaluation of colonial statues and street names Cities have always been about apportioning and memorialising power; about writing force into space. Britain’s colonial and imperial past is inscribed into the bricks and mortar of every city and town in the country. Mostly this hidden text of power relations and wealth acquisition lies dormant in the half-forgotten significance of street names, in the knotty iconography of grand facades, in the barely read inscript
  
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• What lies beneath: our love affair with living underwater

  08-06-2020 09:00 via theguardian.com
  
  How the 1960s craze for oceanic exploration changed our relationship with the planet for everIn November 1966, the Gemini 12 spacecraft, carrying two astronauts, splashed down in the Pacific. The four-day mission was a triumph, proving that humans could work in outer space, and even step into the great unknown, albeit tethered to their spacecraft. It catapulted the US ahead of the USSR in the space race.From then, Nasa’s goal was to beat the Russians to the moon. That meant weeks rather th
  
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• Case study: Rye Apartments by Tikari Works

  08-06-2020 08:00 via architectsjournal.co.uk
  
  With a shingle-clad façade and exposed CLT interiors, Tikari Works has create a sense of warmth and privacy in this housing scheme opposite Peckham Rye Park. Photography by Jack Hobhouse
  
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• No house of straw: Sarah Wigglesworth's eco-home, 20 years on

  07-06-2020 11:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Two decades ago, the architect built a groundbreaking green space for living and working. How has ‘the straw bale house’ endured?“I’m a real believer in trying things,” says the architect Sarah Wigglesworth. “That’s how you learn. Taking risks is really important. I’m interested in the things that give a kind of joy and maybe disrupt things. I am interested in pushing boundaries. Anything that does that is good.”Wigglesworth – who was a
  
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• From Prince's Bible to Battersea Power Station: the Observer culture quiz

  07-06-2020 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Test your arts knowledge with these questions from our criticsThe Funk Bible was the original title for which album by Prince?Dirty MindSign o' the TimesThe Black AlbumThe German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen wrote a quartet for four string players and four machines. What were they?Industrial diggersHelicoptersBulk-handling cranesWhich technique was not used by Renaissance artists?SgraffitoSfumatoFrescoKatharine Hepburn said this to which actor: “You know you can’t act and if you ha
  
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• Want beautiful, sustainable and safe buildings? Use wood | Rowan Moore

  06-06-2020 19:00 via theguardian.com
  
  After Grenfell, the reluctance to utilise timber in new constructions is understandable, but misguided and the government should reconsider its banYou don’t have to be an expert in construction to know that wood burns. You might also recall that parts of London were destroyed in the Great Fire because they were made largely of wood, after which they were rebuilt in brick and stone. So it will seem a reasonable reaction to the Grenfell disaster that the government banned timber (along with
  
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• Do you want beautiful, sustainable and safe tall buildings? Use wood | Rowan Moore

  06-06-2020 19:00 via theguardian.com
  
  A ban on constructing with timber is one of the more misguided responses to GrenfellYou don’t have to be an expert in construction to know that wood burns. You might also recall that parts of London were destroyed in the Great Fire because they were made largely of wood, after which they were rebuilt in brick and stone. So it will seem a reasonable reaction to the Grenfell disaster that the government banned timber (along with other combustible materials) from the exterior of residential b
  
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• ACME creates stone-fretted waterside square in Muscat

  04-06-2020 09:00 via architectsjournal.co.uk
  
  Situated in the centre of Al Mouj Quarter on the western edge of Muscat, Marsa Plaza is a new urban space at the edge of the marina
  
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• ACME create stone-fretted waterside square in Muscat

  04-06-2020 09:00 via architectsjournal.co.uk
  
  Situated in the centre of Al Mouj Quarter on the western edge of Muscat, Marsa Plaza is a new urban space at the edge of the marina
  
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• My lockdown fantasy: I wish I was back in the bustling, mind-blowing beauty of Phnom Penh

  03-06-2020 17:14 via theguardian.com
  
  From its sublime palaces and museums to its divine art deco markets, the city’s glorious architecture is lovingly captured in a thrilling new book. But can it survive a tidal wave of foreign investment?Hovering like a banana-coloured flying saucer above the dusty, congested streets of scooters and cyclo taxis, the central market of Phnom Penh is a remarkable thing. Its enormous concrete dome rises in sharply serrated steps, perforated with screens of chevron tiles, above four long streamli
  
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• Terrace house-type reinterpreted by Child Graddon Lewis in south-west London

  03-06-2020 09:51 via architectsjournal.co.uk
  
  Nine family-sized houses remake the street on the Old Imperial Laundry site in Battersea
  
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• More 'age-appropriate' homes needed in the UK, says report

  02-06-2020 19:49 via theguardian.com
  
  More purpose-built housing for older people will free up family homes, research claims The key to unlocking the UK’s housing crisis lies in reversing decades of underinvestment in purpose-built housing for older people, according to new research published on Wednesday.The report, titled Too little, Too late? Housing for an ageing population, by the Cass Business School, the Association of Retirement Community Operators and the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation, said investi
  
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• Austria unveils design to turn Hitler’s house into a police station

  02-06-2020 17:44 via theguardian.com
  
  Conversion of building where Nazi leader was born will cost €5m and be completed in 1922
  Austrian authorities have unveiled a design for turning the house where Adolf Hitler was born into a police station – while trying to make it unattractive as a pilgrimage site for people who glorify the Nazi dictator.A design by Austrian architects Marte.Marte beat 11 competitors in an interior ministry tender, officials said on Tuesday. The refurbishment is expected to be completed around the end
  
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• Landmark 20th Century Fox building in London facing new threat

  01-06-2020 17:31 via theguardian.com
  
  The distinctive building in Soho Square will be almost entirely demolished if developers’ plans succeed in gaining planning consent
  Twentieth Century Fox’s former HQ faces the threat of imminent demolition after developers submitted a new set of plans, it has been revealed.Situated in London’s Soho Square, in the heart of the capital’s traditional film-making district, the distinctive building housed the UK arm of the Hollywood studio from its construction in 1937 until D
  
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• Where is this orgy taking place? The great British art quiz

  01-06-2020 09:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Sir John Soane’s Museum in London sets today’s quiz, which tests your knowledge while exploring the art collections of museums closed to to coronavirusThis quiz is brought to you in collaboration with Art UK, the online home for the UK’s public art collections, showing art from over 3,000 venues and by 45,000 artists. Each day, a different collection on Art UK will set the questions.Today, our questions are set by the Sir John Soane’s Museum, London, the house and mu
  
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• This way for Bums and Tums! The discreet charm of the village hall

  31-05-2020 16:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Bleak, bulky yet strangely beautiful, village halls are the beating heart of rural Britain, where great events happen for £8 an hour. We meet a photographer celebrating these harmonious hubsA row of karate kids are performing mawashi geri kicks in unison to the cries of their teacher. Coincidentally, in the room next door, the Brownies are learning first aid. The next morning, a gaggle of pensioners arrive and are soon waltzing to wartime classics. Then, by the afternoon, a jumble sale is
  
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