Architecture news

• A bold addition: Hoskins Architects revamps Aberdeen City Art Gallery

  20-11-2019 10:54 via Architects Journal - Buildings
  
  This revamp and extension of the city’s prime exhibition space for visual arts is an impressively mature project in a city that until now has enjoyed little good modern architecture, writes Alan Dunlop. Photography Gillian Hayes
  
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• Ryder Architecture completes blue slate hospice in Glasgow

  19-11-2019 10:06 via Architects Journal - Buildings
  
  The hospice is spread over 5,840m² of social spaces, patient accommodation and therapy rooms
  
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• Hidden grandeur in Chicago's South Side – in pictures

  18-11-2019 11:15 via Architecture | The Guardian
  
  Photographer Lee Bey’s new book Southern Exposure celebrates the often-overlooked architecture of Chicago’s South Side, an area known as a place of abandonment and violence Continue reading...
  
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• Featherstone Young designs sloping stone house in rural East Midlands

  18-11-2019 10:19 via Architects Journal - Buildings
  
  The 347m² house has two wings enclosing a central courtyard, one topped by a folded green roof rising out of the ground, giving the illusion that ’the field has been lifted up and the house slid in beneath’
  
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• Slacklands 2 by Corinna Dean review – beauty of our forgotten architecture

  18-11-2019 10:00 via Architecture | The Guardian
  
  Dean’s photographs capture unintended poetry in rural Britain’s abandoned water towers, brickworks and wartime defencesSome of the best architecture happens when its creators are looking the other way – side elevations rather than imposing facades, kitchens and stables in great palaces, chimneys and roof trusses and other functional items. Something good happens when the anxiety to impress is removed, and an architect or builder can just get on with solving a practical problem
  
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• Conserving Plymouth: the city that dared to dream

  16-11-2019 18:00 via Architecture | The Guardian
  
  Even as the blitz reduced the historic Devon port city to rubble, plans were afoot for major reconstruction. Now its remarkable hybrid city centre has been designated as a conservation areaIt’s a recurrent yearning, after an urban catastrophe, to rebuild better than before, to take the opportunity to clear away the mistakes of the past. Phoenixes tend to get mentioned, and their well-known ability to rise from ashes. Often it doesn’t work out as planned. Vested interests muscle in. T
  
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• fourth_space completes mews house extension in Shoreditch infill site

  15-11-2019 09:00 via Architects Journal - Buildings
  
  The 85m² house, on a infill site in east London, features hand-painted imitation exposed concrete walls
  
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• Desert ski slopes and outdoor aircon: can the scorching emirates really go green?

  14-11-2019 17:47 via Architecture | The Guardian
  
  It is one of Earth’s biggest carbon emitters, a place where SUVs roar from manmade islands to malls with ski slopes. Can an architecture triennial in the UAE really teach us how to go green?A perfectly manicured lawn lines either side of the eight-lane highway leading into the Gulf city of Sharjah. Punctuated by rows of palm trees and pink-blossomed flowerbeds, it is a lush, implausible vision, sustained by a constant mist of sprinklers beneath the scorching sun. Beyond the green ribbon, e
  
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• Notre Dame fire: row as general tells architect to 'shut his mouth'

  14-11-2019 15:27 via Architecture | The Guardian
  
  Army general rebuked after lashing out at chief architect over cathedral rebuild plansThe French army general charged with the rebuilding of the fire ravaged Notre Dame Cathedral has been rebuked by the government after telling the chief architect to “shut his mouth” in a sign of tensions over the cathedral’s future appearance.Gen Jean-Louis Georgelin lost his cool with Philippe Villeneuve in a dispute over whether to replace the spire, which collapsed in the fire in April, wit
  
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• WilkinsonEyre’s Science Museum medicine galleries revealed

  14-11-2019 10:13 via Architects Journal - Buildings
  
  At 3,000m², the £24 million Wellcome Galleries are the largest medicine galleries in the world 
  
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• AHMM designs homes out of shipping containers in Oklahoma

  13-11-2019 09:23 via Architects Journal - Buildings
  
  The $1.1 million scheme employs 16 reused shipping containers to make four homes on a central residential plot in Oklahoma City
  
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• Dragging parliament into the 21st century | Letters

  12-11-2019 18:39 via Architecture | The Guardian
  
  Judith Martin and Jol Miskin agree that moving parliament away from London is a good first stepJohn Forsyth (Letters, 8 November) says he would vote for the party that opts to move on from the constraints imposed by the built fabric of the “mother of parliaments”. Writing from Penzance, he generously suggests parliament should be moved to the Midlands or the north.I agree, but the first step is to prevent the ludicrous waste of public funds about to be spent on turning Richmond House
  
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• Architectural branding: The Silver Building by SODA Studio

  12-11-2019 13:09 via Architects Journal - Buildings
  
  SODA Studio has transformed a former brewery in London’s Royal Docks into a creative workspace hub with branding and wayfinding inspired by the building’s form. Photography by Lewis Khan and SODA Studio
  
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• First images released of David Chipperfield’s West Bund Museum in Shanghai

  12-11-2019 07:00 via Architects Journal - Buildings
  
  Right on the northern bank of the Huangpu River, the recycled glass-clad museum is a partnership with Paris’s Centre Pompidou 
  
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• Sutton social housing: Three schemes by Bell Phillips Architects

  11-11-2019 10:18 via Architects Journal - Buildings
  
  Richmond Green, Century House and Ludlow Lodge are the first schemes in a wave of social housing being built by Sutton Council, the first the borough has undertaken for 30 years, writes Fran Williams. Photography Kilian O’Sullivan
  
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• Steve McQueen's school sensation, R2-D2 and a hi-tech Leonardo – the week in art

  08-11-2019 15:09 via Architecture | The Guardian
  
  McQueen puts Britain’s next generation on billboards, droids take over Dundee, and the National Gallery goes inside the mind of Da Vinci – all in your weekly dispatchSteve McQueen Year 3
  Portraits of an entire generation of young Londoners – displayed on hundreds of billboards across the city – that foreground the future of Britain, just as it prepares to vote in a general election. Read more in this interview.• Tate Britain, London, 12 November to 3 May. Continue re
  
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• Ghost in the shell: Alma-nac’s House Within a House

  08-11-2019 08:00 via Architects Journal - Buildings
  
  The practice has transformed a two-storey 1950s house in south-east London to reinstate the scale and silhouette of the bomb-destroyed home it replaced, writes Ellie Duffy. Photography Jack Hobhouse
  
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• Pride of space: Australia's 2019 National Architecture Award winners, in pictures

  08-11-2019 07:34 via Architecture | The Guardian
  
  Sustainability-minded and socially conscious design dominated the Australian Institute of Architects’ awards Continue reading...
  
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• Auckland Castle has a long tradition of hospitality | Letter

  07-11-2019 19:08 via Architecture | The Guardian
  Michael Turnbull, a former bishop of Durham, refutes a suggestion that the castle has not welcomed in visitorsIt is good to know that Oliver Wainwright was impressed by his visit to Auckland Castle (Big bubbles, no trouble, G2, 5 November). It is remarkable what Jonathan Ruffer and the splendid Auckland Project team have achieved not only with the building itself but by a social renewal of Bishop Auckland town and indeed the wider north-east.I hope, however, that the chief executive of the Auckl
  
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• From bars to pod homes: how underused car parks are being transformed

  07-11-2019 13:45 via Architecture | The Guardian
  Shopper numbers in city centres are falling, leaving car parks empty – and councils are finding innovative ways to repurpose the space
  The Abbey Walk multistorey car park in Grimsby is a stark concrete layer cake with abstract reliefs sculpted by artist Harold Gosney on its flank and an elegant spiral access ramp. But despite its appearance, North East Lincolnshire council believe that Abbey Walk’s reputation for attracting anti-social behaviour puts off customers and is seeking &pou
  
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• Getting warmer: Collective Architecture upgrades Glasgow tower blocks

  07-11-2019 09:33 via Architects Journal - Buildings
  
  The project seeks to tackle fuel poverty while exemplifying the city council’s shift towards retrofitting its high-rise housing, says Alan Dunlop. Photography Andrew Lee, Collective Architecture
  
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• The best architectural photography of 2019 – in pictures

  07-11-2019 08:00 via Architecture | The Guardian
  The shortlist for the 2019 Architectural Photography Awards highlights the best images selected from nearly 2000 entries from 42 countries Continue reading...
  
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• One for the ages: Nithurst Farm by Adam Richards

  06-11-2019 10:09 via Architects Journal - Buildings
  
  This large family home on the South Downs replaces a 19th-century cottage with a church‑like structure built to last at least 500 years, writes Rob Wilson. Photography Brotherton-Lock
  
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• Hayhurst & Co creates RIBA learning centre out of recycled materials

  05-11-2019 09:52 via Architects Journal - Buildings
  
  The 320m² room features inbuilt display cabinets and furniture made out of recycled yoghurt pots and bamboo
  
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• Hothouse towers: Auckland Castle's skyscraping, pineapple-friendly revamp

  05-11-2019 07:01 via Architecture | The Guardian
  After 1,000 years, the fortified stronghold of Durham’s mighty bishops is finally opening to visitors. Our writer scales its siege tower – and marvels at its mesmerising 13-orb glasshouseThe golden-tipped spikes of a razor-sharp tower poke out above the rooftops of Bishop Auckland. It looks as if a giant beard-trimmer has been planted in the centre of the historic County Durham market town. As you get closer, this mysterious structure takes on a more primitive air, its great timber f
  
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• How a cash-strapped generation fell for the fantasy world of the Modern House

  04-11-2019 13:00 via Architecture | The Guardian
  Why has an estate agency that specialises in design-led properties built such a big online following? Because it offers escapism at a time of towering property pricesThe Drive curves quietly through the green of Maresfield Park, past mature trees, grass verges and tall, polite hedges that offer glimmers of the homes beyond: slate roofs, mullion windows, block-paving, gravel.Once part of a local manor house estate, the land here was requisitioned during the first world war and afterwards parcelle
  
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• Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands completes 17-storey mixed-use scheme in Southwark

  04-11-2019 10:21 via Architects Journal - Buildings
  
  Six floors of hotel rooms integrate with restaurants, bars and function rooms plus 4,000m2 of flexible co-working office space
  
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• LDS completes 17-storey scheme in Southwark incorporating 192-room hotel

  04-11-2019 10:21 via Architects Journal - Buildings
  
  Six floors of hotel rooms integrate with restaurants, bars and function rooms plus 4,000m2 of flexible co-working office space
  
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• Case study: Orchard House by Beasley Dickson Architects

  04-11-2019 10:15 via Architects Journal - Buildings
  
  The house frames its landscape context through large windows on every side, allowing for continual engagement with the natural environment. Photography by Agnese Sanvito
  
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• Neon dreams: Los Angeles by night – in pictures

  02-11-2019 18:00 via Architecture | The Guardian
  Franck Bohbot’s photography series LA Confidential, started in 2018, is a nocturnal exploration that focuses on neon signs. “At night, everything changes,” says the photographer, who is originally from Paris, “and the neon lights help to create the scene… this could be the LA from the past but also from the future.” Continue reading...
  
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• Aberdeen’s bid to reinvent itself falls between a rock and a hard place

  02-11-2019 14:00 via Architecture | The Guardian
  The granite city’s multimillion-pound events centre and revamped art gallery are practical and ambitious – but can they transcend mere function?How does an oil town plan for life when the hydrocarbons run out? Dubai, famously, has its response – build archipelagos and super-tall buildings in memorable shapes and open your arms to financial services and tourism. Aberdeen, less spectacular but still aspirational, has its own version. It is spending about a billion pounds, with th
  
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• First look: a tour of the restored Auckland Castle

  02-11-2019 13:00 via Architecture | The Guardian
  When Harry Pearson last visited this Georgian gothic palace in County Durham ‘it was a jewel badly in need of a polish.’ Now its restored spires and grand state rooms are the centrepiece of an ambitious project to regenerate the Bishop Auckland areaSurveying the ornate white plasterwork of the Throne Room in Auckland Castle – a neo-gothic riot of spires and curlicues designed in the 1790s by the fashionable and feckless James Wyatt – I hear the voice of my long departed g
  
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• Great council housing of the past and the future | Letters

  01-11-2019 18:52 via Architecture | The Guardian
  Readers respond to a piece about local authorities that are finding ways to build housing despite government cutsIn a time of pressing need for more social housing, it was heartening to read Oliver Wainwright’s article (Home truths: The councils building a housing revolution against all the odds, 29 October). But while many local authorities are to be congratulated on how they are managing to deliver such well-designed and well-considered social housing developments, despite difficult fina
  
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• Amsterdam citizens given chance to own a piece of its golden age

  01-11-2019 11:09 via Architecture | The Guardian
  Architectural treasure trove up for grabs in attempt to ‘breathe new life’ into old AmsterdamAmsterdammers are being given the chance to own a piece of their city dating from as early as the 17th century.Urban renewal programmes before the second world war and in the 1960s left behind huge amounts of unwanted debris, from gables ripped from the city’s famous canal houses to monuments, ornaments and columns complete with Roman numerals. Continue reading...
  
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• SODA Studio completes revolving Soho theatre

  01-11-2019 06:51 via Architects Journal - Buildings
  
  A new boulevard cabaret and theatre venue with a revolving auditorium has been created above the old entrance to the Raymond Revuebar in the heart of Soho
  
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• Former Yugoslavia's brutalist beauty – a photo essay

  31-10-2019 08:00 via Architecture | The Guardian
  After the second world war, socialist Yugoslavia set out to reconstruct a land destroyed by fighting. Concrete residential blocks, hotels, civic centres and monuments shot up across the country in a show of power from a state between two worlds, western democracy and the communist east. Photographs by Marko Đurica/Reuters. Written by Ivana Sekularac.Genex Tower is unmissable on the highway from Belgrade airport to the centre of the city. Its two soaring blocks, connected by an aerial bridge
  
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• Former Yugloslavia's brutalist beauty – a photo essay

  31-10-2019 08:00 via Architecture | The Guardian
  After the second world war, socialist Yugoslavia set out to reconstruct a land destroyed by fighting. Concrete residential blocks, hotels, civic centres and monuments shot up across the country in a show of power from a state between two worlds, western democracy and the communist east. Genex Tower is unmissable on the highway from Belgrade airport to the centre of the city. Its two soaring blocks, connected by an aerial bridge and topped with a long-closed rotating restaurant resembling a space
  
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• HAT Projects completes Science Museum supporters centre

  31-10-2019 07:40 via Architects Journal - Buildings
  
  The museum’s 745m² Smith Centre in South Kensington was created from a former Royal Mail sorting office
  
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• 'We're cosseting our kids' – the war against today's dangerously dull playgrounds

  31-10-2019 07:00 via Architecture | The Guardian
  Architects are taking issue with risk-averse playparks full of sluggish roundabouts and tiny climbing frames. But are playgrounds in the middle of roads really the answer?In the decades after the second world war, the celebrated architect Aldo van Eyck designed more than 700 playgrounds in Amsterdam, filling bomb sites with dazzling constellations of tumbling bars, leapfrog posts and climbing domes. His idea was that by providing children with a range of elemental forms and open-ended structures
  
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• Chinese province closes all glass bridges over safety fears

  30-10-2019 16:58 via Architecture | The Guardian
  Series of injuries and deaths prompts closure of 32 glass-bottomed attractions in HebeiThey were meant to be futuristic marvels, allowing thrill-seeking tourists to feel like they were walking on air.But China’s growing obsession with glass bridges may be coming to an abrupt end, after a series of accidents led one province to close down all its glass-bottomed attractions. Continue reading...
  
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• 'It's in complete crisis' – architects form trade union amid fury and despair over exploitation

  30-10-2019 12:48 via Architecture | The Guardian
  Low pay, shocking hours and cut-throat competition spell misery in a profession with few safeguards. We meet the young architects who are fighting backUnpaid overtime, precarious contracts, working hours so antisocial your only friends are people who do the same job … after a minimum of seven years’ education and professional training, the reality of working as an architect can be a bleak prospect. It’s not hard to see why so many of them wear black, as if in permanent mournin
  
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• Stanton Williams completes major research centre at Great Ormond Street Hospital

  30-10-2019 09:14 via Architects Journal - Buildings
  
  The 13,000m² Zayed Centre for Research into Rare Disease in Children provides facilities for 500 researchers and clinical staff
  
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• NEX’s long-awaited Cadogan pavilion finally completes

  29-10-2019 07:52 via Architects Journal - Buildings
  
  The £5.2 million building has a unique curved glazing system which retracts into the ground and forms the final element in the redevelopment of London’s Duke of York Square, housing a restaurant and incorporating a new rooftop garden
  
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• Meet the councils quietly building a housing revolution

  28-10-2019 14:15 via Architecture | The Guardian
  The Stirling prize-winning Norwich estate is the tip of the iceberg: despite government cuts, local authorities are finding innovative ways to build housingA crescent of semi-detached houses stands on the edge of a playing field in Conisbrough, South Yorkshire, offering views of the rolling hills beyond. With pointed gables, big picture windows and generous back gardens dotted with trampolines, it looks like a development of aspirational “executive homes”, awaiting its gilded electri
  
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• Nithurst Farm review – if Tarkovsky had a farm

  26-10-2019 18:00 via Architecture | The Guardian
  The Russian director’s sci-fi classic Stalker is the unlikely inspiration for this playful, intriguing family home in the South DownsStalker, the 1979 sci-fi film by the great Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky, is a gloomy, troubling work. It describes a dangerous journey into a forbidden territory called the Zone, on which a writer and a scientist are guided by the eponymous Stalker. They are seeking “the room”, a place where your innermost desires are granted, which may not b
  
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• Brutal refurbishment: Studio Egret West upgrades Balfron Tower

  26-10-2019 08:00 via Architects Journal - Buildings
  
  The practice is impressively refurbishing Ernő Goldfinger’s 1960s Brutalist housing block – but arguably at the expense of social sustainability, says Fran Williams. Photography The Modern House, Jake Curtis
  
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• A united island: David Chipperfield’s James Simon Galerie in Berlin

  25-10-2019 09:00 via Architects Journal - Buildings
  
  The building provides access and central services for the five institutions on Berlin’s Museum Island, including David Chipperfield Architects’ own rework of the Neues Museum, writes Rob Wilson. Photography by Simon Menges and Ute Zscharnt
  
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• A broad church: Dow Jones’s restoration of St Mary Magdalene

  24-10-2019 09:35 via Architects Journal - Buildings
  
  Dow Jones has combined the restoration of a west London church with the addition of a new building opening it up to community uses, writes Jay Merrick. Photography Anthony Coleman
  
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• ‘An office of stacked things’: Sam Jacob Studio completes London design studio

  23-10-2019 09:00 via Architects Journal - Buildings
  
  This studio for a Japanese design agency in London’s Old Street makes a virtue of being an assemblage of different components
  
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• Nissen Richards Studio completes Magazine London: a new event space in North Greenwich

  23-10-2019 07:00 via Architects Journal - Buildings
  
  The 8m-high L-shaped black box can accommodate up to 10,000 people across 24,179m² of space
  
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