Architecture news

• Splashing in the Seine, diving in the Danube: the drive to make cities swimmable

  19-08-2024 17:36
  
  Campaigners and architects around the world are turning previously polluted rivers and harbours into the perfect places for a refreshing dip. So will we soon be swimming to work?On a summer morning in the Swiss city of Basel, groups of commuters bob merrily down the Rhine. They’re not on boats but in their trunks, clutching fish-shaped waterproof bags that double as floats as they drift to work alongside cargo ships and gravel barges.At lunchtime in Copenhagen, the harbour walls are packed
  
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• Vaults of ambition: shock find under London Museum enchants its builders

  19-08-2024 07:00
  
  Discovery of Victorian network hiding under some of city’s busiest streets set ‘magical’ new challenge for multimillion pound projectWhen a contractor working on the site of the new London Museum at Smithfield market knocked a tentative hole in a bricked-up basement wall, all he could see, peering in with a torch, was a muddy pile of rubble and some scurrying rats.That unpromising beginning, however, would lead to an “unparalleled” discovery. Behind the wall, once t
  
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