Architecture news

• Country Diary: All of life takes place in a rural village hall | Nicola Chester

  06-11-2024 06:30
  Inkpen, West Berkshire: The ‘old girl’ is 100 years old – as are many others built around Britain after the first world war. We give it the celebration it deservesI’m not sure I’ve ever sung Happy Birthday to a building before. Something caught in my throat – and looking round at my fellow villagers, I could see I wasn’t the only one. Our village hall is a hundred years old – one of many around the country sharing a surprisingly radical, rural cent
  
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• Power station turned event space lights up Australian architecture awards

  07-11-2024 17:53
  
  Mildura’s Powerhouse Place wins for sustainable architecture and urban design, while Sydney renovation for Atlassian boss takes top awardFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastWith its whirring engines and towering smoke stacks, Mildura’s power station was hailed as a technological marvel of the early 20th century.When a new engine was installed to help light up the regional Victorian city in June 1925, the loc
  
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• Max Dupain: A Portrait by Helen Ennis review – the man who took Australia’s most famous photo

  07-11-2024 15:00
  
  In this very readable and moving biography, the Sunbaker photographer comes across as someone who spoke against his myth – but also traded on it until the endGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailDuring the summer of 1937-38, at Culburra beach, in Dharawal and Dhurga country on the south coast of New South Wales, a young man emerges from the surf and lies face-first on the sand. His friend, who is holding a Rolleiflex camera, exposes two negatives, one of which he’ll dismiss due
  
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• Joseph Rykwert obituary

  04-11-2024 11:59
  Architectural writer who believed that buildings not be considered in isolation but as part of the fabric of a cityJoseph Rykwert, who has died aged 98, was a historian and critic of architecture of exceptional intellect, cultural breadth and distinctive outlook. His books and his teaching changed the understanding of his discipline and helped to move the design and planning of cities and buildings away from the functionalist mindset that dominated postwar building. In 2014 he was awarded Britai
  
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• Dracula’s Castle, a monument to 1980s excess, is about to be cruelly defanged | Rowan Moore

  02-11-2024 17:00
  
  Minster Court, which once served as Cruella de Vil’s HQ, faces a bland redevelopment to provide more office space in the CityMinster Court, a pink granite-and-marble neo-gothic office block in the City of London, a work of 1980s excess sometimes known as Monster Court or Dracula’s Castle, is to be defanged. Its owner M&G Real Estate is going to obliterate its pointy bits and “reimagine” its entrance, in order to create “a landmark in sustainable design”, a
  
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• Urban planning and the long legacy of brutalism

  01-11-2024 18:56
  
  Readers respond to Simon Jenkins’ analysis of shifting architectural trends Simon Jenkins provides a timely account of how, from the 1960s onwards, plans for wholesale demolition of large parts of urban areas began to be challenged (The ransacking of Britain: why the people finally rose up against ‘sod you architecture’, 28 October). He cites the 1974 Covent Garden revolt, which saw citizens, enlightened planners such as Ian Robert Christie – whose legacy is to be honoure
  
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• The ransacking of Britain: why the people finally rose up against ‘sod you architecture’

  28-10-2024 06:00
  
  Inspired by Swiss-born architect Le Corbusier, who believed streets fostered disease, a vision of Britain was cooked up that would see historic city centres flattened for flats and ring roads. But the public decided they’d had enough – and took to the streetsThe interview did not go well. I was in Liverpool as a journalist being shown a model for the city’s future by its proud architect, Graeme Shankland. I told him I regarded his city as the most magnificent port in Europe. He
  
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• ‘Places to heal, not to harm’: why brutal prison design kills off hope – podcast

  28-10-2024 06:00
  From razor-wire fences and crumbling cells to no windows and overcrowding, conditions in most jails mean rehabilitation is a nonstarter. Here’s how we can create better spaces for prisoners. By Yvonne Jewkes Continue reading...
  
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• Artist Lauren Halsey: ‘So much of what I make is in response to the context of funk’

  27-10-2024 10:00
  
  The LA artist says her musically inspired, architectural works are deeply rooted in her South Central neighbourhood as she opens her debut solo UK show“Funk is oxygen. It’s life,” according to Lauren Halsey. The Los Angeles artist can recall the day that funk music changed her life. It was the early 00s and she was on her parents’ computer, downloading music from the filesharing website LimeWire, as she did every night, when she happened upon the entire discography of the
  
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• Row erupts over plan to charge €5 to enter fire-hit Notre Dame

  26-10-2024 09:59
  
  Catholic church condemns idea of charging entrance fee when rebuilt cathedral reopens in December after five yearsWeeks before its scheduled grand reopening after a devastating fire, Notre Dame has become embroiled in an escalating row over whether to charge future visitors a fee to enter the 12th-century gothic masterpiece.France’s culture minister, Rachida Dati, proposed this week that tourists visiting the Paris cathedral, known as “the soul of France” and one of the world&r
  
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• Bring on the Vegas glitz! How Roma families are defying their persecutors with bling palaces

  22-10-2024 16:59
  Keen to show off their newfound riches, and to kick back at a society that suppressed them, Roma families are filling rural Romania with exuberant symbols of wealth – boasting gilded turrets and gleaming staircases that lead to nowhereIn the village of Hășdat in the heart of rural Romania, geese roam the dusty streets, bonfires burn in back gardens, and the houses are not quite what you would expect. Not at all. One sports a pair of golden Versace Medusa heads and Rolex crown emb
  
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• David Bowie collection among draws at vast V&A archives in east London

  22-10-2024 15:23
  
  V&A East Storehouse in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park will give public extensive access behind the scenesIt looks like the Hangar 51 store room from the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark: row after row of boxes and artefacts kept in climate-controlled conditions. The V&A East Storehouse is not off limits, though. The team behind it hope 250,000 people a year will visit and gain access to archives such as its recently acquired David Bowie collection.Delayed because of the pandemic, the storeho
  
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• The Guardian view on investing in public transport: it’s time, finally, to look north | Editorial

  21-10-2024 19:49
  
  London’s award-winning Elizabeth line is an example of what can be achieved. Labour needs to deliver the same ambition elsewhereWhen London’s new 73-mile Elizabeth line won the prestigious Stirling prize for architecture last week, the judges’ choice proved a popular one. Spacious, fast and pleasing on the eye, the east-west addition to the capital’s underground network is a triumphant example of modern civic infrastructure. As this newspaper’s architecture and desi
  
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• Up in smoke: a former charcoal factory in Chicago

  20-10-2024 15:00
  
  The industrial building, originally used to make charcoal, has been minimally restored and adapted into a stunning homeApproaching Stuart Grannen’s home is an experience in itself, marked by the unexpected. Tucked down an unremarkable alley in the industrial heart of Chicago, this 1900s former charcoal factory stands in quiet contrast to its surroundings. Draped in creeping ivy and raw steel, the concrete structure, hidden in plain sight, exudes an original and raw kind of charm. It’
  
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• Meet your makers: the artisans who help make eating out magical

  20-10-2024 15:00
  
  Bespoke ceramics, evocative music playlists, handmade leather aprons – we may not always notice them, but these are the things that make eating out magicalWhen visitors to Alice Blogg’s home discover her family eat from wooden plates, it often elicits a “that’s so cute” response, although she is not trying to be. Continue reading...
  
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• Tight corners, red tape and amazing grace – why architects love a tricky site

  20-10-2024 12:00
  
  RIBA, London
  Dodging railway lines, squeezed into historic sites, or down a Highland lane… how building design responds to constraints, on projects from the British Library to the Eden Project, makes for a fascinating exhibitionThere’s a concrete building on the right, as you head into London Euston station by train, that’s brooding, impressive in an almost-Roman way, and a bit mysterious. Its upper levels jetty towards the tracks, as if they were the outside of a stadium, but
  
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• Patrick Warren obituary

  18-10-2024 19:01
  
  My father, Patrick Warren, who has died aged 85, was principal design and conservation officer for the city of Durham, where he masterminded a strategic restructuring of the city over three decades.Much of Pat’s work focused on the city centre, in particular the pedestrianisation of Elvet Bridge and the old marketplace, which had become a rather large car park but which is now a lovely space that is much better connected to the adjacent streets. Continue reading...
  
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• ‘A triumph’: London’s £19bn Elizabeth line is named best new architecture in Britain

  16-10-2024 22:39
  
  With its futuristic panels, airy tunnels and elegantly unified design, the 73-mile addition to the tube is a worthy winner of the prestigious Stirling prize – and puts the rest of the creaking, sooty network to shameWith the longest platforms, the biggest tunnels and the fastest trains on the entire London underground, the Elizabeth line boasts a dizzying list of superlatives, carrying more people a day than any other train line in the country. It is now deemed to have the best design, too
  
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• Could Aboriginal-designed housing help solve the health crisis in remote communities?

  12-10-2024 21:00
  
  Tennant Creek residents say the hot, overcrowded homes built by government contractors are not fit for purpose, so they’ve drawn up their own plansSign up for the Rural Network email newsletterIt’s hotter inside than out in many of the homes in the remote Northern Territory town of Tennant Creek, where the Warumungu man Jimmy Frank Jupurrurla and his family live. Most lack insulation and guttering. At Drive-in Camp outside town, the homes are tin sheds, disconnected from services sin
  
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• Colin Fournier obituary

  11-10-2024 21:22
  
  My friend Colin Fournier, who has died aged 79, was an architect and planner. His two best known projects were Bernard Tschumi’s vast Parc de la Villette in Paris, which he helped to implement (1984-87), and the Kunsthaus building in Graz, Austria (2003-04), co-designed with Sir Peter Cook.La Villette, one of François Mitterrand’s grands projets, captured a unique tension between grid-like geometry and naturalistic landscaping that concurred with Colin’s way of applying
  
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• ‘You’re a girl?’ The duo taking on the male-dominated plastering world

  10-10-2024 13:00
  
  In the early days of Kamp Studios, Kim Collins and Amy Morgenstern were barely making rent. Now they’re a favorite of interior designers across the countryIf there was a low point in the history of Kamp Studios, it had to have been the day in 2010 when Kim Collins and Amy Morgenstern found themselves lugging every single quarter, dime, nickel and penny they had scrounged up from their apartment to pour into a coin-counting machine at a Brooklyn branch of TD Bank. The women, then partners i
  
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• ‘Like the Guggenheim!’ Inside Zurich’s staggering, revolutionary new hospital for kids

  09-10-2024 12:21
  
  From the chalet-style patient ‘cottages’ to the walls designed for scribbling on, Herzog & de Meuron’s Kinderspital is a stylish, healing, child-friendly miracle – and it cost less than UK equivalents‘Hospitals are the ugliest places in the world,” says Jacques Herzog. “They are a product of blind functionalist thinking, while neglecting basic human needs.” The Swiss architect has a point. With their low ceilings, windowless corridors and harsh
  
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• Sydney entry beaten by ‘spectacular’ Beijing building in library of the year award

  08-10-2024 16:00
  Liverpool mayor Ned Mannoun just shrugs and smiles after his council’s ‘magnificent’ Yellamundie is outshone by $300m Beijing LibraryFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastIt was always going to be competition of David and Goliath proportions.Liverpool’s new public library Yellamundie, in Sydney’s south-west, made international news last month when it became one of four finalists in the annual
  
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• ‘I make architects’ dreams come true’: Hanif Kara, the magician who makes impossible buildings stay up

  08-10-2024 01:01
  
  He has had a hand in some of the 21st-century’s most daring structures – including Zaha Hadid’s Phaeno science centre. We meet the Uganda-born engineer, who has just won architecture’s prestigious Soane medalFrom the wayward columns of Will Alsop, to the gravity-defying curves of Zaha Hadid, there has always been someone in the background making architects’ improbable visions stand up. More often than not, in the case of the 21st-century’s most unlikely struct
  
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• Paul Rudolph: the artful architect who inspired Foster and Rogers

  06-10-2024 12:00
  
  The US architect designed brutalist buildings vast and small across Asia and America – including his own 27-floor Manhattan apartment. A new exhibition highlights a queer sensibility beneath the crewcutPaul Rudolph, the US’s greatest brutalist, had a career in four overlapping acts. First, starting in the 1950s, he designed private houses, delightful Florida getaways where modernist glassiness was tempered by screens and shutters. In the next decade he designed monumental concrete fo
  
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• ‘Our houses are too big’: Grand Designs’ Anthony Burke on the best and worst of Australian architecture

  05-10-2024 21:00
  
  The architecture professor on homes with more bathrooms than occupants – and how the Sydney metro might renew confidence in the benefits of good designGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailAnthony Burke knows good design. And he knows why it matters. The UTS architecture professor is the host of the ABC’s Grand Designs Australia and has spent a career examining and celebrating the best that design has to offer. So Guardian Australia asked him about his personal bugbears and favo
  
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• Touching distance: an apartment in a Brussels brutalist block

  05-10-2024 17:00
  
  A remote makeover during Covid pays off handsomely for an interior designer and her partnerCan you imagine buying a flat without ever actually stepping inside it? And then doing up the entire place – bashing down walls, jettisoning fittings and reshuffling the floorplan – remotely? For most of us the answer would be an emphatic, “Of course not!”Kim Verbist would say otherwise. The Belgian interior designer did all of the above when she embarked on the convention-defying t
  
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• Mansion of mysticism: Paris opens glittering home to Sufi art and beliefs

  04-10-2024 16:03
  
  Featuring peacock-shaped padlocks and a holographic Sufi master, a new museum explores the religion’s influence on Western culture – and leaves visitors wondering how the giant begging bowls were installedAmong the most emblematic paraphernalia of the Sufis is their “begging bowl”, known as the kashkul. That’s why nearly a dozen are at the centre of a new museum dedicated to Sufi culture and art, the Musée d’Art et de Culture Soufis MTO, which has just
  
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• Money-saving hacks helped a first-time buyer turn a humdrum 1960s house into a graceful modern home

  04-10-2024 12:00
  
  The stylish conversion of this two-up two-down shows how investing in an interior designer can end up saving you moneyAs a first-time buyer with no renovation experience, Ed Colston, 32, could have been forgiven for choosing a shiny new-build flat that he could move straight into. However, Colston knew it was in his best interests to play the long game. After moving to London after graduating, he flat-hopped his way around the city for the best part of a decade while saving for a place of his ow
  
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• Prisons need more than an architecture of hope | Letters

  01-10-2024 17:50
  
  Joe Sim on reforming prisoners through a compassionate philosophy, Malcolm Fowler on the sensory memories of his prison visits, and Sue Beaumont on the demoralising effect of stepping inside a jailBefore modernising prisons through new architecture, as discussed by Yvonne Jewkes, there are other issues to consider (‘Places to heal, not to harm’: why brutal prison design kills off hope, 24 September). There are examples of places that have radically transformed prisoners that have not
  
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