Architecture news

• Green roofs and solar chimneys are here – experts say it’s time to use them

  27-09-2024 16:00
  
  Builders already have the tools needed to build cooler homes for an increasingly hotter worldThe US sweltered under record-breaking heat this year, with new research suggesting that air conditioning is no longer enough to keep homes cool. Spiraling energy demands and costs of indoor cooling now have planners looking to alternative ways to keep buildings cool – some fresh out of the lab, others centuries old.“The amount of buildings we expect to go up in the next couple decades is jus
  
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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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• Is this a mountain? A multistorey car park? Or both? Inside Shanghai’s audacious £225m summit

  30-09-2024 06:00
  It’s got winding trails, a gushing waterfall, some 7,000 trees – and room inside for 1,500 cars. We explore the astonishing Twin Hills project, which isn’t even the city’s first manmade mountainscapeChina is no stranger to moving mountains. It has levelled hundreds of peaks in Gansu for urban expansion, blasted away hills in Yunnan to build railway stations, and bulldozed bluffs in Hubei for economic development zones. This insatiable lust for terraforming is simply a cas
  
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• America’s first ‘carbon positive’ hotel comes to Denver – but do its climate claims stack up?

  26-09-2024 14:00
  
  The stylish Populus hotel boasts eco-friendly construction and tree planting for every guest. Is this the hospitality of the future – or hot air?Travelers to Denver, Colorado, will soon have the opportunity to spend the night in what promises to be “the first carbon positive hotel in America”. So say the creators behind Populus, a new 265-room, stylish, yet climate-conscious luxury hotel in the heart of the city.Set to open in mid-October, the building is a striking addition to
  
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• Occult? Try upstairs! Inside the world’s weirdest library, now open to the public

  25-09-2024 09:00
  It has folders marked ‘Grasping the victim’s head’ and now – after a £15m revamp and some help from Albert Einstein and the patron saint of the internet – the extraordinary Warburg Institute is letting passersby in to view its ‘books emanating sorcery’A mysterious cosmic emblem hangs over the entrance to a building in Bloomsbury, at the heart of London’s university quarter. Depicting concentric circles bound by intertwined arcs, it represents
  
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• John Wheatley obituary

  24-09-2024 17:59
  My father, John Wheatley, who has died aged 86, was an architect with a remarkably diverse range of work.He established John Wheatley Architects in 1968, running the practice from home alongside his teaching commitments, and his students made good use of this, through field visits or on placements. Some of them went on to become employees and partners as the practice expanded over the years. Continue reading...
  
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• ‘Places to heal, not to harm’: why brutal prison design kills off hope

  24-09-2024 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 prisonersArriving at a prison – any prison – still makes my heart race a little faster. I have been to more than 100 prisons for my research into how architecture and design can assist in rehabilitating offenders. But my first visit after 18 months of lockdown, to a prison deep in one of England&rsquo
  
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• Stephen Bond obituary

  23-09-2024 17:09
  My friend Stephen Bond, who has died aged 69 of heart failure, was a groundbreaking heritage consultant and conservation surveyor.Stephen’s reputation as a leading heritage practitioner was cemented by his directorship of the Tower Environs Scheme (TES), which ran from 1997 to 2005. A regeneration initiative for the area surrounding the Tower of London, TES was innovative in pioneering a holistic understanding of heritage assets within their historical, cultural and built environments. Con
  
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• Football-mad Morocco dreams of a World Cup final in its own ark

  22-09-2024 09:00
  
  Buoyed by the team’s success in 2022, the kingdom is eyeing a bigger goalThe rendering is dramatic, a vast white stadium inspired by the design of a Maghrebi communal tent, known as a moussem.The language used to describe it is no less flowery: think of it as “almost like a Noah’s Ark, a place for all nature and animals to come together”, says Tarik Oualalou, head of Paris architecture firm Oualalou + Choi, one of five teams in the design consortium. Continue reading...
  
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• ‘Students want to stay here now rather than disappear to London’: how design transformed the city of Dundee

  21-09-2024 19:00
  Its biennial arts festival this week will celebrate a decade of being the UK’s first and only Unesco-designated ‘design city’The city of Dundee, about 60 miles north of Edinburgh on Scotland’s east coast, was once best known for its industry: whaling and shipbuilding in the 19th century, then its celebrated “three Js” – jute, jam and journalism. But in recent years, Dundee has developed another reputation: as an arts and culture hub, and the UK’s f
  
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• Crystal Palace’s radical gardeners | Brief letters

  18-09-2024 18:44
  
  John Claudius Loudon and Joseph Paxton | Fearful poetry | Train horror | Lost Consonants | Starmer’s new clothesIt was not just standard nuts and bolts that made the Crystal Palace possible (Solved: the mystery of how Victorians built Crystal Palace in just 190 days, 16 September). The whole building was built from interchangeable parts, many prefabricated, by methods designed not by engineers but by two gardeners, John Claudius Loudon and Joseph Paxton (the architect of the Palace), and p
  
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• Tracey Emin among hundreds opposing changes to Margate ‘brutalist masterpiece’

  16-09-2024 17:01
  
  Managers of building in which Emin owns a flat want to replace windows but opponents say they are a key featureThe 18-storey Arlington House in Margate has long been considered a brutalist masterpiece. It inspired the English rock band Hawkwind’s song High Rise and recently featured in Sam Mendes’s Bafta-nominated film Empire of Light.But now, the building, which sits on Margate seafront next to the railway station and the amusement park Dreamland, has become the cause of a bitter di
  
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• Fifteen architecture firms shortlisted for NSW competition aimed at alleviating housing crisis

  16-09-2024 09:57
  
  Six student teams named as finalists in pattern book contest to develop pre-approved designs and cut red tapeFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastMore than a dozen architecture firms from across Australia and overseas will vie to design homes for five Sydney sites set aside by the New South Wales government to help alleviate the state’s housing crisis.The 15 finalists in the government’s pattern book design c
  
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• Solved: the mystery of how Victorians built Crystal Palace in just 190 days

  16-09-2024 08:00
  
  Rapid assembly of structure for 1851 Great Exhibition in London was possible thanks to nut-and-bolt revolutionIt was built at unprecedented speed to exhibit the globe’s greatest treasures and manufacturing achievements to the world. Now, the mystery of how the Victorians managed to erect the Crystal Palace so quickly in 1851 has finally been solved.Experts have discovered that the answer to this 173-year-old riddle lies in the first known use of standardised nuts and bolts in construction
  
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• John Sell obituary

  15-09-2024 11:46
  
  My father, John Sell, who has died aged 79, spent his career championing the protection of historic buildings and spaces. After qualifying as an architect in the 1960s, John attended a course at the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB), which informed his direction for the rest of his career.He became a vigorous advocate and expert in the restoration and protection of old buildings. Throughout his life and career John cared passionately about creating and preserving beautiful s
  
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• Architects Caruso St John: ‘Developers are too powerful in this country. Everything is upped in terms of crudity and brashness’

  14-09-2024 17:00
  The Stirling prize-winning duo’s new St Pancras Campus of homes and offices in London is a triumph of attention to detail. It could also be their last new-build, they tell us, as they focus on renovation projects – such as a turreted arts centre in Arbroath…Many architects like to say that they practise attention to detail. (As, you may say, they should.) Sometimes this statement is a form of faint self-praise, a signal not to expect too much more from their work, an excuse fo
  
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• From straw hats to milk bottles: why genius design doesn’t need to be expensive

  14-09-2024 16:38
  Experts were invited to pick their hero products for London Design Festival show that redefines ‘well made’ for todayVisitors to this year’s London design festival can expect to see everything from an installation inspired by Barbie’s Dreamhouse to an exhibition devoted to the late furniture designer Robin Day.At the Yorkton Workshops in Hackney, east London, however, the cutting-edge show features clothes pegs, hammers, smart cards and a case for carrying Pringles crisps
  
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• Sydney’s Yellamundie library among the world’s most beautiful as finalists for annual award revealed

  13-09-2024 07:38
  Liverpool council’s new public building includes public art gallery spaces and a Stem centreFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastA public building in the heart of Sydney’s south-west is one of the most beautiful new libraries in the world, according to the international arbiters of temples to literature.Liverpool council’s new library, which opened in December last year as part of the Yellamundie Civic
  
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• Total bollards: the iconic ‘eco-Blade Runner’ roundabout that became a grim £132m ‘abomination’

  12-09-2024 12:39
  
  Boasting hovering haloes and futuristic forests, Old Street roundabout was meant to be a shining beacon for Britain’s very own Tech City. Instead, we have120 hefty bollards and paving built to deter rough sleepersComputer-generated PR images often outshine reality, but rarely has so much been promised and so little delivered as at Old Street roundabout in east London, finally complete after more than a decade in the works. It was supposed to be the radiant hub of the UK’s very own Te
  
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• Country diary: A forgotten church that’s being returned to the earth | Alexandra Pearce-Broomhead

  12-09-2024 06:30
  Merther, Cornwall: For centuries, a small local population worshipped at St Cohan’s. Now it’s the ivy and thistles, ferns and avens that take their nourishment hereIn the hamlet of Merther, nature is concealing a secret. Wrapped in robes of ivy and traveller’s joy, the ruins of a 14th-century church are hidden among a small copse. Little remains of the original building; the crumbling outer walls have been slowly succumbing to wildlife ever since the church closed 80-odd y
  
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• Grenfell inquiry has shone a light on architecture profession’s flaws | Letters

  10-09-2024 18:42
  
  Kerr Robertson and Catherine Brownell on the structural defects in the training and fees of architectsOliver Wainwright’s article about the Grenfell Tower inquiry report was spot-on (‘Professional buck-passers’: why the excoriating Grenfell report was right to damn architects, 5 September). He could also have added that the Royal Institute of British Architects’ complacency on continuing professional development (CPD) has been another factor. On the point about architects
  
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• A genius in pink jandals: Rewi Thompson, the Māori architect who shocked his neighbours

  10-09-2024 15:27
  
  He was one of the boldest and most influential Māori architects, whose outfits were as eye-catching as his buildings. A new book captures his creations, from his own defiant home to a ‘healing’ correctional facilityIn the leafy Auckland suburb of Kohimarama, where pitch-roofed clapboard homes line well-kept streets, a striking grey ziggurat rises from the subtropical foliage. It looks like a defensive fortification, greeting the road with a monolithic, windowless facade. Narrow
  
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• Grenfell brought back memories of Summerland fire | Letter

  09-09-2024 18:23
  
  Deborah Gahan remembers a fire on the Isle of Man in 1973 and says the Grenfell Tower inquiry shows how little has changedDo you remember Summerland? I did, on 14 June 2017, when I saw the images of Grenfell Tower burning on the news. Summerland was a holiday complex on the Isle of Man that burned down on 2 August 1973, killing 50 people and seriously injuring a further 80.It was designed as an all‑weather tourist attraction with a capacity of 10,000, but its walls were clad
  
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• Stairways to modernist heaven – in pictures

  09-09-2024 08:00
  Architecture obsessive Adam Štěch has photographed the interiors of over 5,000 modern gems around the globe, from hunting lodges to high-rises. Ahead of a new exhibition, he shares his favourite flights of fancy Continue reading...
  
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• Flood the golf courses, demolish the freeways: what could Melbourne look like in 2070?

  08-09-2024 17:00
  The NGV’s first landscape architecture exhibition has invited eight visionaries to picture the future of different sites along Birrarung – the Yarra RiverGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailIn half a century, should Melbourne’s golf courses be flooded and transformed into wetlands? Could the city’s freeways be replaced with public parks? Will underwater robotic drones have a part to play in ridding our waterways of invasive species?These are some of the questions e
  
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• Simon Verity obituary

  06-09-2024 13:23
  
  Master sculptor and stone carver who created grottoes, public memorials and ecclesiastial work in the UK and the USA 1983 poster for the Victoria and Albert Museum shows a letter cutter with corduroy trousers, braces and a shapeless hat standing at the base of an inscription cut into the terracotta wall announcing in flaming gilded capitals its opening as the Henry Cole Wing, now sadly obscured by the new entrance paving. The artist appearing in the photograph was Simon Verity, who has died aged
  
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