Architecture news

• 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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• 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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• 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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• ‘Professional buck-passers’: why the excoriating Grenfell report was right to damn architects

  05-09-2024 18:51
  The ultimate responsibility for the tower’s safety lay with its architect, said the 1,700-page report, which highlighted a ‘widespread failure among the profession’. Why are so many architects now utterly detached from the realities of construction?Lying manufacturers, incompetent inspectors, muddled regulations, contemptuous landlords – the blame for the Grenfell Tower fire has been hurled in all directions, exposing a housing and construction industry that is rotten at
  
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• California home thought to have inspired Sydney Opera House sells for US$20m less than asking price

  03-09-2024 08:35
  
  The six-bedroom Wave House in Malibu was designed by Harry Gesner, whose son says it inspired Jørn Utzon’s Sydney landmarkGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailAn iconic California beach house thought to have inspired Jørn Utzon’s design for the Sydney Opera House has sold for US$20m less than its original asking price.Malibu’s Wave House, designed by the American architect Harry Gesner in the late 1950s, was bought by the former Victoria’s Secret model
  
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• ‘There’s a lot to be built still’: the architect Mariam Issoufou on excavating the past to build Africa’s future

  02-09-2024 13:00
  
  One of the continent’s most-sought after designers draws inspiration from the traditional mud-brick building to create modern, sustainable structuresGrowing up near the historic mud-brick city of Agadez, Niger’s gateway to the Sahara, Mariam Issoufou was always inspired by the majestic adobe structures around her. The 27-metre-high minaret of the city’s mosque, the tallest mud-brick structure in the world, has stood on the sandy horizon since the 16th century. But Issoufou neve
  
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• Going up: Can Britain’s empty department stores be brought back to life?

  01-09-2024 11:00
  
  With many branches of famous chains lying empty, work is under way to transform them into housing, hotels, offices, independent shops and more. Could this be the key to revitalising the high street?Department stores, once palaces of delight and theatres of modernity, enclosed commercial town squares where you might meet, fall in love, get married and furnish your new home, are now none of these things. Empty, cold and bulky, they occupy town centres like fridge freezers that no one will take awa
  
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• Antony Gormley joins fight against ‘destruction’ of historic King’s Cross site

  31-08-2024 16:31
  Angel of the North artist is among residents objecting to development plans for Coal Drops Yard in LondonSir Antony Gormley, the artist who created the Angel of the North, is among King’s Cross residents ­objecting to proposals that could see Coal Drops Yard, a grade II-listed industrial site, divided into streets of shops and “grab-and-go” food retailers.Gormley and his artist ­partner, Vicken Parsons, who live in the nearby Gasholders building, said in a submission to
  
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• Milwaukee plans to build tallest timber building in the world

  30-08-2024 17:22
  
  Wisconsin city – already home to world’s tallest wooden building – announces proposal for tower with 55 floorsThe city of Milwaukee in Wisconsin is currently home to the tallest timber building in the world, but this summer the city announced a new proposal to build an even taller one.Designed by the Vancouver-based architecture firm, Michael Green Architecture, the tower, once completed, would become the tallest mass timber structure in the world with 55 floors – ab
  
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• Monstrous carbuncles to talking columns: the National Gallery’s Sainsbury Wing is still a controversy magnet

  28-08-2024 13:35
  
  Prince Charles detested the plans for its extension. Now its major donor has criticised it from beyond the grave. So what’s coming next? Something that looks a lot like an airport lounge …If buildings could speak, would they always object to their demolition? In the case of the National Gallery’s Sainsbury Wing, now undergoing a controversial redevelopment, a voice from the grave heartily approves of the arrival of the wrecking ball.It has emerged that, during the demolition o
  
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• Builders renovating National Gallery find funder’s letter commending demolition

  27-08-2024 21:40
  
  John Sainsbury hid note in 1990 inside false column he objected to, anticipating foyer would one day be remodelled to his likingWhy the building is still a controversy magnetBuilders knocking down a column at the National Gallery were surprised to find a long-lost note amid the rubble thanking them for demolishing the “unnecessary” pillar.While removing a column in the gallery’s Sainsbury Wing, demolition workers discovered a letter dating back to 1990 from its funder, John Sai
  
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• Gimme shelter… how social housing in stormy Shetland was transformed by a modernist fleeing 60s London

  25-08-2024 12:00
  
  The architect Richard Gibson, a contemporary of Richard Rogers, left forward-thinking Camden council in 1969 for the UK’s northernmost isles. There, he says, he refined his ideas about well-made homes for all, in work that feels newly relevantRichard Gibson and I turn up unannounced at a primary school in Hamnavoe, Shetland – a light, airy, steel-framed structure of repeating shallow-pitched roofs designed by him more than 40 years ago. We are enthusiastically welcomed by the headtea
  
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• ‘Out of this world’: free app will offer tour of modernist Manchester

  20-08-2024 18:25
  
  Developers hope guide to 20th-century buildings will soon be available in other cities“As a prewar building it must have blown people’s minds,” says Jack Hale, admiring the glassy magnificence of the Express building in Manchester. “In the same period you were still getting stone, classical buildings and then this appears.”His colleague Eddy Rhead agrees. “It must have been like a space-ship landing. To the average Mancunian it would have been out of this worl
  
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• 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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• Absolutely prefabulous: a vision of the future

  18-08-2024 15:00
  
  An Italian architect teamed up with her father on the prototype of a very special project on the family hill in Lombardy, then they built 50 of themWhen the 43-year-old Italian architect Valentina Moretti returned to Italy from living in Switzerland and the US to help her father, Vittorio, in his construction company, she seized the chance to work on the prototype of her vision for the future of prefabricated homes.“After many years working with famous architects, I understood that I reall
  
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• Zigzag patterns on walls could help cool overheated buildings, study finds

  16-08-2024 08:00
  
  An architectural zigzag design can limit how much heat is absorbed by buildings – and emitted back to spaceIncorporating zigzag patterns into building walls could help cool overheated buildings, research has found.Buildings are now responsible for approximately 40% of global energy consumption, contributing more than a third of global carbon dioxide emissions. Continue reading...
  
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• Cities are tackling rising heat – but they have to avoid a dangerous trap

  15-08-2024 14:00
  
  With modern solutions such as air-con aggravating the problem, ancient heat-management techniques can offer answersClimate scientists baffled by unexpected pace of heatingBeneath the streets of Seville – the city nicknamed “El Sartén”, the frying pan of Europe, where summer temperatures regularly top 40C – a €5m (about £4m ) cooling strategy is taking the city back in time.The millennium-old Persian technique of “qanat” features underground c
  
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