Architecture news

• Neo Bankside: how Richard Rogers's new 'non-dom accom' cut out the poor

  21-07-2015 14:12
  
  Questions are raised about the project’s inclusion on the Stirling prize shortlist after details emerge that developers failed to live up to its original affordable housing claims – setting a dangerous precedent for developments everywhereWhen the Stirling prize shortlist was announced last week there were gasps of incredulity that Neo Bankside, the angular cluster of luxury flats poking up behind Tate Modern in London, had muscled its way into a group of otherwise well-meaning buildings. Wh
  
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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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• ‘What they threw away, I used’: the story behind Nek Chand’s 25-acre outsider art masterpiece

  14-08-2024 13:57
  
  This forest of intricately decorated statues was begun in secret by a man who never considered himself an artist but built what became India’s most visited tourist site after the Taj Mahal, the Rock Garden of ChandigarhA forest of curious cement statues stands on the edge of the city of Chandigarh in northern India, their bodies dressed in colourful costumes made from beads and broken glass bangles. There are figures of women carrying baskets on their heads, alongside dancers and athletes,
  
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• ‘Casual decommunisation’: seeking to save Ukraine’s Soviet-era modernist masterpieces

  12-08-2024 06:00
  
  Dmytro Soloviov is campaigning to protect Ukraine’s USSR architectural past from the double threat of Russian bombs and ‘blind fury’ at MoscowAs Russian bombs rain down on Ukraine, one young Ukrainian activist is trying to halt destruction of a different kind: the neglect of, and damage to, modernist buildings and public art.Nearly a decade ago, in 2015, Ukraine instituted laws demanding the removal of monuments and street names glorifying the country’s communist past, wi
  
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• Pretty pylons can add character to England’s industrial landscape | Letters

  09-08-2024 18:54
  
  New designs mean the structures don’t necessarily have to be eyesores, writes John Dinneen. Plus letters from Holly Nicholson and Matt AtkinsonThe photo published with your article (‘There’ll be no countryside left’: Opposition to pylons puts UK carbon targets at risk, 3 August) shows a row of traditional lattice tower pylons. These types of pylons are used all over the UK and generally regarded as ugly by many people, especially if they live near them.However, in 2011, t
  
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• Postwar new towns like Milton Keynes offer Labour a masterclass in planning | Letters

  08-08-2024 19:25
  
  Dr Alistair Fair and Ellie Brown respond to comments by the RIBA president, Muyiwa Oki, on Labour’s housebuilding plans. Plus Laura Steel on growing up in Washington, Tyne and WearMuyiwa Oki, the president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, is right to say that the new generation of new towns planned by the government should learn from the planning mistakes of the past (Labour’s ‘grey belt’ plans could result in isolated communities, warns leading architect, 2
  
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• I wanted a tiny house – and a big life. Could I have it all in 25 square metres?

  03-08-2024 22:00
  
  At 50, home ownership was out of reach for Louise Southerden. When she decided to build a tiny house on tyres, it promised liberation from Australia’s rental hamster wheelGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailWhat does it mean to come home? To have a place of your own that feels safe in all the important ways? That wraps its arms around you when you arrive at the doorstep drenched in the problems of the world?For decades, whenever I thought of home, I didn’t picture the houses I
  
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• A renovated Queenslander with a home office in a former laundry wins Houses awards top prize

  03-08-2024 02:00
  A revamped Brisbane worker’s cottage measuring less than 200 sq metres has been capped the best new home in the countryGet our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcastA renovation of a 1910 Brisbane worker’s cottage, which focuses on compact space, has won the Australian house of the year in the 2024 Houses awards.Red Hill House and Studio is the home and office of architect Nicholas Skepper, designer Zuzana Kovar and their two young children. The renovation
  
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• Labour’s ‘grey belt’ plans could result in isolated communities, warns leading architect

  02-08-2024 14:39
  Exclusive: Muyiwa Oki, president of the RIBA, says new estates must be high quality and have access to shops, schools, transport and green spaceLabour’s plans to boost housebuilding by allowing the construction of thousands of homes on green belt land could have the unintended consequence of producing isolated communities, the president of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has warned.Muyiwa Oki said the government should avoid making the mistakes of the past, which have led
  
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• Botched Spanish church makeover leaves cherubim looking startled

  01-08-2024 15:42
  
  Professional restorers want explanation for changes in Soria, which have been likened to ‘Monkey Christ’ workProfessional restorers in Spain are demanding explanations after a historic church in the north-eastern city of Soria was given a bold makeover that has left the building’s cherubim looking startled and local heritage lovers up in arms.The attentions lavished on the Ermita de Nuestra Señora del Mirón, which was built in 1725 on the ruins of a romanesque and
  
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• The new town I grew up in radically improved life for my family. Labour is right to champion them | George Clarke

  01-08-2024 13:10
  
  In Washington, Tyne and Wear, we found space, security and community. It shows the power of good planningGeorge Clarke is an architect and television presenterI was born in Sunderland in the 1970s, and my mam and dad lived in a small flat in an old brick Victorian terrace just a short walk from Sunderland general hospital. At that time, all the shipyards and coalmines that employed thousands of people were closing and a once-thriving industrial town was on the decline.Just eight miles away from
  
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• The City of London’s tallest skyscraper could look like a toilet seat in the sky – and that’s not even the worst thing about it| Oliver Wainwright

  31-07-2024 16:00
  
  As more and more giant towers are squeezed in by developers, open spaces and natural light are becoming things of the pastFrom some angles, it looks like a giant toilet seat in the sky. From others, it looks like a big tongue, sticking out to lick crumbs off the neighbouring Cheesegrater. Or, in the words of William Upton KC, member of the City of London Corporation’s planning committee: “It looks like one of those plastic spoons we used to get in cheap station cafes that you sort of
  
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• Britain’s best new building: can a tiny dairy farm beat the epic Elizabeth Line?

  31-07-2024 01:01
  
  From increasing the National Portrait Gallery’s wall space to revitalising a notorious estate, this year’s finalists for the RIBA Stirling architecture prize couldn’t be more differentIt is like trying to compare a Hollywood blockbuster with an indie documentary, or a symphony orchestra with a busker. This year’s RIBA Stirling prize for the best building in the the country sees the £19bn Elizabeth line and the 67-acre regeneration of King’s Cross go head to he
  
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• Country diary: Mending the last thatched roof in the village | Tom Allan

  30-07-2024 06:30
  
  Ardersier, Moray Firth: I’ve come all the way from south Devon and my colleague from the Outer Hebrides, such is the dearth of thatchers in Scotland nowI have come across many ways of securing thatch to a roof, from pointed hazel spars to heather rope, iron crooks to old-fashioned tarred twine. But this 17th-century roof in the fishing village of Ardersier offers something I haven’t seen before: everything has been tied down with orange baler twine.As basic as the technique may seem,
  
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• ‘Welcome to Wrexham!’ Is my old hometown about to become a hothouse of culture?

  29-07-2024 12:16
  
  Our critic returns to the place of his birth to find the rough old town where he grew up has been transformed – and not just by Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds buying the football teamThe actor Rob McElhenney, reclining and bare-chested, gives a come-hither look as you enter the Tŷ Pawb (“Everybody’s House”) art gallery/market in Wrexham, Wales. McElhenney, famously, co-owns Wrexham football club with Ryan Reynolds and, clearly, you can’t get away from their g
  
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• Who’s on the 2024 RA Dorfman prize shortlist? A lingerie factory turned weekend home, Ukrainian volunteer roofers – and more

  28-07-2024 12:00
  
  The four disparate projects shortlisted for the annual prize add up to a heartening display of style, beauty, collaboration and force-for-good ambitionThe £10,000 RA Dorfman prize, given each year by the Royal Academy of Arts in London, is broad in its aims and global in its ambition. It “champions new talent”, from anywhere in the world, found with the help of 150 nominators and judged by a panel of academicians. The prize takes into consideration “geographical and socio
  
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