First, a quick look of what The New Architecture of Austerity is not. Even before the worst of the current economic “downturn” became evident, there had been murmurs that, considering the amount of steel it took to build, the Beijing National Stadium wasn’t perhaps the most economical or sustainable of buildings. It’s old news that the […]
Twelve aready! Doesn’t time fly? etc. Born rich and in the Middle East, it’s never really had much to do apart from indicate a destination. It’s easy to criticise and it’s easy to disapprove but it’s actually quite an amazing building. This gets forgotten. I’ve seen many articles about the building as a hotel – its […]
Q. What links Love, Architecture and Religion? A. The answer could only be Antoni Gaudí (1852 – 1926), couldn’t it? Here’s a pic of him looking dapper, before he stopped caring about this-worldy things like appearance. Gaudí’s always been a bit of a strange one. In a 20th century history lecture or book, he usually […]
One of our earlier posts was titled “What’s the point of architecture?” and it’s true that many of our posts have mentioned shit shapes and stuff. Recently however, I’ve been wondering what’s the point of engineering. I’ll set out my thinking first. The Statue of Liberty is a good example of what I’ll call the “traditional” relationship […]
1) The Chicago School architects invented Modern Architecture by “expressing” the steel frame and by “getting rid” of ornament. NOT TRUE! The Chicago School architects were designing department stores and office buildings – both new types of buildings for new types of commercially-driven clients. By that time, steel frame construction had become cheaper and quicker. […]
Another problem with today’s architecture is the lack of an integrative approach towards designing buildings. What’s happening is that parts of a building component are designed without taking into account any other parts it may affect, thereby possibly affecting those parts in a negative way. I especially sensed this during my education at architecture school, […]
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In this post I’d like to talk about an exciting new possibility – the impending death of parametric architecture! When it happens, we’ll have Povilas Cepaitis, Luis Enrique, Diego Ordoñez and Carlos Piles of the AA School of Architecture to thank as they’ve developed an Efficient fabrication system for geometrically complex building elements. It was […]
Q: Which one of these four tables is the misfit? Is it Table 1, designed by Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, Charlotte Perriand, in 1928? This table is called the LC6 but it’s usually known (unfairly to its co-designers) as “the Corbusier table”. You can download lots of nice photos of it from the Cassina website, […]
Today’s Guardian newspaper had images of the shortlist for the pylon competition I wrote about in an earlier post. Here are the six shortlisted entries. 1) T-Pylon by Bystrup Architecture, Design & Engineering Materials: Hot dip galvanized steel with a paint finish and as alternatives Cor-Ten steel, stainless steel, and hot dip galvanized without paint. What […]
For Part I Following on from Graham’s first post on this architectural ‘masterpiece’, and which mainly talked about how bad the planning of the house was, today I’m going to talk about some other things that weren’t so great about this villa. As soon as it was completed, it was apparent that the house was […]
Hello again. I’d like to talk about ornament. But first, I have a friend who’d like to say something. You can find Adolf Loos saying the same thing in more words here but he did make two important points. The first is that ornament is unnecessary – he believed that ornament on buildings was the sign of […]
Previous posts: Part I, Part II Back to STACEY and, this time, with DAYLIGHTING & VIEWS. Daylighting is a very important yet neglected aspect of buildings. In addition to its benefits for energy-saving, it has huge psychological and productivity benefits for a building’s occupants as well. As for productivity, studies have shown that daylight can have […]
Hello again! Check this out! http://www.ribapylondesign.com/ Yes, it’s an RIBA-approved competition to re-design electricity pylons. Here’s all the good bits from the competition brief, deconstructed. Competition Objective The challenging target of an 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050, means substantial change in our energy infrastructure with electricity becoming an increasingly important part of our […]
