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Page 1: Blueprint 20130910

ARCHITECTURE | DESIGN | ART

Mecanoo’s BirMinghaM LiBrary

|

It all stacks up

30 years of Blueprint celeBrated inside By conran | Foster | rogers | hadid | heatherwickFarreLL | herzog | arad | diLLer | Brody | starck | griMshaw | newson | hoLL | PauL sMith & more...

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Lounge Chair Produced by Vitra since 1956, Design: Charles & Ray Eames 30 Clerkenwell Road, London EC1M 5PG, T: +44 (0) 20 7608 6200 www.vitra.com

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021Neo Bankside

023Listen 1

025Listen 2

026Listen 3

029On the Drawing Board

031On the list

033Info

034Meet

037Design Project

039Architecture Project

040 – 041The Art of Repetition

043Blueprint for the Future

045 – 046London Design Festival 2013

048 – 049Curated diary

050Designers in Residence

COveR sTORy 056 – 072Robe and CrownAs Mecanoo’s long-awaited new Birmingham library opens, Herbert Wright speaks to the Dutch practice’s founding partner Francine Houben about her hopes for the building

074 – 090snow Business

092 – 102Kengo Kuma

104 – 116Inside the Rainbow

118 – 126Neville Brody

128 – 136The New Reality

138 – 148Between Heaven and earth

150 – 160elmgreen & Dragset

162 – 170World’s end Architecture

176 – 177The Moment

180 – 186Farrell 20/20

189MvRDv Buildings

190Ice Lab: From science Fiction to Cold Reality

193The Images of Architects

194The spectacle of Disintegration — situationist Passages out of the 20th Century

196 – 197Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life

199Manuel estrada: sailing through

200Dixonary

BACK–COveR sTORy 205 – 266Archive30 years of Blueprint personally celebrated by (in year order):Eva Jiřičná, Ron Arad, Richard Rogers, Paul Smith, Nigel Coates, Neville Brody, Michael Hopkins, Eric Parry, Terry Farrell, Nicholas Grimshaw, Philippe Starck, Marc Newson, Jacques Herzog, Elizabeth Diller, Sam Jacob, Steven Holl, Eric Kuhne, Iain Borden, Fernando Gutiérrez, Steffen Sauerteig, Luke Pearson, David Greene, Peter St John, Charles Jencks, Zaha Hadid, Craig Dykers, Eduardo Souto de Moura, Norman Foster, Terence Conran, Thomas Heatherwick, David Adjaye

REVIEWFORWARD PLAY

039 056 180

CONTENTS

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EDITORIALT. ++44 (0) 20 3220 0851Editor Johnny Tucker [email protected] dirEctor Wes [email protected] assistant Editor Shumi [email protected] Editor Herbert [email protected] Editor Gian Luca [email protected] sub-Editor Pamela Hornesub-Editor Francis Pearcecontributors Dele Adeyemo, Richard Beckett, James Bridle, Ewan Buck, Angela Derbyshire, Clare Farrow, Eva Franch i Gilabert, Owen Hatherley, Ian Hart, Terry Hawes, Gonzalo Herrero Delicado, Dylan Kendle, Andrew Meredith, James Morris, Peter Murray, Philip Pullman, Paul Raftery, Vera Sacchetti, Jack Self, Veronica Simpson, Site Specific, Erik Spiekermann, Gwen

Webber, Thomas Wensing, Irwin WongintErns Anne Bellamy, Grace Quah

pRODucTIOnProduction managEr Clare [email protected]

pubLIshIngcEo Joe TerreniEditoriaL dirEctor Theresa Dowling commErciaL dirEctor Mike Callison

ADvERTIsIngsaLEs dirEctor Joe Maughan T. ++44 (0)20 7936 [email protected] managEr Alistair FitzpatrickT. ++44 (0)20 7936 [email protected] managEr Ryan SloanT. ++44 (0)20 7936 [email protected] dEVELoPmEnt managEr Dean Cassar T. ++44 (0)20 7936 6682

[email protected] ExEcutiVE Sophia SahinT. ++44 (0)20 7936 6400 [email protected]

subscRIpTIOnssubscriPtions markEting managErBarbara Carcangiu T. ++44 (0)20 7936 [email protected]

TEchnIcAL Printing S&G Print GroupnEwstradE distributionCOMAG Specialist Division T. ++44 (0)1895 433800booksHoP/gaLLEry distributionCentral Books T. ++44 (0)20 8986 4854

subscRIpTIOnssingLE issuE PricE UK £30; EU €46; US $61; ROW $62onE yEar (6 issuEs) UK £150; EU €233; USA $308; ROW $311

two yEar (12 issuEs) UK £240; EU €373; USA $493; ROW $498digitaL onE yEar* UK £75; EU €112.50; USA $150; ROW $150digitaL two yEar* UK £120; EU €180; USA $240; ROW $240* The digital prices above do not include VAT. Please include VAT at 20% for orders coming from UK or Europe.

Subscriptions Hotline: +44 (0)845 0739 607 (local rate) Fax: +44 (0)20 7458 4032 Email: [email protected] Blueprint Subscriptions, PMI, Progressive House, 2 Maidstone Road, Sidcup, Kent DA14 5HZ, UK. Subscribe online at: www.buythatmag.com

bLuEPrint The Colonnades, 34 Porchester Road, London W2 6ES blueprintmagazine.co.uk

ProgrEssiVE mEdia intErnationaL John Carpenter House, 7 Carmelite Street, London, EC4Y 0BS T. +44 (0)20 7936 6400 F. +44 (0)20 7936 6813

­­­­(ISSN­0268-4926)­Blueprint­is­published­bi-monthly­by­Progressive­Media­International,­John­Carpenter­House,­7­Carmelite­Street,­London­EC4Y­0BS,­England.­No­responsibility­can­be­accepted­for­unsolicited­manuscripts­or­photographs.­©2013.­All­calls­may­be­monitored­for­training­purposes.

Back­cover­— 30 masthead font blocks made by Richard Beckett and photographed by Johnny Tucker

In 1983 the first £1 coins were minted, and with that unfamiliarly heavy little coin you would have been able to buy a pint of beer and still have more than 30p change. Or, if you were more abstemious you could have four pints of milk, still with a few coppers left.

In 1983 TV-AM started broadcasting to the nation from a building, complete with oversized egg cups, at London’s Camden Lock that was, of course, designed by Terry Farrell.

In 1983 Stephen Bayley brought up the tricky issue of taste with an exhibition at the Boilerhouse at the V&A, which saw him placing a model of the TV-AM building in a bin marked ‘Kitsch’. After spotting it at the opening, a peeved Farrell took the model back. And talking of kitsch, as far as fashion taste went, if you were of a certain age you were probably walking around with flouncy hair, sizeable shoulder pads and possibly a pair of Tukka boots.

In 1983 Polish trade unionist Lech Walesa picked up the Nobel Peace Prize following his leadership of democracy-enhancing Solidarnosc in Poland, while in Britain we re-elected Margaret Thatcher with a massive 144-seat majority (though in actuality only 42 per cent of the vote).

In 1983 the last DeLorean gull-wing car limped off the production line, and CDs went on sale in the UK. As far as (overpriced) CD content went, we lost singer Karen Carpenter, but gained a baby Cheryl Cole.

But, as far as we are concerned, the most important thing to happen in 1983 was that the first issue of Blueprint hit the newsstands with the strapline ‘London’s magazine of design, architecture and style’.

For 30 years we’ve been publishing this tome and pithily commenting on the worlds of architecture and design. In this issue you’ll find a number of celebrations of this fact, not least the archive, where we revisit a single issue from each of the years and talk to the cover stars of the time (page 205).

But that was then and this is now. As you will have noticed by the sheer weight of the thing alone, Blueprint has evolved again! We’ve given the magazine a top-to-toe redesign, and every issue, published bimonthly, will now contain more than 200 packed editorial pages. One thing that hasn’t changed though and that is Blueprint’s irreverent, acerbic, critical, entertaining approach to reporting on architecture, design and art.

Welcome to the next generation of Blueprint. Johnny tucker,­editor

IssuE 330 EDITORIAL

Front­cover­— Mecanoo’s Library of Birmingham photographed by Paul Raftery. Blueprint masthead set in Reduct by Dylan Kendle, Tomato.

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The 2020 chair is yet another example of Ahrend’s enviable heritage of furniture design. For over 100 years, our passion has been creating beautiful products, rich in ergonomics, functionality and sustainability. From office chairs to desks, soft seating to tables, our design is not a trend but a tradition.In fact, the only old fashioned thing you’ll find at Ahrend, is our unrivalled customer service. For more information call 020 7566 7466 or visit www.ahrend.com

_BELIEVE IN AHREND’S TIMELESS DUTCH DESIGN.

Ahrend. Humanising_Spaces

I BELIEVE: “Good design is a combination of invisible technology and complete functionality. That’s what makes the Ahrend 2020 the office chair of the future. Clear lines, astonishing comfort and effortlessly adjustable. Oh, and 100% recyclable.”Paul Brooks, Designer, Ahrend 2020 chair

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The 2020 chair is yet another example of Ahrend’s enviable heritage of furniture design. For over 100 years, our passion has been creating beautiful products, rich in ergonomics, functionality and sustainability. From office chairs to desks, soft seating to tables, our design is not a trend but a tradition.In fact, the only old fashioned thing you’ll find at Ahrend, is our unrivalled customer service. For more information call 020 7566 7466 or visit www.ahrend.com

_BELIEVE IN AHREND’S TIMELESS DUTCH DESIGN.

Ahrend. Humanising_Spaces

I BELIEVE: “Good design is a combination of invisible technology and complete functionality. That’s what makes the Ahrend 2020 the office chair of the future. Clear lines, astonishing comfort and effortlessly adjustable. Oh, and 100% recyclable.”Paul Brooks, Designer, Ahrend 2020 chair

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Showrooms Kettal: London: 567 Kings Road. London SW6 2 EB. T. (44) 20 7371 5170. Paris: 80, Blvd Malesherbes. T. (33) 01 43 59 51 44. Miami: 147 Miracle Mile. Coral Gables, Florida. T. (1) 786 552 90 22. Cannes: 98, Blvd. Carnot. 06110 Le Cannet. T. (33) 04 93 45 66 18. Milano: Spazio S. Marco, Via San Marco, 38. T. (39) 02 65560728. Marbella: Ctra Cádiz. Km 179. T. (34) 952 77 89 89. Barcelona: Aragón 316. T. (34) 93 488 10 80. Madrid: Príncipe de Vergara, 81. T. (34) 91 411 26 20.

Head Offi ce Kettal / Contract: Aragón 316. 08009 Barcelona. Spain. T. (34) 93 487 90 90. www.kettal.com

OUTDOOR COLLECTION

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Showrooms Kettal: London: 567 Kings Road. London SW6 2 EB. T. (44) 20 7371 5170. Paris: 80, Blvd Malesherbes. T. (33) 01 43 59 51 44. Miami: 147 Miracle Mile. Coral Gables, Florida. T. (1) 786 552 90 22. Cannes: 98, Blvd. Carnot. 06110 Le Cannet. T. (33) 04 93 45 66 18. Milano: Spazio S. Marco, Via San Marco, 38. T. (39) 02 65560728. Marbella: Ctra Cádiz. Km 179. T. (34) 952 77 89 89. Barcelona: Aragón 316. T. (34) 93 488 10 80. Madrid: Príncipe de Vergara, 81. T. (34) 91 411 26 20.

Head Offi ce Kettal / Contract: Aragón 316. 08009 Barcelona. Spain. T. (34) 93 487 90 90. www.kettal.com

OUTDOOR COLLECTION

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designjunctionIn Partnership with

London’s leading design destination

The Sorting Office21–23 New Oxford St.

London WC1A 1BA

thedesignjunction.co.uk

18–22/09/2013

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designjunctionIn Partnership with

London’s leading design destination

The Sorting Office21–23 New Oxford St.

London WC1A 1BA

thedesignjunction.co.uk

18–22/09/2013

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021

Neo BanksideWe’re having a 30th birthday party and you’re invited…

023

Listen 1Peter Murray looks at the future for London development with the benefit of 30 years’ hindsight

025

Listen 2Owen Hatherley assesses the London Olympic architectural legacy one year on

026

Listen 3Erik Spiekermann on what can happen in 30 years

029

On the Drawing BoardHerzog & de Meuron talks to Shumi Bose about the inspiration for its design for West Kowloon’s M+ cultural centre

031

On the listTop 10 listing of the tallest skyscrapers in Europe and the world, plus highest restaurants and tallest vertical cities

033

InfoA graphic depiction of this year’s Stirling Prize shortlist

034

MeetA potted history of Gareth Hoskins Architects and the faces behind the name, by Veronica Simpson

037

Design ProjectInside our new masthead font reduct, designed by Dylan Kendle from art and design collective Tomato 039

Architecture ProjectA look at Squires and Partners unusual conversion of an old boozer into a home, by Herbert Wright

040 – 041

The Art of RepetitionRon Arad’s transforms Fiat 500s into wall-hung art, capping off a 30-year retrospective of his work in metal

043

Blueprint for the FutureWe want you to join us at Design Junction during the London Design Festival to judge our 3D printing product and architecture competition

045 – 046

London Design Festival 2013Johnny Tucker’s pick of what not to miss this year from the 274 events across 200 venues

048 – 049

Curated diaryStorefront for Art and Architecture’s Eva Franch i Gilabert selects some upcoming events

050

Designers in ResidenceMeet this year’s Designers in Residence, as their exhibition of research and work opens at the Design Museum

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FF

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Arper London Showroom11 Clerkenwell RoadLondon EC1M [email protected]

Juno CollectionDesign byJames Irvine

www.arper.com

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Blueprint partyWith 30 illustrious years of publishing under our belt, we’re in the mood to celebrate and we’d like you to join us

For Blueprint it all began 30 years ago with a launch party in the then unfinished Lloyd’s building – Richard Rogers Partnership’s first London project.

Now we’re celebrating again with a salubrious 30th birthday (and a few special awards!), dramatically high up in the latest Roger Stirk Harbour + Partners completion, NEO Bankside.

The ever-changing London skyline will form the backdrop to the evening, with some of the capital’s finest views out across the Thames to St Paul’s and, of course, RSHP’s Leadenhall, and the now slightly dwarfed Lloyd’s Building where it all started.

And we have a number of party tickets to give away to readers for the evening on 9 October. If you’d like to join us, please email us at:

[email protected], with Party as the subject. Tickets will be allocated on a random, rather than first-come first-serve basis, and the deadline for sending in a request is 30 September. We look forward to seeing you there!

A big thank you to NEO Bankside for giving us the space for this event, also thanks in advance to our other sponsors, Crosswater, Steelcase and Ryan.

NEO BaNksidESitting in landscaped gardens next to Tate Modern, NEO Bankside is actually five separate buildings (called pavilions) of between six and 24 storeys, designed by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners for joint developers Native Land and Grosvenor.

The brief required a mix of 217 residential units, ranging from studios and one-bedroom apartments to four-bedroom units, all varying in size. RSHP’s answer was to create a hexagonal plan form and orthogonal structural grid for maximum flexibility. This also gives the pavilions the look of ships’ prows, with RSH+P hallmark muscular external bracing and restrained but positive use of colour. These prows also feature floor-to-ceiling glazing to make the most of the views out over London.

The base of the pavilions has been given over to retail units, and house Terence Conran’s latest restaurant, Albion NEO Bankside.

neobankside.com, knightfrank.co.uk

1 – We’ll be taking the furniture out and rolling back the carpets for the party!2 – Part of the view, including the now ‘dwarfed’ Lloyd’s BuildingSponsored by

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DESIGN PORTRAIT.

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Anne, the creative director, and the two loves of her life: Jacob and Michel. Michel is designed by Antonio Citterio. www.bebitalia.com

B&B Italia Store London, SW3 2AS - 250 Brompton Road - T. 020 7591 8111 [email protected] Agent: Keith De La Plain - Tel. +44 786 0419670 - [email protected]

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LISTEN

Over the past 30 years London has become the capital-friendly capital, with the Olympics as the most recent catalyst for development, but housing has not kept pace and public spaces needs to be put at the top of the agenda

PETER MURRAYMayor Boris Johnson regularly describes London as ‘the greatest city on Earth’. Few would quibble. Had Ken Livingstone used similar words in 1983, when he was Leader of the Greater London Council (GLC), most people would have thought he was barmy. In the 30 years since, London has changed dramatically, from shrinking city to honeypot of the global economy, from dull metropolis where contemporary design and architecture were specialist interests to the world’s most popular destination, with a skyline of exotic towers by international architects.

So how did that happen? Radical change began with Big Bang and the deregulation of the financial markets in 1985. As a result, international banks – and bankers – flooded into London demanding new sorts of buildings that could accommodate innovative computer technology and football-pitch-sized trading floors, surrounded by better public spaces than Brits were used to. Broadgate, designed by Arup Associates, led the way with new standards of construction, flexibility in use and interior fit-out.

As the banks poured into the capital, more space was required. The City of London Corporation made life difficult for developers so Canary Wharf started construction in Docklands. Without this additional office space the financial markets might well have decided to move to Paris or Frankfurt. The Corporation viewed this as so serious that in 1997 it reversed its opposition to tall buildings – leading directly to the current cluster of skyscrapers in the east of the Square Mile.

During the Eighties and Nineties public buildings were few and far between, the supply

only improving with Lottery money in the lead-up to the Millennium. Key projects began to change the face of the capital: the London Eye kicked off the revival of the South Bank; Tate Modern regenerated a desolate piece of Southwark and reinforced London’s reputation as a centre for progressive art; the Gherkin proved that the public could love tall buildings, its iconic form sending out positive messages of London’s new modernism to the world.

Margaret Thatcher closed down the GLC in 1986, irritated by Livingstone’s left-wing policies; in 2000 New Labour introduced an elected mayor and he was back in charge. He was no longer ‘Red Ken’ – he supported development as a driver for growth and the City of London as a global financial capital and powerhouse of the UK economy. He launched the London Plan, setting out his strategy for a more sustainable city (based largely on Richard Rogers’ concept of the compact city), where development for the capital takes place within its boundaries – in contrast to post-war policies of moving people out to New Towns – thus leading to denser development and increasing population.

Livingstone’s decision to bid for the Olympics was crucial in the changing image and fortunes of London as well as those of East London. Stratford is a key example of the large brownfield sites, highlighted as ‘opportunity areas’ in the London Plan, which, when developed, would deliver 30 or so new neighbourhoods in a polycentric city.

When Boris Johnson took over as mayor in 2008, he retained many of the basic principles of Livingstone’s London Plan. His 2020 Vision sets out how he will deal with London’s population growth

by investing in transport, in cycling, education and skills, home-building and vibrant town centres.

Much of this investment is driven by the vast amount of global money pouring in: Malaysian pension funds at Battersea Power Station, Chinese investors in the Royal Docks and Canadians in the City. Housing schemes in Nine Elms are being sold off-plan to Hong Kong and Singapore investors. This international money keeps the London economy afloat, but there is the danger that it is pushing up house prices while absent purchasers are creating dark areas of the city – only occupied part of the time. The long-term impact is unknown, global cities are new territory as far as governance and planning are concerned.

Housing is a critical issue for the Mayor – the city needs at least 36,000 homes a year just to keep pace with the demand of the growing population and is not building anything like enough. What we do build is going to be more dense and it will be higher: as the construction of tall office buildings slows down, so we will soon see a spate of big residential towers hitting the skyline.

Johnson’s plans to spend nearly £1bn on cycling infrastructure will speed up the modal shift away from the car in favour of active transportation – walking, cycling and public transport – with resultant improvements to streets and spaces in the city. Indeed, it is the transformation of public space, and the way we use it, that has fundamentally changed one’s day-to-day experience of London over the past 30 years and is likely to be high on the agenda over the next. After all, it’s the quality of the spaces in between the buildings that makes a really great city.

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Leading Japanese architect Tadao Ando collaborated with the furniture experts at Carl Hansen & Søn to create the Dream Chair – a tribute to Hans J. Wegner, the undisputed master of chair design. The result is a sculptural and comfortable lounge chair crafted from a single piece of plywood – and imbued with a beautiful floating expression.

EvERy piEcE coMEs with A stoRy

new york | london | tokyo | copenhagen | carlhansen.com

LoNDoN : skandium Brompton, 245-249 Brompton road – skandium maryleBone, 86 maryleBone high street – skandium selfridges, 400 oxford street

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LISTEN

Aside from a few swooping sports structures, the architectural legacy of the Olympics is predominantly bland or oppressive. But that’s OK if the people of Newham are getting something out of it, isn’t it? Would that they were

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OWEN HATHERLEYIf there’s one architectural object that embodies the ‘Olympic legacy’, then it’s the Shoal, a sculpture by Studio Egret West. It is placed in front of the unlovely Arndale-like hulk of the Stratford Centre, at the side facing the Stratford transport interchange and the entrance to Westfield Stratford City. Aware that this insufficiently iconic structure would be seen by all visitors to the Olympic Village and the Olympic site, the munificent Olympic commissioners got the bumptious Alsopians at Egret in to hide it without demolishing it, or (as at Egret’s other big project, Park Hill) turfing out its tenants and draping it in luminous anodised aluminium. The idea is dubious enough, but the execution is something else – a series of multicoloured ‘fish’ swim along the centre’s concrete and stock brick, suspended on big, bulky and wobbly steel members. Some of those members don’t have fish on at all, but little CCTV cameras instead. Who knew ubiquitous surveillance could be so much fun!

It may sound like I’m being cynical here. After all, didn’t the Olympics ‘deliver’ various public facilities and a new park where once there was a poisoned post-industrial wasteland? I’m not one of those fixated with the memory of the picturesque interzone that once occupied the Lea Valley — it was a very vivid and strange landscape, and though it would have been nice if it could have been remade without erasing quite so ruthlessly its unplanned wildernesses, it’s also hard to see how they could have been retained as anything other than a smug contrivance; flats surrounding tyres and shopping trolleys would not necessarily have been better. Listening to Ken Livingstone on the Lea Valley, you got the impression that the area was

being transformed from a landscape used mainly by Iain Sinclair into an area of desperately needed social housing and public facilities. The notion that Ken was going to get a new Alton Estate built on the sly, via the massive injections of money that come with the Olympics was always implausible, and from the start, there were clearances of housing co-ops on the site to make way for the New Stratford. Yet it’s still staggering quite how much Livingstone’s gamble failed.

The ‘legacy’ can be roughly divided into the site itself and the knock-on-effect, the latter being mainly Stock Woolstencroft’s series of towering dromes down Stratford High Street, a miserable parade of barcode facade buy-to-let nullities, and the clearance of the Carpenters Estate — now halted after a public campaign, but still an area of only partly-occupied council housing in a borough, Newham, that has taken to trying to export its poor to Stoke-on-Trent. Then there’s the vast, bland mall which provides a huge barrier between the Village and Stratford proper, a building of no more architectural distinction than the Stratford Centre itself, albeit significantly shinier. If these are the side-effects on the immediate area, they are hardly encouraging. But what of the official legacy, the Olympic Village and the Queen Elizabeth Park? The latter is pleasant if extremely eerie in its combination of calm and ultra-heavy security. The imposing appearance of the publicly funded, Qatari Diar-owned Village, with its unified height and bulk leading to ‘Eastern Bloc’ comparisons, has led to some obvious criticisms. It does look peculiarly authoritarian in its stark, stone-clad monumentality, hence, presumably, the necessity for Fun to be slathered about, as in the ArcelorMittal Orbit, that

monument to downsizing commissioned by Boris Johnson in the toilets of Davos: probably his only major contribution to the development. The other buildings have their moments, passably swooping sports structures that, with luck, won’t be the victim of cuts at Newham Council in a couple of years.

What next? The bedroom tax and other measures are putting Newham under enormous pressure, which may explain its abandonment of the clearance of Carpenters; and its rhetoric suggests that it will be trying to avoid oligarch-owned towers in future, with current plans opting for low-rise ‘villages’, with delightful sourdough bakery names, like ‘Chobham Manor’. In fact, Newham intends to directly build some of these houses, employing Rogers Stirk Harbour to design one of the first council-commissioned estates in decades, using the prefabrication system RSHP devised for Oxley Woods, Milton Keynes. It would be wonderful if it were possible to proclaim that this signifies a great change of heart, away from the public subsidy of rentier capitalism that has so comprehensively dominated the Olympic Borough. Unfortunately, that’s not exactly what Newham is planning. It will be the client of the new development, but the houses will not be open to those on the council waiting list, but will instead be ‘affordable’ — that is, available at 80 per cent of the market price, immediately pricing out almost all council tenants and a considerable number of even middle class Londoners. After that, perhaps, if it’s successful, they’ll consider building council housing at subsidised rent. If public money can fund a sports festival to the tune of £15bn, then why can’t Newham Council spend some of its money on cornering the market for prefab chic?

IT WOuLd bE WONdERfuL If THIs WERE A mOvE AWAY fROm THE pubLIc subsIdY Of RENTIER cApITALIsm, buT THAT’s NOT quITE WHAT NEWHAm Is pLANNINg

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LISTEN

Looking back at Blueprint after 30 years provides a reminder both of what has been achieved over the past three decades and just how slow progress can be. But then Rome — or should that be London — wasn’t built in a day

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ERIK SPIEKERMANNBuildings here in Germany are planned to be written off within 20 years. Not written off as in ‘forgotten’ or ‘destroyed’, but the initial construction and the cost of financing and maintaining it over those 20 years should have been paid for by then. If investors had paid for the building, they should have their money back, plus whatever profit margin they had calculated. From now on, with the cost of financing gone, the building could return a much higher profit. Or it could be destroyed, having fulfilled its purpose as an investment.

Unfortunately, a lot of these buildings show that they were built as investments rather than as real contributions to the fabric of our cities. They were designed and constructed to the principle of length-by-width-by-dollars (or pounds, or euros). If it wasn’t for the cost of demolition, a lot more of those financially written-off buildings would be written off physically and a lot of them deserve to be. But they still exist — they are monuments of thoughtlessness, obstructing our views of a better city.

In Britain, private mortgages can run for 30 years because ‘owning’ a home (or more accurately, owing money on a mortgage) is the default rather than the exception. So, if you manage

to come up with an initial payment before you’re 30, you may actually be the home’s owner by the time you’re ready for retirement. At least this is how it used to be and how the system is still set up. Mobility isn’t really its main purpose and only works as long as property values go up. They still do, but not equally across the country, so we end up with a country divided not so much by rivers, mountains and local dialects, but by the affordability of property. The expensive places become more so, while the cheap ones become impossible to sell and thus to finance.

If publishing Blueprint had been an investment in order to return a profit, it could be written off this year. I know the people who started the magazine, and none of them has so far become a publishing magnate, let alone a millionaire — as far as I know. What they have achieved, instead, is to provide a record of the designed environment, the buildings and other artefacts that were planned by architects, engineers and designers from many disciplines. I have them all on my shelves, adding to the clutter in my home but also aiding my memory.

Not only do the old issues of Blueprint remind us of what has been done, they also show us what has not been achieved. Progress has been painful,

often totally absent. Thirty years ago we thought that traffic in our cities had become unbearable. It is still unbearable today. Investment in the infrastructure only happens when things literally fall apart. It took a fire in the Tube back in 1987 to prompt a serious look at the state of the London Underground. While wooden escalators were gradually replaced and signage improved to better guide passengers, the Tube is still aching under the strain of too many users and not enough services.

Thirty years is not a long time to rebuild a city that has been growing for almost 2,000 years (Emperor Hadrian visited in 122 and London Wall was built around 200 AD). Publishing a magazine for 30 years, however, offers a great look at our successes as well as our failures. Publishing it on paper means that I can find all the issues quickly. No hard drive, DVD, magnetic tape or CD would have survived as long as that. And even if the data were still there, how would I access it? How would I even know what’s there?

I am celebrating Blueprint’s birthday by spreading dozens of magazines (remember the tabloid format?) across the floor and looking at my 30-year investment. Well worth it and more valuable than ever. No write-offs needed.

I KNow thE PEoPlE who StARtEd BluEPRINt ANd NoNE of thEM hAS BEcoME A PuBlIShINg MAgNAtE, lEt AloNE A MIllIoNAIRE

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‘Most of the time with such competitions, the brief is fairly open, but there’s a lot of information to take in about the site. This time it was the opposite, with little on site but a very precise brief. It is all about foregrounding the programme of the museum.

‘There was one very specific request from the client: they had seen Tate Modern and similar projects and were keen on these large scale post-industrial spaces. We realised the only given context on the site was below ground – the Airport Express tunnel, which passes underneath the site.

‘We liked the shape of it – and we spent time building a proper model of the tunnel, probably one of the first we built. We decided that revealing this found landscape would be one of the main ingredients; a pragmatic approach but one that fitted the client’s vision.

‘We have always been interested in this kind of archaeological approach, which for us is a powerful architectural tool. The most recent project where we applied this method was the Serpentine Pavilion (2012, with Ai Weiwei).

‘The next concern was of course how to organise galleries efficiently. Keeping things on one level is the easiest way, providing the most flexible and easily adaptable space. Keeping things flexible was always important; the clients would tell us not to have things completely defined, to allow

for some flexibility and go into detail together. And this is the way we like to work.

‘Materiality is at this stage open, and kept open on purpose; it’s still a competition entry to be discussed with our clients. That said, we put a lot of work into our research for materials, not only to strengthen the design and concept but for the building process. The basic and functional principles are very important. At the moment the only design feature that has a material implication is the strong horizontal louvre bands that wrap around the entire building volume. Considering the climate and location, these make the building very efficient in terms of energy consumption, yet

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Following a competition that included entries by Sanaa, renzo Piano, Toyo ito, Snøhetta and Shigeru Ban, Hong kong’s West kowloon cultural district authority appointed Herzog & de Meuron + TFP Farrells to design the first museum in its new cultural quarter. called M+ , the project will focus on art, design, architecture and film and is scheduled to open in 2017. Shumi Bose caught up with Herzog & de Meuron’s partner in charge, Ascan Mergenthaler, who here explains what’s currently on the drawing board and how we can expect it to evolve

Herzog & de Meuron

1 (left to right) – Jacques Herzog, Ascan Mergenthaler, and Pierre de Meuron2 – A visualisation of what the Herzog & de Meuron building for the Hong Kong cultural quarter may look like

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allow for maximal transparency where needed. ‘We have intense workshops to exchange ideas,

which last about a week, and we alternate – we’ll go to Hong Kong for one, then the client will come to Basel for the next. Our strategy was to ensure the project progressed as smoothly as possible, so we avoided all the Pandora’s boxes – things that would cause setbacks – and tried to stay within the constraints of budget, time, and the volumetric masterplan. In terms of smooth efficiency, this is why we’re working with Farrells’ Hong Kong office who have a lot of experience in local planning regulations, and building codes. It’s a good combination.

‘Our design is very basic: an infrastructure that can be populated by people and art. It is the contents of the museum that should be the foreground. So we tried to think about the building as an organisation – making the building very accessible at street level, entering into a cosmos with precise order and overview.

‘Hong Kong people are very ‘alive’ – they are very active and full of curiosity. So we had to think about how people would flow from one area to another quite naturally; it’s almost like a little village. The design is not something we have finalised as yet. But I do think that we have established an attitude, a spirit of the place.’

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ON THE lisT

If you have a taste for heights and an appetite to match, then head for Moscow, mainland China or the Middle East for the tallest man-made structures and loftiest places to lunch and look down to Earth

Skyscrapers

1 (left to right) – Kingdom Tower, Jedddah; Federation Tower (East), Moscow; Mubarak Tower, Kuwait: Ozone Restaurant in the Ritz Carlton, Hong Kong

1 – X-Seed 4000, Tokyo, Japan Height: 4000m Storeys: 800 Planned population: 500,000+Designed: 1995 Architect: Peter Neville

2 – Ultima Tower, anywhereHeight: 3219m Storeys: 500 Population: 1 millionDesigned: 1991 Architect: Eugene Tsui

3 – Shimuzu Mega-City Pyramid, Tokyo, Japan Height: 2004m Storeys: 400 Population: 1 millionDesigned: 2004 Architect: Dante Bini, David Dimitric of Shimuzu Corporation

4 – Bionic Tower, Shanghai or Hong Kong, China Height: 1228m Storeys: 300 Population: 100,000Designed: 1997 Architect: Eloy Celaya, Mª Rosa Cervera, Javier Gómez

5 – Nakheel Tower, Dubai Height: 1,200 Storeys: 200+ Population: 55,000+Designed: 2008Architect: Woods Bagot

6 – The Illinois, Chicago, USAHeight: 1610m Storeys: 528 Population: 100,000Designed: 1956 Architect: Frank Lloyd Wright

7 – Mubarak Tower, Kuwait Height: 1001m Storeys: 250 Population: Unspecified Designed: 2005 Architect: Eric Kuhne and Associates

8 – Millennium Tower, Tokyo, JapanHeight: 840m Storeys: 170 Population: 60,000Designed: 1989 Architect: Foster + Partners

9 – Sky City, Changsha, China Height: 838m Storeys: 202 Population: 20-30,000Designed: 2012 Due to complete 2014 Architect: BROAD Group

10 – Vertical Village, Meuse, France Height: 600m Storeys: 180 Population: 30,000Designed: 2011 Architect: Fabio Gramazio and Matthias Kohler of ETH Zurich

Tallest skyscrapers in Europe (current and under construction – in height order)

1 – Federation Tower (East), Moscow, Russia, 2014, 360m, NPS Tchoban Voss

2 – Mercury City Tower, Moscow, Russia, 2013, 339m, MM Posokin, Frank Williams and GL Sirota

3 – OKO Tower (South), Moscow, Russia, 2015, 336m, SOM

4 – Eurasia Tower, Moscow, Russia, 2014, 309m, Swanke Hayden Connell

5 – The Shard, London, UK, 2013, 306m, RPBW, 2013

6 – City of Capitals (Moscow Tower), Moscow, Russia, 2010, 302m, NBBJ

7 – Naberezhnaya Tower C, Moscow, Russia, 2007, 268m, RTKL and ENKA Design

8 – Triumph Palace, Moscow, Russia, 2005, 264m, TROMOS

9 – Sapphire Tower, Istanbul, Turkey, 2010, 261m, Tabanlioglu Architects

10 – Commerzbank Tower, Frankfurt, Germany, 1997, 259m, Foster+Partners

1 – Ozone, 470m,Ritz-Carlton, International Commerce Centre, Hong Kong, China

2 – 100 Century Avenue,450m, Park Hyatt, Shanghai World Financial Centre, Shanghai, China

3 – At.Mosphere, 442m, Burj Khalifa, Dubai, UAE

4 – Lutece Restaurant (revolves), 424m, Canton Tower, Guangzhou, China

5 – 360 Restaurant (revolves), 351m, CN Tower, Toronto, Canada

6 – Cloud 9 350m, Grand Hyatt, Jin Mao building, Shanghai, China

7 – Skytree Cafe 350m, Sky Tree Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

8 – Observation Deck at 300 300m, Jumeirah, Etihad Tower, Abu Dhabi, UAE

9 – 1-Altitide Gallery & Bar (open air), 282m, OUB Centre, Singapore

10 – Revolving Bar (revolves), 267m, Oriental Pearl Tower, Shanghai, China

Tallest vertical cities – a selection of skyscrapers with pretty much everything you need from birth to death (in height order – all are unbuilt)

Tallest skyscrapers in the world (current and under construction – in height order)

1 – Kingdom Tower, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, 2019, 1,001m+, Smith+Gill Architecture

2 – Sky City, Changsha, China, planned 2014, 838m, Broad Group

3 – Burj Khalifa, Dubai, UAE, 2010, 828m, SOM

4 – Ping An Finance Center, Shenzen, China, 2016, 660m, KPF

5 – Greenland Center, Wuhan, China, 2017, 636m, Smith+Gill Architecture

6 – Shanghai Tower, Shanghai, China, 2014, 632m, Gensler

7 – Makkah Royal Clock Tower Hotel, Mecca, Saudi Arabia, 2012, 601m, Dar Al-Handasah

8 – Goldin Finance 117, Tianjin, China, 2016, 597m, P&T Group

9 – Lotte World Tower, Seoul, South Korea, 2015, 555m, KPF

10 – One World Trade Center, New York, USA, 2014, 541m, SOM

Some of the highest places to enjoy a drink or nibble (in height order)

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CRW CONTRACTS Blueprint fullpg.indd 1 16/08/2013 09:30Untitled-1 1 16/08/2013 09:40

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Stanton Williams Architects SAINSBURY LABORATORY

£82M11,000 sq m

Zaha Hadid Architects EVELYN GRACE ACADEMY

£48M10,745 sq m

Zaha Hadid Architects MAXXI NATIONAL MUSEUM

£138M30,000 sq m

Rogers Stirk Harbour Partners MAGGIE'S CENTRE

£2.1M370 sq m

CostGross internal area

Maccreanor Lavington + Alison Brooks Architects+Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios ACCORDIA

£80M30,000 sq m

David Chipperfield ArchitectsMARBACH MUSEUM OF MODERN LITERATURE

£14.5M3.800 sq m

Richard Rogers Partnership MADRID–BARAJAS AIRPORT

£448M1,158,000 sq m

EMBT/RMJM Architects THE SCOTTISH PARLIAMENT

£414.4M31,000 sq m

Foster + Partners 30 ST. MARY AXE/THE GHERKIN

£138M47,950 sq m

Herzog & de Meuron Architects THE LABAN CENTRE

£24M8,203 sq m

Wilkinson Eyre Architects GATESHEAD MILLENNIUM BRIDGE

£46M6,000 sq m

Wilkinson Eyre Architects MAGNA SCIENCE CENTRE

£17.7M126 m

Alsop & Stormer PECKHAM LIBRARY

£5M2,300 sq m

Future Systems LORD'S CRICKET GROUND MEDIA CENTRE

£5M650 sq m

Foster + Partners AMERICAN AIR MUSEUM

£13.5M7,400 sq m

James Stirling, Michael Wilford and Associates STUTTGART MUSIC BUILDING

£40M20,830 sq m

Stephen Hodder CENTENARY BUILDING

£3.2M3,623 sq m

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ASTLEY CASTLE, WARWICKSHIREWitherford Watson Mann Architects

£1.4M285 sq m

UNIVERSITY OF LIMERICK, IRELANDGrafton Architects

£12M9,900 sq m

NEWHALL BE, HARLOW, ESSEXAlison Brooks Architects

£12M16,300 sq m

PARK HILL, SHEFFIELDHawkins\Brown with Studio Egret West

£120M27,928 sq m

BISHOP EDWARD KING CHAPEL, OXFORDSHIRENiall McLaughlin Architects

£2M280 sq m

£18.5M1,800 sq m

GIANT'S CAUSEWAY VISITOR CENTRE, CO. ANTRIMHeneghan Peng architects

InfoThe Stirling Prize

Five of the six practices on the 2013 RIBA Stirling Prize shortlist are first-timers. The projects are bookies’ favourite Bishop Edward King Chapel, along with Essex housing development Newhall Be; the Giant’s Causeway Visitor Centre; a contemporary home within the shell of Astley Castle; the University of Limerick Medical School and Park Hill, Sheffield. Results on 26 September

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To survive a recession any creative business needs luck, talent, judgement, timing and drive. After three years of what MD Gareth Hoskins describes as ‘a wee bit of a slog’, Gareth Hoskins Architects’ fortunes appear to be on the rise.

Hoskins modestly plays up the luck and timing elements, but there’s no questioning the talent and drive that has got them here – after all, GHA was the first Scottish architecture practice to be invited to exhibit at the Venice Architecture Biennale (Gathering Place, 2008).

Hoskins cut his teeth in London with Sunand Prasad and Greg Penoyre’s then fledgling practice. After seven years he felt the time was right to set up a practice in his Scottish homeland. Says Hoskins: ‘It was 1998, just before Glasgow’s Year of Architecture & Design. I thought: “Let’s see if we can make anything out of it”.’ Among other schemes, GHA won

the Mackintosh Interpretation Centre, and began elegantly reinventing Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s first building as a gallery and workshop space, on a budget of £300,000. ‘We got an awful lot of press and publicity out of it. It was a fortunate early project,’ says Hoskins.

A big win in 2003 was pivotal for further growth: the £60m, 15-year masterplan for the redevelopment of the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. GHA’s complete refurbishment of this grade-A listed Victorian building is now attracting two million visitors a year, making it the biggest museum attraction outside of London. This project, in turn, helped GHA’s Berlin office take first prize in the competition for the masterplanning of Germany’s Gottorf Museum Island. GHA has also won awards for its thoughtful, sculptural and beautifully resolved school and healthcare buildings as well as private

residences, and garnered a useful reputation among developers for being able to transform complex sites into liveable, workable spaces.

Though Hoskins relishes the major, nationally significant schemes that ‘enable you to have a conversation with the surrounding city and authorities, so you can actually use the leverage of the project to sort out the streetscape around it’, he admits to investing just as much effort in ‘making the last 45p stretch a bit further’ on projects such as Liverpool’s Strawberry Fields special needs school.

Other future work include a contemporary £30m extension for the 19th-century Aberdeen Art Gallery, a 1,200-seat concert hall in Edinburgh for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra; and Bird College performing arts centre in London, for which the practice beat Meccanoo, Eric Parry Architects and Carmody Groarke to win the RIBA competition. Veronica Simpson

1 (left to right) – Gareth Hoskins, Chris Coleman-Smith, Jennifer Guillain, Nick Domminney and Clare Kemsley2 – Aberdeen Art Gallery

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WHO Directors: Gareth Hoskins, Chris Coleman-Smith, Jennifer Guillain, Nick Domminney and Clare Kemsley in Glasgow. Berlin studio directors are Thomas Bernatzky and Gabi Bernatzky. 30 staff in total WHAT Architecture, masterplanningWHeN Founded in 1998WHere Glasgow and Berlin (since 2010)

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Project

Designer Dylan Kendle of Tomato is the man behind the new Blueprint magazine masthead. He also contributed creatively to the back-cover shoot that uses a 3D wooden version of his font. He talks to Johnny Tucker

As part of the complete redesign of Blueprint (which you’ve probably already noticed by now!), we’ve introduced a brand new masthead, which is set in a font designed by Dylan Kendle, partner at the multidisciplinary design collective Tomato.

Kendle set out to create ‘a simple modular typeface that could be used physically as well as digitally — the idea being to create cnc-ed printing blocks that encouraged play and multiple permutations. He’s called the new font Reduct.

‘I suppose Reduct stemmed from when I designed a set of numerals for a Nouvelle Vague album cover, that I actually cut in plywood and printed. That got me interested in the idea of making a modular typeface that was in pieces, but with as few elements as possible, without that having an impact on the legibility. The idea was that they would be physical objects, and that if you didn’t like it you could use the pieces to design your own.

It was all very DIY. It’s part inspired by that, by children’s building blocks, by lo-fi home printing kits and the typeface Fregio Mecano.’

The construction idea is something we took and ran with for our back-cover shoot, having the font elements for the number 30 routed in wood and sprayed-up in the primary colours of children’s building blocks. We then took our construction set into the City on a quiet September Sunday morning, assembled the constituent elements and photographed them in front of Richard Rogers’ Lloyd’s building (for a fun movie of the ‘30’

constructing itself, have a look at our website, blueprintmagazinebeta.co.uk). Kendle was particularly keen on bringing out the physical element of the font when contributing heavily to the back-cover concept. We used Lloyd’s as the backdrop, because that it was where Blueprint had its launch party back in 1983.

Kendle’s no newcomer to type: ‘The first font I did was for Neville Brody and Fuse back in the Nineties. I wouldn’t call myself a font designer, but I like playing with typefaces, but they mostly tend be experimental or headline.’

Reduct is still under development. ‘The need to make a more extensive and nuanced character set meant expanding the kit of parts I had created,’ says Kendle, who has used Reduct to create a set of three silkscreen prints called Beginnings. You can see them at Design Junction during the London Design Festival or on his website, dylankendle.com.

1 – Design evolution of the Blueprint masthead: (from top) Simon Esterson (1983 and 1987), John Belknap (1995), Andrew Johnson (1997), Patrick Myles (2006) and Dylan Kendle (2013) 2 – An alternative shot from the back-cover shoot3 – Kendle experimenting early on in the Reduct design process4 – A detail from one of Kendle’s three silkscreen prints, Beginnigs, which use the Reduct font

Dylan Kendle

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In London’s Mayfair metal foliage is in ‘conversation with Virginia creepers’. That’s how Marcie Larizadeh of Squire and Partners described the interplay between a vine-covered facade on Curzon Street and an extraordinary field of aluminium leaves in bronze hues, facing it a block away. The latter forms part of the south facade of a new townhouse, One Waverton Street, and she’s the project associate architect. It’s just one remarkable feature of a project that manages to fit 800 sq m over seven floors into a narrow site behind the retained facade of a old boozer dating from the 18th century.

The old Red Lion’s facade faces east, and its stucco has been repainted dazzling white. But every side of the Mayfair house is different. The north side, of handmade brick, hosts a surprisingly discrete entrance from a narrow cobbled mews. Bringing light into the ground floor was a challenge because the site is bounded to the south by a light-blocking, listed, Georgian wall of blanked arches, balustrades and a pediment, partly shared with the Sultan of Brunei’s Chesterfield House. A ‘cour anglaise’, the architectural device that brings light into streetside basements, is situated between this wall and the house, and not only brightens the reception room but the generous double-height dining room sunk into a lower floor. Below this are two more subterranean levels, with facilities such

as a gym, spa and 12.5m-long swimming pool. The plant rooms seem worthy of an office block, but it’s all tucked away and acoustically shielded.  

Constructing what is effectively a new building underground involved piling and creating a concrete box for it that is 12m deep. Georgian vaults were scrupulously documented before construction. Incredibly, all materials in and out were ‘posted’ through the Red Lion facade, because of severe restrictions on site activity.

Upstairs are six bedrooms on two floors. Throughout the house, a variety of magnificent marbles and polished stone by Stone Theatre have been fitted, incidentally making each bathroom different. Some smaller windows are translucently

fritted because they overlook adjacent properties. The south facade is recessed at the cour anglaise, this middle section climbing 12m to incorporate a third-floor steel pavilion sited between patios, one with a patch of hardy grass green roof, the other above the Red Lion facade.

It is around the pavilion, and across the set-back part of the otherwise-stucco south facade rising behind and above the neo-classical south wall, that the metal leaves spread, like a Victorian repeating print. The bespoke, coated-aluminium leaves are a collaboration with Tuchschmid of Switzerland, whose artisan-industrial metalworks have included the cone on Sheppard Robson’s BBC Portland Place extension. Each leaf has seven folds, there are three colours, and every now and then a leaf is missing in the array to enhance the organic feel. Larizadeh herself worked on the leaf design, making shapes with beermats, and comments that ‘you get vine rhythms and colours come into play’.

In sunshine, the leaves positively glint and the old Red Lion facade dazzles, but nevertheless One Waverton Street is the soul of discretion in a charming, hidden corner of London’s most exclusive quarter. The result is an exquisite play of volumes, light and textures with artisan touches, a great piece of urbanism, and something that ups the game in townhouse design, whatever the market.

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a seven-storey townhouse has been squeezed into the space behind the retained facade of an 18th-century pub in mayfair. Herbert Wright quizzed project architect marcie Larizadeh on how its tardis-like design manages to include six bedrooms and a swimming pool

Squire and Partners

1 – One Waverton Street lies behind the facade of the Red Lion 2 – Bronze-hued aluminium leaves made by Swiss firm Tuchschmid

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By squashing them flat, Ron Arad has turned iconic Fiat 500s into two-dimensional, wall-hung art

The ArT of repeTiTion

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In-Reverse is a new batch of work, which caps off a 30-year retrospective exploring Ron Arad’s output in metal, at Israel’s Design Museum Holon (which of course he designed), until 19 October. Arad explains: ‘Rather than manipulate materials to render them functional or render digital models towards a functional object, here I “reverse” perfectly functional objects and render them useless.’ These pieces are Pressed Flower Blue, Yellow, Rust and Red. Beauty in a car-crash of an exhibition...

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PROOFF #001 EarChair by Jurgen Bey, Studio Makkink & Bey

PROOFF #002 WorkSofa by Studio Makkink & Bey

PROOFF #005 SitTable by Ben van Berkel, UNStudio

PROOFF #004 Niche by Axia Design

#003

#004

#001

#005

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PROOFF #003 PhoneBox by Axia Design

www.prooff.com

Now in showrooms of our London partners:

Ergonom Whittington House 19-30 Alfred Place London WC1E 7EA t: 020 7323 2325

Workform Holford Mews Cruikshank Street London WC1X 9HW t: 01920 877338

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LONDON DESIGN FESTIVAL 2013

Blueprint is at Design Junction during the London Design Festival. We would like you to come and join us to help choose the winner of our 3D printing competition, run in conjunction with Additive Earth Systems and the Bartlett School. You will also be able to see 3D printing in action

Blueprint for the Future

For designers and architects 3D printing is very much part of the current zeitgeist; many are already using the technology regularly for modelling, rapid prototyping and creating fi nished objects. It’s even entering the consciousness of the general public, though most have only a pretty hazy idea of what the term involves.

Although it all fi rst began back in the early Eighties, it’s only really now that 3D printers have got up a head of steam, to mix up some technological metaphors. Like early computers, they’ve gone from being room fi llers to being a­ ordable desktop items. The future impact is going to be quite incredible. Imagine a world where we don’t have to ship all these objects around the globe, but can simply print them where we are. It will also be nice once we get past the current phase of printing inane key-ring-size trinkets and fi gures and toys with multiple personalities.

We are on the cusp of a new era that is seeing the democratisation of design, the burgeoning of new, open-sourced ways of manufacturing. We can print in many materials, from the most ubiquitous plastics and ceramics to metal and even food. If you can liquefy it and reset it, then it is a possibility for the printing. We’re already in a world where we can 3D-print replacement prosthetic body parts, have schemes to build on the moon using moondust, can take scans of unborn babies and print them out

(move over ultrasound) to hold in our hands and,of course, it’s being weaponised as well. Earlier this year we saw the printing of a fi reable gun – no doubt a raft of other terrifi c ideas are being worked on by the military as we speak. Unfortunately money always seems to be available in this area of R&D, but the trickle down ought eventually to have some benefi ts for mankind.

COME BE A JUDGE OF OUR 3D PRINTING COMPETITION AT DESIGN JUNCTIONOur own 3D printing project is far more social than anything being planned by those in uniform. We challenged you to design either a shelter for sub-Saharan conditions or an object for use within such a shelter, both of which could be printed with a solar sintering process, using the sun to power it, and lenses to melt a locally abundant raw material, sand. We’ve had a great response to the competition we ran in conjunction with Additive Earth Systems and the Bartlett School of Architecture in London. We’ve chosen the 10 best projects, fi ve in each category, and printed them up for you to look at and judge. Come and visit our stand at Design Junction during

London Design Festival and vote for your two favourite projects. The creators will walk away with £1,000 each. We’ll announce the results at the show on the Friday evening, 20 September.

There’ll also be live 3D printing going on, a showcase of some ongoing experiments into large-scale 3D printing for its potential application in architecture – even part of the stand itself will be 3D-printed. We look forward to seeing you there.

3D PRINTING DURING LDF14-22 SeptemberDesigners Block/The Fifth Element (see LDF preview page 46), Southbank Centre, SE1 8XXDigits2Widgits, 61-63 Rochester Place, NW1 9JU

18-22 SeptemberBlueprint for the Future, Design Junction,WC1N 2RA

Until 12 October Adhocracy@limewharf, Vyner Street E2 9DG

Until 29 October The Future is Here, Design Museum, SE1 2YD

1 – Matt Terry’s geodesic structure entry2 – Patrick Hamdy and Sam Welham’s entry, The Well of Sychar3 – Ed Rawle’s entry coud provide protection from sandstorms

Sponsored by

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Occasionally minor adjustments in the application of technologies play a role in activating a new kind of behaviour that somehow changes our daily lifestyle.

Consider a traditional parasol or umbrella. These are often set beside each other to cover space and protect people from rain. They are effective at bringing people to the streets and activating public life in urban centres, but they suffer from one unavoidable fl aw - they channel rain to their perimeter. While it rains, your movement is limited by the drip-line.

The AVX is unlike a traditional parasol. It drains to the center and links with its neighbours to create an unbroken canopy. It retracts in fi ne weather and unlike an awning, the covered space can tessellate indefi nitely. This shift in functionality places the AVX into a new category of shelter.

The AVX includes diffuse lighting integrated between the membrane leaves, the potential for sound and data integration, and a central mast that allows water to fl ow visibly between a clear outer sheath and a structural mast.

If we imagine how this shift in technology might infl uence social behaviour, consider generic parasols in town centres and city squares. Liberate the ground-level so pedestrians move unencumbered in rainy conditions. Add light to make the exterior hospitable at night-time and make the system collapsible so even small moments of fi ne weather are taken advantage of. The difference in aptitude between the AVX and any other covering system offers a signifi cantly broader range of design opportunities.

Occasionally minor adjustments in the application of technologies play a role in activating a new kind of behaviour that somehow changes our daily lifestyle.

Consider a traditional parasol or umbrella. These are often set beside each other to cover space and protect people from rain. They are effective at bringing people to the streets and activating public life in urban centres, but they suffer from one unavoidable fl aw - they channel rain to their perimeter. While

HISTORY HAS A WAY OF ADJUSTING OUR ATTENTION TO SPECIFIC DETAILS AS CATALYSTS OF GREATER CHANGE.

MDT-TEX LAUNCH THIS PRODUCT EXCLUSIVEAT SUPER BRANDS DURING THE LONDON DESIGN FESTIVAL.ARCHITECTS: FURRER JUD

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london design festival 2013

From almost 2,000 exhibitors at 274 events, across seven main hubs and close to 200 venues in the capital, Johnny Tucker picks out a selection of the unmissable at this year’s London Design Festival. londondesignfestival.com

1 Vamp Dig out your old speakers or get on ebay now, because at Design Junction leftfield-designer Paul Cocksedge launches his Kickstarter-funded Vamp — a gizmo that turns any regular speaker into a wireless one. Guest DJs will bring a planned wall of speakers alive. paulcocksedgestudio.com 2 SUN Out to the east, the TENT and Superbrands London shows bring together some highly creative individuals and small designer-makers, plus some of the larger brands in the lively setting of Brick Lane and The Old Truman Brewery. This year 100% Norway is celebrating its 10th anniversary and literally spreading a little sunshine with this 3m-wide, Olafur Eliasson-

esque Sun by Lisa Pacini and Christine Istad. tentlondon.co.uk, 100percentnorway.com 3 Lazy ByteS This project brings the level of aesthetic consideration usually reserved for more objet d’art items around the home to the remote control. The Royal College of Art was one of four schools involved with EPFL +ECAL and the Kudelski Group. And while you’re there, check out A Life Examined, the yearly output of the Helen Hamlyn Research Associates. Both are in the newly opened Haworth Tompkins–designed Dyson Building. epfl-ecal-lab.ch 4 tFL OySter card hOLder – WAnT One? Launching during LDF, Noma Bar (work pictured) is

one of 10 illustrators who have designed Oyster Card holders celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Tube (see also the bar at Design Junction). Just email [email protected] for a chance to win one of complete set of 10 designs that we have to give away, (put Tube Comp in the subject line). nomabar.com, tfl.gov.uk/shop 5 V&a There’s always plenty going on at the V&A, which is one of the main LDF Hubs these days and sees record visitor numbers as a result (ie go early!) Look out for a sensorius cork floor installation on a bridge over the Medieval Gallery by FAT. Swarovski has used its financial muscle to draft in some big names, like Tom Dixon,

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london design festival 2013

to use its lenses to spotlight specific items in the collection. Watch out also for the winner of the competition to design a new chair for the Bodleian Library, Oxford. vam.ac.uk 6 ZigZag: CrissCross Literally one of the most colourful characters on the UK design scene, Bethan Laura Wood has taken her inspiration from the land of turquoise and the revolutionary mural, Mexico, and married it to the urban detail of London, for her show Zigzag:Crisscross at The Aram Gallery. thearamgallery.org 7 southbank Centre Head over to the Southbank for a number of draws including a very big Mathmos lamp. Designers Block

is making the area its home again this year, along with its Fifth Element show, which is promising to be highly experimental (see Blueprint for the Future, page 43. Sylvain lampshade by Beth Lewis-Williams pictured). verydesignersblock.com, mathmos.com 8 refuelling Done properly, LDF is a gruelling event, so take a break for a spot of refuelling — my choice has to be the micro-brewery bar pop-up from TfL and Camden Town Brewery, plus Modus furniture with some definitely non-standard moquette upholstery (pictured) at Design Junction. There’s an interesting-sounding international street food offer on the ground floor, where you’ll also find our Blueprint

for the Future 3D printing (not to mention partially 3D printed) stand. thedesignjunction.co.uk/eat 9 twin’Z Launched in Milan earlier this year, the UK gets a closer look at the Renault Twin’z concept car designed by Ross Lovegrove, elements of which are likely to feature in next year’s Twingo. See it at the Design Museum and while there take in the Designers in Residence show (page 48) and The Future is Here. designmuseum.org 10 endless stair London Design Festival organiser Ben Evans confesses to having a penchant for the grand gesture, and this year it’s the MC Escher-inspired, dRMM-designed Endless Stair outside Tate Modern. drmm.co.uk

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Today, a good product is not just

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CURATED DIARY

1 Resilience: U3 seventh tRienial of contempoRaRy aRt MG+MSUM, LjUbLjana, SLovenia Until 29 SeptemberThe Seventh Triennial of Contemporary art U3 revolves around the topic resilience. if architecture has at its core the task of articulating and learning from all other fields and disciplines in order to construct the collective aspirations of its time, then architecture needs a dose of Resilience perhaps now more than ever. Curated by nataša Petrešin-bachelez, Resilience features an incredible roster of artists and world citizens set on changing and challenging the norms. u3trienale.mg-lj.si

2 lisbon aRchitectURe tRiennale LiSbon, PoRTUGaL Until 15 December Fábrica braço de Prata, a former gun factory that sits next to some of the now too-common ruins of the urban development bubble, is the site for an alternative space of cultural production, directed by professor of Philosophy nuno nabais. While the project has been ongoing during the past five years, this autumn the factory will also be a site for some of the associated projects within the Lisbon architecture Triennale Close, Closer (page 169). i will be there, together with the Storefront international Series. close-closer.com

3 behind the GReen dooR: oslo aRchitectURe tRiennaleoSLo, noRWay19 September-1 DecemberThis year’s iteration of the oslo architecture Triennale, behind the Green Door, aims to tear down the illusory edifices that architects and designers have built around the issue of sustainability and restart a conversation that is perhaps one of the few relevant conversations to be had nowadays. Curated by the imaginative and critical belgian studio, Rotor (below), it promises to be a real space of provocation and discussion. i will be there. oslotriennale.com

Eva Franch i Gilabert Director, Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York

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Franch is an architect, researcher, curator, teacher, and founder in 2003 of OOAA (office of architectural affairs). At Storefront, her most recent projects include exhibitions such as POP Protocols-Obsessions-Positions, and launching the Storefront International Series. She has lectured internationally on art, architecture and the importance of alternative practices in the construction and understanding of public life. storefrontnews.org

4 AndrEs JAquE: diffErEnt Kinds of WAtEr Pouring into A sWimming Pool LOS AngeLeS, USA20 September-14 Novembernamed after Hockney’s 1965 painting, this show from Andrés Jaque of the Office for Political Innovation (Blueprint 328, June 2013) will unveil personal stories about the use of water. These stories reveal and expose the desires embedded in the collective imagination of Angelenos. The political implications of the domesticities that Jaque’s work exposes are far more telling than the surveys of analytical data that politicians or decision-makers like to observe. redcat.org

6 PErformA 13 new YOrk, USA1-24 NovemberThis biannual event that indiscriminately transgresses disciplinary, physical and moral borders, will once again invade the city for the best part of november. Performing Architectures, a series of site-specific installations commissioned by Storefront for Art and Architecture, will bring the temporality of performance, together with the duration and conscience embedded in architectural practice, to address issues of vacancy, pollution, gender and communication. I will be there! performa-arts.org

5 City – WAys of mAKing, WAys of using: sAo PAulo ArChitECturE BiEnnAlE SAO PAULO, BrAzIL28 September-24 Novemberwith the upcoming world Cup and $13bn in investment planned across the country, a vast cultural, social and physical territory is undergoing rapid transformation, coupled with civic protest, creating a radical spaces for reflection about globalising forces, development and progress. In the meantime, check out the 10th Sao Paulo Architecture Biennale, which will be trying to raise awareness about the process of construction — and destruction. I will be there. iabsp.org.br

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EunhEE Jo‘Nowadays new interactive surfaces have made everyday objects multifunctional and fun to engage with. My interests are within these reactive technologies that have now enabled normal interfaces with new functions and new possibilities to be responsive and sensually stimulating.

‘In this residency, I am introducing future products and environments – redefining the role of surfaces, which offer a new physical experience and identity. I’m developing surfaces made of flexible materials, which will be used to create a wall-embedded light and Hi-Fi system and in doing so hoping to create new aesthetic possibilities as well.

‘In detail, I am exploring how new surfaces can integrate within our product interfaces, delivering tactility and responsiveness through engaging touch with the product or environment.’

Thomas ThwaiTEs‘I want to change my life. I want to be happy with what I’ve got, I want to derive pleasure from wholesome activity, I want to be satisfied by the little things, I want to be calmer, more stable, more fufilled. In short I want to change my ‘self’.

‘Neuroscience is relegating our powers of conscious decision-making to the shadows, and elevating the role of our influences. To change myself

I need to change the influences I’m exposed to, and that means taking control of what I see, what I hear and what I can do. So, I’m making several objects that will gradually impose restrictions on my life, changing the path of least resistance, so that it leads not to temptation, but to fulfilment.

‘This residency is an opportunity for me to explore some long-standing questions, such as whether it’s possible to engineer change in ourselves, or even in the common aspirations of a culture, and whether the consciousness we think of as the self – the part of us that makes choices about what we should do – is really in control, or if it’s really just a useful illusion.’

adam naThaniEl Furman‘I’m making a contemporary museum of creativity for a particular individual, a designer who is in love with technology, mass media and pop culture, but who is searching for depth and meaning, and is doing so in precisely those cultural areas, through the production of objects.

‘Identity Parade will be a personalised cabinet of curiosities filled with new products, all of which are to be made using only 3D printing and slip

casting. This is a story in which the search for identity is a journey told through an obsessive, intimate, and highly personal practice of design.’

ChloE mEinECk‘My particular interest in this year’s theme of Identity is when a person’s identity becomes cloudy or confused. On the residency I am developing The Music Memory Box for people with dementia. The box supports someone’s sense of their own identity through the use of familiar music, treasured objects, embedded technologies and storytelling.

‘It is a kit that families will complete with their loved ones who have dementia. The kit comprises a box, into which small trinkets are put, all tagged with an RFID (radio frequency identification) sticker, so that when put in the middle of the box, they set off an individual piece of music. The latest prototype contains a Raspberry Pi kit inside and I’m exploring the different methods people can use to upload content to the box, experimenting with the box’s manufacture and also testing the box and kit on people.

‘I hope that through my project, people will better understand dementia and see that people with it should be at the forefront of care, while also seeing the potential of this product and the potential in embedded networked technologies.’

DESIGNERS IN RESIDENCE

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always a good place to spot emerging talent, the Designers in residence exhibition opens at the Design Museum in London this September. blueprint editor Johnny

tucker was on the panel that chose the current crop of designers who benefit from £6,000 to continue their design investigations. here they explain what they will be doing

1 – (from left) Eunhee Jo, Thomas Thwaites, Adam Nathaniel Furman, Chloe Meineck

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VOLA Round Series. Discreetly efficient. Visibly VOLA.

VOLA International Studio I 32-36 Great Portland Street I London W1W 8QX I Tel: 020 7580 7722 I [email protected] I www.vola.comVOLA UK Ltd. I Highfield House I 108 The Hawthorns I Flitwick MK45 1FN I Tel: 01525 84 11 55 I [email protected] I www.vola.com

Discreetly efficient. Visibly VOLA. Our paper towel dispenser and waste bin may be new,but they follow a longstanding principle. Each is true to ourtimeless design and functionality. Together, they show thatthe bathroom or washroom can now be pure, 100% VOLA.

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The difference is Gaggenau.

One of the most successful innovations to come out of the Black Forest.

In the Black Forest, some things never change – others have been evolving since 1683. Innovation has become a tradition for us ever since our company was founded as a hammer and nail works, along with unique design that is highly regarded the world over. Such as the ovens 400 series, shown here with oven, Combi-steam oven and warming drawer – a combination that unites cutting-edge technology and premium materials with super ior design. Our appliances have been constantly evolving since 1683. The only thing that stays the same is that they just keep looking better and better.

For more information and a list of partners, please dial 0844 8929026 or visit www.gaggenau.co.uk. Alternatively, please visit our showroom at: 40 Wigmore Street, London, W1U 2RX.

And a cuckoo clock.

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The difference is Gaggenau.

One of the most successful innovations to come out of the Black Forest.

In the Black Forest, some things never change – others have been evolving since 1683. Innovation has become a tradition for us ever since our company was founded as a hammer and nail works, along with unique design that is highly regarded the world over. Such as the ovens 400 series, shown here with oven, Combi-steam oven and warming drawer – a combination that unites cutting-edge technology and premium materials with super ior design. Our appliances have been constantly evolving since 1683. The only thing that stays the same is that they just keep looking better and better.

For more information and a list of partners, please dial 0844 8929026 or visit www.gaggenau.co.uk. Alternatively, please visit our showroom at: 40 Wigmore Street, London, W1U 2RX.

And a cuckoo clock.

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056 – 072

Robe and CrownAs Mecanoo’s long-awaited new Birmingham library opens, Herbert Wright speaks to founding partner Francine Houben about her hopes for the building

074 – 090

Snow BusinessPhotographer James Morris documents his journey to visit the Halley VI research station in its breathtaking arctic location, while Johnny Tucker talks to its designer, Hugh Broughton Architects

092 – 102

Kengo KumaClare Farrow talks to Kengo Kuma and discovers how his exposure to traditional and modern Japanese architecture has shaped his vision

104 – 116

Inside the RainbowAuthor Philip Pullman explores the splendid world of Soviet Union-era illustrated children’s books

118 – 126

Neville BrodyDiscussing tactics and typology, Veronica Simpson talks to Neville Brody — one of the great gurus of graphic design

128 – 136

The New RealityAs technology starts to catch up with the long-awaited promise of augmented reality, James Bridle explores Luma 3Di and a virtual world of architecture

138 – 148

Between Heaven and EarthHerbert Wright reports from this year’s CTBUH conference, and talks to Zhang Yue about his BROAD Group’s controversial plans for a vertical city for 30,000 people

150 – 160

Elmgreen & DragsetAs the Scandinavian duo prepares to open the doors on its installationat the V&A, the self-declared art-world outsiders talk to Shumi Bose

162 – 170

Post World’s End Architecture: PortugalThe third in our World’s End series spotlights Portugal, as Gonzalo Herrero Delicado and Vera Sacchetti investigate the new wave of architects hoping to reclaim the civic domain

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PLAY

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Robe and CRown

Words Herbert WrightPhotography Paul Raftery

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Its brutalist predecessor divided opinion in the city, but the new, £189m Library of Birmingham triumphs

as a building of the 21st century. It should also be a building for the next century, hopes

architect Mecanoo’s Francine Houben

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‘Ooooo...’ read the busy lines of 5,357 overlapping aluminium circles, zinging across the hypnotic filigree frieze mounted around the £189m Library of Birmingham. ‘Ooh!’ visitors will surely react, encountering the electric exhilaration it offers outside and in. But don’t say an ‘ooh’ when speaking the name of new library’s Dutch architect Mecanoo — it is pronounced like the hobby kit Meccano, which inspired its founding group of architecture students at Delft’s University of Technology (TUDelft) in 1984.

Francine Houben is the last of the gang still there, and now leads a 115-strong practice. The Mecanoo office in Delft occupies a converted canalside convent hospital. In its airy gothic-arched meeting room, the surprisingly soft-spoken Houben declares: ‘I like to create unforgettable spaces.’ She has nothing of the dark intensity of OMA’s Rem Koolhaas, or the mischievous hints of MVRDV’s Winy Maas, but like her fellow Netherlanders from those nearby Rotterdam-based practices, she talks with a considered earnestness, and she too commands a global portfolio. Around the room are models of key projects such as Arnhem’s National Heritage Museum (2000), walled by a 143m-long quilt of different brick and stoneworks facing a metallic boulder-shaped hall; the 139m-high Montevideo (2005), a distinctive exercise in stack architecture among Rotterdam towers by the likes of Foster, OMA and Siza; and the Wei-Wu-Ying Arts Center in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, under a great 225m x 160m undulating magic carpet-like roof, now under construction. Miesian rectlinearity and millennial fluidity, transparency and organic materiality, villas and towers — is there a common thread? Houben claims there is no Mecanoo style, but rather ‘you recognise our work, its more an attitude that a form-style...

it’s tactile, it’s multidisciplinary, it’s human.’ Does being a woman make a difference as an architect? ‘After 50, I started thinking I’m different,’ she replies. ‘I think more intuitively, more personally. Sometimes the men don’t like it.’

She quoted John Lennon’s line ‘intuition takes me everywhere’ in one of her books, but from what starting point? Houben cites Max Risselade, a ‘very humanistic’ Delft professor known for his research on modernism, as ‘a very good teacher’. He worked with the legendary Brazilian humanist-modernist Lina Bo Bardi, an inspiration for Houben, and he also introduced Houben to Charles and Ray Eames. She met them in Los Angeles, shortly before Charles died in 1978. ‘It was like coming home, seeing such a free way of working,’ she recalls, ‘this humanity and friendliness and timelessness’.

If any project put Mecanoo on the map, it was TUDelft’s Library, completed in 1997. There, a white cone thrusts upwards through a lawn which slopes, like the soft hills of the southern Netherlands where she was brought up, to form a green roof. She explains that ‘the cone fixes it and is a symbol of the rationality of the university’. Inside, natural light floods through both inclined glazed curtain walls reaching to the sweeping arc of the roof, and a skylight around the cone. There’s a sensuous curviness there, like Saarinen’s TWA Terminal, JFK (1962). The cone floats above the floor, revealing from underneath rings of internal workspaces, connected via angled gangways (perhaps recalling Bo Bardi’s SESC Pompéia, 1977) to a great plane of books, floating before a wall of vibrant blue. Houben refers to the colour as Mecanoo blue, and reveals that it’s a stage paint she first used in a theatre set design.

Natural light, curved voids, paths reaching through open

1 (previous page) – The Library of Birmingham from Centenary Square

2 – The filigree metalwork screen honours the crafts and industrial legacy of Birmingham

3 – The Library of Delft’s University of Technology is green-roofed and naturally lit with skylight and glazing

4 – Francine Houben, founding partner and creative director of Mecanoo

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5 – Bookshelves radiate from the Book Rotunda across the massive floorplates

6 – A glass lift rises towards the skylight

7 – The Book Rotunda

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8 (previous page) – Stacked and staggered rotundas create dramatic spatial revelations

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9 – The William Shakespeare Memorial Room

10 – North-south section

11 – East-west section illustrating Buro Happold’s airflow simulation

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space and that Mecanoo blue are among design touches shared between the 15,000sq m TUDelft and 29,000sq m Birmingham library. Billed as a People’s Palace and engineered by Buro Happold, the latter sits between T Cecil Howitt’s imposing stone office building, the grade II Baskerville House (1938), and the RIBA Award-winning Birmingham Repertory Theatre (Rep) by Graham Winteringham (1971). The new project has connected the library and Rep, which has been partially remodelled inside. Houben comments, ‘we kept the Rep as its own architectonic statement.’ Like three graces, they face Centenary Square, but the Library dominates, rising in three layered rectilinear volumes, clad in bands of blue and gold. The window strips are behind a filigree screen of circles, whose perhaps feminine effect is not unlike Louis Vuitton’s ‘broderie anglaise’. The library is topped at 60m with a gold drum (Houben’s ‘pièce de résistance’), which now houses the relocated, wood-lined Shakespeare Memorial Room (1882) by John Henry Chamberlain. The composition is like a stack of giant fancy-wrapped gift boxes, with a golden hatbox on top.

The filigree honours Birmingham’s long tradition of craftsmanship, particularly that of its Jewellery Quarter. Mounted 90cm from the cladding, its structure is overlapping black circles 5.8m across, overlaying shiny circles of 1.8m.

A concrete frame rises from bedrock on circular columns on a 7.2m square grid and two service cores. The double-height Mecanoo blue foyer is entered under an 11m-cantilever. Immediately, the Library’s internal spatial drama lifts the eye upwards, following unfeasibly long escalators — strip-lit in blue. The first escalators rise into clear space over the Children’s Library and above them is a series of stacked and staggered

contiguous circular voids. Together they make an astonishing space of cathedral-like scale, with clear yet displaced geometries. It’s also a vertical funnel providing natural ventilation to supplement HVAC. ‘I wanted to seduce people with the sequence of rotundas,’ says Houben.

The first escalators reach the business and learning floor, where skills like using computers and making CVs are on offer, and meeting rooms hang over Centenary Square. Look up and behold: the great Book Rotunda. The 24m-wide, three-storey drum lined with books is as majestic as Sydney Stirke’s 1857 British Museum Reading Room (which Houben confesses she never saw). A second escalator pair reaches its base, and from it the expanse of Reader Services stretches into the cantilever. On this floor, the ceiling lights are halos. Bookshelves radiate from the Book Rotunda, which is crossed by yet another escalator pair to the Discovery Floor, with a cafe and gallery. A great L-shaped public Discovery Terrace hangs over Centenary Square, commanding views across the city dominated by Seifert’s 100m-high Alpha House (1973). Arcs of wooden benches sit among garden islands containing 3500 plants, landscaped by Mecanoo. Here, Houben picks a succulent raspberry for Blueprint, commenting ‘Birmingham is a very green city, just not in the city centre, not yet.’

Sloping travelators cross to the highest level of the Book Rotunda, which opens into a narrower rotunda penetrating two levels of enclosed archive spaces. Renderings show its surface as a grid of photo portraits, but for now, it is white, with a lift in a clear tube climbing to offices on the seventh level. Outside that is the Secret Garden, facing north and east, with 5500 plants, some planted for the crisis-striken bees of Birmingham.

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Ground fl oor Level 1

Level 2 Level 3Level 3

Level 4 Level 7

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12 – The floorplans

13 – The REP to the left of the library

14 – Baskerville House to the right of the library

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15 – Discovery Terrace extends some 11m out over Centenary Square

16 – The 5,357 filigree screen circles are aluminium

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17 – The filigree screen viewed from within

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Above both green terraces, 160 species were selected jointly with Buro Happold. The uppermost and narrowest rotunda rises two storeys through office and mechanical levels, to the circular skylight set in a smaller roof cylinder, next to the Shakespeare room. On the lower ground, a bank of giant yellow steps for events faces the Children’s Library, which extends to an 18m-wide circular ‘amphitheatre’ for musical performances, sunk into the central one of three palazzos laid by Mecanoo across Centenary Square. It is reminiscent of Kisho Kurokawa’s van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam (1999). The stainless steel circles inlaid in its floor echo those of the building’s filigree above.

Acoustics were a key consideration, but Houben says, ‘we didn’t want to make it a silent library.’ She adds mercurially, ‘It’s essential to have a piano in the building,’ although I didn’t spot it. Rod Manson, regional director of Buro Happold, highlights the challenge of reverberation in the open-plan areas: ‘A lot of acoustic modelling was done.’ The solution is surface finishes and absorbent materials incorporated in ceilings.

Delft’s sustainable green roof was ahead of its time. Birmingham’s library, too, is highly sustainable, earning a BREEAM Excellent rating, which Mason says is ‘down to a lot of things’, including grey-water reuse and biodiversity. Low-energy lighting, a CHP unit, part-natural ventilation and drawing on an aquifer for cooling make energy demands 40 per cent less than those required by regulations.

What of the old Central Library at nearby Paradise Circus by John Madin (Blueprint 314, May 2012)? The manly inverted brutalist ziggurat, completed in 1972, has dramatically divided opinion, and thrice been refused heritage listing. Before it shut, its interiors were claustrophobic and dilapidated, natural light

through its central atrium ineffective, and its toilets graced with discarded beer cans. Nevertheless, an internal excitement cut through its heavy massings, and bright eateries animated its atrium. Demolition is imminent. Asked not to comment by Birmingham City, Houben nevertheless notes its similarity to Kallman, McKinnell and Knowles’ Boston City Hall (1968). She went in many times, she reports, and admits ‘of course it’s special, but it’s very complicated with the public space around it.’ She adds that ‘people need daylight. It’s not good for a library to be dark inside.’ One Birmingham librarian went a little further, saying: ‘It was like a coffin.’

Shakespeare wrote in The Tempest, ‘What’s past is prologue,’ and Mecanoo’s libraries are about the future. At the new library, Houben remarks: ‘People say it’s a building of the 21st century. It should be a building for the 22nd century!’ Many of the expected 10,000 daily visitors will be the young, who are the city’s future. Observing building users’ behaviour is inherent in Houben’s methodology, and she appeals to the young with spaces they will want to be in. ‘Libraries are the cathedrals of these times,’ declares Houben, contrasting them with less socially inclusive Bilbao-effect art galleries.

‘Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have immortal longings in me,’ commanded Shakespeare’s Cleopatra. The words could be Birmingham’s. Robed in its delicate, fine filigree and crowned in gold, the Library is visible for miles, robust and regal. Internally, it is a masterpiece of flow and openness. The city that has played fast and loose with its past has already been redefined by Houben’s creation. While the Library cannot offer Birmingham immortality, it should at least fulfil its longing for a future of culture and learning.

18 – John Madin’s Central Library, with Richard Seifert’s Alpha house behind

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SNOW BUSINESS

Words James Morris and Johnny TuckerPhotography James Morris

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In February and March of this year, photographer James Morris made the arduous journey to the Brunt Ice Shelf in the Antarctic to photograph the Halley VI

scientific research station designed by Hugh Broughton Architects and AECOM. Before he went we asked him to document the journey for us in words and pictures, as

you’ll see in the next few breathtaking pages, while later on we look at the project itself

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I am the sole passenger on the Russian-built Iljushin II-76, a high-wing cargo plane with rough-field take-off and landing capabilities. The rear is packed full of freight, the toilets are blue plastic portable loos strapped to the fuselage, national flags drape the sides of the interior and there are no windows. The all-Russian crew and I are heading south from Cape Town to Antarctica.

An hour before landing I am instructed to climb into my Antarctic gear — layers of thermals and fleece, an insulated boiler suit, huge and clumsy double-lined boots, hat and wrap-around shades. With extraordinary precision the pilot lands this colossus on the blue-ice runway at the Russian base of Novo, and I bounce out into the pristine, blinding brightness of the Antarctic landscape with all the enthusiasm of an excited child.

The intensity of light and expanse of white is more striking than the cold. I take out my Leica M8 camera and start to snap. Within minutes a malfunction message comes on the screen; the black metal body has sucked in the freezing temperature and the advanced German engineering has failed. My greatest concern — how my photographic equipment would stand up — has been realised.

Within a couple of hours I am aboard a much smaller Basler Turbo 67, a conversion of the beautiful 60-year-old Douglas DC3, equipped with polar survival equipment, fuel and provisions to last crew and me a week, should it be necessary (should we be so lucky). We are flying low across the bleached wilderness of this last unspoilt continent — only the occasional rise of a far-off mountain disturbs an endless flatness. The eye can only focus on the intricate textured detail of the wind-blown snow; dunes, mounds, ripples, ridges, grooves, zastrugi.

We land briefly at the South African and German bases to drop off lettuce and goggles. After six hours flying, having burned 18 barrels of fuel, the British Antarctic Survey’s Halley VI research station starts to appear in the far distance; a silhouetted, microscopic caterpillar crawling deliberately across the vast barren ice shelf.

A small welcoming party transports me by Ski-doo to the newly completed base that stands, a century and a million miles

on from Scott’s hut, like a gravity-bound space train on ski-clad legs — curious, fascinating and unlike any other structure I have seen. Inside a small party is taking place for scientists and crew who arrived 15 months previously in November 2011 and who, having not travelled much more than a kilometre from here since then, and having lived through the darkness and battering of a polar winter, will leave aboard the same plane in the morning — weather permitting. Whether it’s the alcohol or the timescale I can’t be sure, but there is a slightly manic air about them, like caged animals wanting to break free.

The first day starts with a farewell to those leaving and an introduction to the base and its procedures for me. I am given the full tour and a run-through of the rules and regulations, of which there are many. Despite the fact that 24-hour sunshine has only just ended, a fixed daily routine is adhered to for all. Breakfast at 7:30, smoko at 10, lunch 1, tea break 4, evening meal 7. It varies slightly on Sundays. Two bottles of beer are allowed per day, no spirits are available but everyone knows that crates of them exist in the doctor’s lock-up. There are no other locks in the whole building, apart from the toilets — perhaps the only multimillion pound building anywhere for which locks are entirely redundant.

Of the 50 or so people at the base there are only four working scientists, and only one woman, the base commander. Most are construction workers, mechanics, machine drivers and their managers. This season they have already dismantled and shipped out the old research base that the moving ice shelf had moved too close to the edge of the continent; they have completed the new base (nearly); they have built workshops; upgraded the overspill accommodation block; maintained a huge fleet of vehicles, and shifted thousands of the tonnes of snow that build up round the base when the winds blow, all in sub-zero temperatures.

Nervously I set out to test my other equipment; thankfully my digital monorail camera does not suffer the problems of the hand-held Leica. Battery life is shortened by the cold, but otherwise all works well. On the morning of my second day I look from the window and all is white; white ground, white sky,

1 (previous page) – Big Red, the communal hub, is flanked by accommodation, science labs, doctor’s surgery, comms centre and two energy plants

2 – The converted Douglas DC3 on which Morris makes the final leg of his journey to the Brunt Ice shelf

3 – A crew member sleeps as the Ilyushin II-76 high-wing cargo plane heads south from Cape Town

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a soft white light and almost no visible contrast. Outside the air and temperature are exhilarating, any tiredness is blown away. As the day goes on the wind picks up, carrying with it a haze of snow and lowering visibility. The base station and surrounding satellite structures become abstracted in this nothingness.

From then on the weather differs daily. The warmest a mild -5C, with clear blue skies. Then a serious blow with a windchill of -28C and snow-filled air. On the white days a curious darkness hovers where the cloud reaches the snow line, maybe a reflection of the far-off sea. One time an inverted mirage can be seen on the horizon of upturned ice cliffs that are in reality 30km away.

In my warm, clumsy boots and insulated orange boiler suit I work my way around the base, responding to the light and landscape of each day. The main structure boldly dominates; around it are workshops and storage bunkers to the north and science cabooses on stilts to the south. Both have a simple functionality next to the architectural drama of the new base.

Carpenters work in shipping containers on skis. Instruments measuring levels of carbon dioxide, methane and water vapour sit next to ozone monitors in cabins that look like the retreat of a comic-book scientist. Strangely the cold does not really feel so, not in the same way it does at home – the air is so dry and more bearable. My chemical hand warmers remain unused. For 20 minutes at a time a pair of fine silk gloves is sufficient for operating the manual camera controls, before my fingers throb and need proper protection again.

One night I chose to sleep out in a tent a kilometre or so from the base. Though the temperature drops to -17C the sleeping bag keeps me warm and I sleep like a baby. When I wake I know it is later than the time I have set for my alarm. When I look at my iPhone it displays the message ‘The temperature is too hot for the device to function properly’.

Inside the base is warm and comfortable, so much so that it is possible to forget where I am. I photograph the spaces in turn. There is a bar, TV room, reading room, gym, canteen, shower rooms, washing machine rooms, workshops, offices, doctor’s surgery, science laboratories and machine rooms for generating, melting snow and processing sewage. The bedrooms are bunked, like a ship’s cabin. I share with a Mancunian session musician who doubles as an electrician.

Meals are huge; one could put on a lot of weight. The chef single-handedly feeds 50 hungry men and one woman three full meals a day. Mealtimes are a time to talk and get to know the crew. The sound of the chat is rich in its diversity and variety, every accent from across the British Isles seems represented here. As in every institution there is gossip and complaining aplenty, mainly concerning the pay and the powers-that-be. But these men keep coming back, year after year, for the uniqueness of the place. The crew of the Basler pass by again on their way back to Canada, the last plane to leave the continent before winter. They have just finished rescuing a frostbitten Ranulph Fiennes. JM

4 – A cut-away design drawing of the large red communal module

5 – Cut-away drawing of one of the science modules

6 – Halley VI has been designed to be jacked up annually to keep it above the ice level and is on skis so that periodically it can be dragged back to its original position, compensating for the ice shelf moving 40m a year

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7 (previous page) – Halley VI sits on stilts on top of the 150m-thick Brunt ice shelf

8 – Energy module 2 and the bridge used, which has become a shortcut to work

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A chance encounter with a radio programme about a competition to design an Antarctic research station led Hugh Broughton Architects to enter into something that, by its own admission, the firm was thoroughly unqualified for.

Practice founder Hugh Broughton followed up the brief and found that his four-strong practice, at home doing museum and office refurbishment projects, didn’t really fit any of the criteria called for. That didn’t stop him: his imagination had been fired. But meeting at the competition launch with an engineer friend led to him eventually teaming up with AECOM, where there was plenty of experience of extreme-weather projects, and so a competition entry was born.

That was in 2004, and this year the Halley VI research station was officially opened. Right now the 16-strong project team is in the thick of it, 16,000km away from the UK, cut off in a Southern Hemisphere winter where the temperatures will reach a low as -56C, with winds of up to 160kmph. Even in the summer the temperature never rises above freezing. In February a supply ship brought in food and it won’t be back now until their summer starts, in December.

This RIBA-run competition for the British Antarctic Survey, part of the Natural Environmental Research Council and ultimately funded by the Government’s department of business, innovation and science, was a little different from the norm. After making it through to a final shortlist of three, with Michael Hopkins with Expedition, and Lifschutz Davison with Buro Happold, each entrant was then given £400,000 to develop and test their ideas to the limit to make sure they would perform in the field — or rather, on the ice.

‘So they spent more than £1m, £800,000 of which they

didn’t get back, but it meant that when they chose the winner, they could be 100 per cent sure about the final scheme. It was also one of those rare occasions where nobody had done it before, so it was a relatively level playing field, but I never thought in my wildest dreams that we would win.’ He was driven to enter nonetheless: ‘I really like very wild places. I also like no-nonsense briefs for projects, and this was very indepth and it was very straight talking and well-written. You could look at it and see that a good design could evolve from it. Plus, it is in an absolutely mind-blowingly exciting location. The emptiness of it is very inspiring. When we did win we celebrated big time!’

The reason a new research station was needed is that the chosen site is on the 150m-thick Brunt ice shelf over water, which moves towards the sea at a rate of 40m a year. Halley V had passed a ‘fault’ point where it is now in danger of floating off into the sea on a giant iceberg. So putting the station somewhere else, over land perhaps, would seem to be one answer. This spot, however, has been chosen very precisely, as 75 degrees latitude is where the Sun’s rays hit the Earth most perfectly for observation.

The UK has been gathering atmospheric information from this spot for more than 50 years, including observing the ozone layer. It was from Halley IV back in 1985 that an Earth-changing discovery was made by three UK scientists — the hole in the ozone layer. So this is the only site for the research station and it’s also an area where snow levels rise by more than a metre a year. Static buildings are soon buried — the fate of Halleys I-IV — as they also inexorably move seaward.

So key to the brief for the new station was that it should be moveable so that it could be towed back into position, and jackable to raise it above the snow level every year. Hugh

1 – Science module 2The unit includes the key upper meteorological observation deck

2 – Science module 1 The roof rack allows for installation of specialist science equipment

3 – energy module 2Two identical plant rooms have been created in case one should fail

4 – energy 1Not having a handy national grid to plug into, Halley VI generates all of its energy

5 – Big redThe open-plan communal area for recreation, eating and drinking (two beers, max)

6 – command moduleThis includes a small operating room for medical emergencies

7 – Sleeping module 1This contains eight separate rooms, with bunk beds for doubling up when needed

8 – Sleeping module 2Bedrooms and bathrooms were prefabricated in Hull and dropped into pods on site

While photographer James Morris was battling with the elements across the Antarctic wastes, Johnny Tucker put on his warmest jacket and trekked through the sub-arctic conditions of

London in May, to the office of Hugh Broughton Architects near Hammersmith

HALLEY VI

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Broughton’s answer to these and the other design requirements were two kinds of modular, steel-framed, high-performance, GRP-skinned prefabricated pods, on hydraulic legs finished off with skis. There are seven blue modules, which house the sleeping quarters, science labs, doctor’s surgery, communication centre and energy plant (two, in case one breaks down). The pods are aerodynamically chamfered to use the wind to actually scoop out the snow from under the pods when placed perpendicular to the main angle of wind. The ends of each module are small decompression zones, with views out. Then there’s ‘Big Red’, a central communal hub, with everything from a restaurant to a pool table. A climbing wall was dropped from the original plan, as was a hydroponic greenhouse.

Broughton carried out a great deal of research into how people behaved in these stations and found that rooms were separate behind doors in which cliques tended to form and individuals even became isolated, wandering up and down corridors. He wanted open-plan communal living in the main hub. This pod was also seen as a key factor in bringing in the top scientists, in much the way top universities try to attract the brightest students by having the best facilities. In fact, when financial push came to shove ‘as these thing inevitably do’, it was the scientists who fought to keep all the key Big Red facilities in place, says Broughton.

The interior looks like an airline business lounge, while the food area becomes more canteen-like and the sleeping arrangements are a snug, halls of residence. Broughton chose Lebanese cedar as cladding around a spiral staircase in Big Red, as it continues to give off a scent after processing — important

because there are no smells in the Antarctic, except those produced by people. A colour psychologist created a ‘spring palette’ of bright colours to help ward off seasonal affective disorder, since the winter also includes a stretch of a 105-day night, when the sun never comes up over the horizon.

Part of the research also found that, to vary their day, the scientists actually valued the idea of ‘a walk to work’. The sleeping quarters are at one end and the labs the other. In the centre there is an exterior bridge separating the two plant modules in case of fire. Broughton provided staircases either side of the plant modules, allowing scientists to get suited and booted, walk out on to the ice to the other side, disrobe and get on with their working day. The reality is, though, they now walk through the plant room and make a T-shirted dash across the bridge to the other side!

Halley VI was constructed next to Halley V for support and accommodation, then each pod dragged 15km back to the original site and reassembled into a line. In all, Hugh Broughton Architects visited the site three times (each involving a 10-day voyage from the tip of South America). The bedroom modules were fully prefabricated in Hull, so snagging those was not too arduous, while the main pod fabrication was done in Cape Town, again a far cry from the frozen wastes of the Antarctic.

Looking at these often desolate images, you can’t help but think of the alien-runs-amok-in-icebound-research-station film, The Thing. When I asked Hugh Broughton if he’d watched the movie he replied: ‘I waited until I got back…’ JT

See Icelab: From Science Fiction to Reality exhibition review, page 74

9 – Inside the comms centre

10 – Down time in Big Red

11 – A view out from the central module. The obscured layered windows use aerogel for insulation

12 – Broughton used cedar that continues to give off an aroma for the central module’s stairs, to help compensate for the lack of smells in the Antarctic

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Towards the end of my stay the talk turns to the arrival of the James Clarke Ross, the ship that will take us home. It has to be able to dock in one of numerous creeks that change shape each year, depending on the formation of the sea ice. I Ski-doo the 25km down to the coast with the base commander for a recce, towing behind a sledge with equipment and provisions for five days, should some disaster befall us. The perfect weather belies the dangers of crevasses hidden under low mounds of snow. Creek 3 is the chosen site and we plan to start to shift a season’s waste and unwanted goods from the base. Over numerous days container after container is hauled on huge sledges across the blank landscape of the ice shelf to the sea’s edge. My final departure is in the back a Snowcat with 10 other men; the weather so bad it is nearly cancelled. The route is marked with an oil drum every 200m; there is a short period when we lose sight of the one behind before we see the next in line — at one point we miss it and in no time are lost in a world of utter whiteness, completely disorientated. Two days later the James Clarke Ross departs, leaving a small group of those staying for the winter waving goodbye from the cliff. We plough into floes of broken pack ice, with an expected arrival in the Falkland Islands in nine days’ time. JM

13 (previous page) – Halley VI is a splash of colour in an otherwise all-white landscape

14 – All food and supplies, and the research station itself, have to arrive by boat during the Antarctic summer

15 – The first part of the return journey from Halley VI was a nine-day sail to the Falkland Islands

Heading home

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Kengo KumaSharing the Same ShadowS

words Clare FarrowPortrait irwin wong

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With lauded works both at home in Japan and further afield, the architect is keen to express what he sees as the nature of architecture. He tells Blueprint that he first learned of it in his family’s traditional wooden

house, in a suburb of Tokyo largely being redeveloped post-war with concrete-box apartment blocks, and is

inspired to apply technology to reinforce the relationship between architecture and nature

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Kuma speaks of receiving ‘many hints’ from Japanese building traditions and gardens, as well as from the ideas of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Smithsons. But the strongest influence on this now globally recognised architect was the Thirties’ house where he grew up, in Kanagawa, a prefecture that was heavily bombed in 1945, and underwent rapid urbanisation: ‘It was an old wooden house in the suburbs of Tokyo, [which were] newly developed after the war; an aging house, ordinary, but quintessentially Japanese.’

He was very conscious as a child of the difference between his house of wood, rice paper and interior soil walls, which would drop particles of earth, like powder, on to the floor, and the modern concrete-box apartments of his friends, shining with aluminium and fluorescent lighting: ‘My house felt out of place at that time.’ Kuma was impressed by modern technology, especially the concrete and steel structures designed by Kenzo Tange for the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. Concrete seemed to be the future for Japan.

His father, a businessman, was also interested in modernist architecture, collecting furniture designs by the German-Jewish

architect Bruno Taut, who had fled Berlin in the Thirties and opened a shop in the Ginza district of Tokyo. His father was constantly extending and changing their wooden house too, and Kuma came to realise that it had a freedom lacking in the apartments of his friends: ‘With this house I learned the nature of architecture.’ His choice of phrase is apt.

In Japanese writing, the word for nature, ‘shizen’, contains two characters: the first meaning ‘one’s self ’, the second, ‘the cycle of the sun, water, and living things’; and it is this old connection between humanity and nature that a traditional Japanese house encapsulates. The all-important roof resting on a wooden frame opened up the possibility of non-loadbearing movable walls, screens, and materials such as paper and textiles. The wood was used for what Kuma terms its ‘softness’, colour, flexibility, and fragrance, and the human scale was emphasised by the dimensions of the tatami mat. It was this modular, fluid concept of space that inspired the symbiotic relationship between Japanese design and Western modernism.

Walter Gropius went to Japan in 1954 and Le Corbusier is cited as the primary influence on the Japanese modernist Kenzo

Kengo Kuma is a little embarrassed to show me a black and white photograph (circa 1959) of a man sitting on the veranda of a traditional wooden Japanese house. Dressed in a Western-style shirt and jacket, he is smiling as he helps a little boy take off his coat, uncovering a traditional-style velvet jacket. A structural post, rising to the eaves, makes a play of shadow patterns on the steps, beside the shadow of the man. The little boy is Kengo Kuma, the man his father.

1 (Previous pages)Kengo Kuma in his studio

2 - A young Kuma with his father (c.1959), in front of the traditional wooden home

3, 4, 5, 6 - The FRAC contemporary art centre (2013) is ‘a 3D version of the museum without walls’

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Tange and the Metabolism movement of the Sixties. Tange however recognised the gap between ‘advancing technology’ and ‘the unchanging human scale’, supporting Metabolism’s vision of urban expansion through forms that mirrored organic growth. For example, Kurokawa’s Nakagin Capsule Tower (1972) translated cell patterns into detachable concrete, steel and glass capsules. Nature was on the agenda, but not in terms of materials.

Formed in the School of Engineering at Tokyo University and New York’s Columbia University, Kuma’s thinking changed when he was forced by the 1990 economic crisis to leave Tokyo for the countryside. There he worked with Japanese craftsmen on small-scale projects, learning to value natural materials and to rethink architecture’s connection to humanity: ‘The Metabolism movement themed on ageing, but it focused only on the period of growing and expansion. In my design I am emphasising the aspect of aging, or the time of shrinking. Things decay and disappear. The role of architecture is to remind people of this fact, and to show how things can age beautifully.’

The idea of impermanence and disappearance is central to Kuma’s philosophy, and makes sense in the face of post-war

concrete buildings that have not aged well — the residents of Nakagin Capsule Tower voted in 2007 to demolish it, though the debate with Kurokawa continues. Kuma says: ‘“Permanent architecture” is impossible to begin with.’ His words also connect to the human experience of life and mortality, and in this sense Kuma’s work is about a kind of material empathy. He describes concrete as ‘too strong’ for the human body, instead proposing ‘weak’ buildings that correspond to the ‘fragile’ presence of humanity.

His experiments with ‘weak’ materials, including bamboo and ‘membranes’ — 2011 Même Meadows Experimental House (2011) comprises a translucent envelope of Japanese larch and polyester fluorocarbon membrane — can be compared to the cardboard technology of Shigeru Ban. Both architects share a profound respect for nature, magnified by the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami. Kuma says: ‘The natural disasters made me even more humbled towards nature. Before its absolute force, you can only respect it and dare to confront it — that is my continuing attitude in designing.’

Kuma differs to Ban in that his buildings are not necessarily

7, 8 – Besançon Art Centre and Cité de la Musique, France (2013)

9 – The roof is a mosaic of planting interspersed with solar, metal and glass panels

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10 – Besançon Art Centre and Cité de la Musique, France, west facade

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‘weak’ through his choice of materials — he uses stone, aluminium and steel plate too — but through his breaking down the structure and ‘materiality’ into fine ‘particles’. He describes how in Japanese houses the spaces between the small elements of wood, rice paper, sometimes stone, allow air to enter freely, and how a material’s qualities only become visible when broken up with emptiness and light. He has spoken before of vertical lines of rain, citing the artist Utagawa Hiroshige’s painting People on a Bridge Surprised by Rain as an influence on the Hiroshige Museum of Art he designed in 2000.

I asked him if thought of the structures in nature too —honeycomb, or crystals. ‘Light is the most important element that exists in nature. When I design, I think carefully how the light could play and be taken in the structure and its environment. The idea of honeycomb and other structures is the result of relationships between the light and the site’s nature.’

In his Shang Xia store (2012), in Beijing, the interior structure is a transparent screen, through which colours are intensified, like a red umbrella in snow: ‘Colour is of course an important element comprising environments, but I do not design architecture where colour itself comes first and says things. For me, materials and their materiality matter more, and I believe the colour red looks vivid in Shang Xia because of the extruded aluminium lattice we used.’

Kuma’s theories are evident in two upcoming commercial projects in Japan: a Taiwanese pastry shop in Tokyo (Pineapple House, December 2013), in which a diamond-shaped lattice of

hinoki wood screens the building like a canopy of trees; and the Sogokagu Design Center in Mie prefecture (completing June 2015), in which organic curves and a central ‘ambiguous void connect the building and nature’. Kuma is also experimenting with display proposals, including suspending furniture designs in the air and ‘trying to use urethane foam as a finish material’ like clouds: ‘What I aim for is not to decrease the relative weight of the materials, but to remove an air of intimidation. I believe buildings should not overwhelm people.’

The notion of a void is also pivotal in Kuma’s Besançon Art Center and Cité de la Musique (2013) in France, in which an all-enveloping roof unifies the two pre-existing buildings, forming a ‘shade of trees’ in-between — a space where the wind from the river can pass through. Using a wood and steel structure, the roof is a ‘woven mosaic’ of local wood, stone, glass and vegetation. In another French project, the FRAC Museum Marseille (2012), pivoted panels of recycled enamelled-glass present like a textile, materialising and dematerialising in the light — a demonstration of Kuma’s ‘disappearance’ and ‘erasure’ that contrasts to ‘literal transparency”’. ‘In intimate transparency, materiality and transparency are inseparable, and that is the big difference from modernism,’ he says.

Kuma has also created a spiral ‘alley in the sky’, with ‘sky stages’ that connect the FRAC Museum to the city. It seems poetic, but he is pragmatic when describing it: ‘I do not bring any particular philosophy or literature into the work of

11 – An early impressionistic sketch for the V&A at Dundee

12 – The stratified rocks of Scotland’s Seaton Cliffs were a clear influence for the facade

13 – Render of the Dundee V&A, due to complete in 2015

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designing. That would not do you any good. I only think of the relationship between the site and the architecture.’

Kuma’s thinking is exemplified in his design for the V&A at Dundee, due to be completed in 2015. The angled lines —suggesting origami — are in dialogue with the site’s waterfront, though financial and marine engineering factors prevented the structure from actually floating as Kuma wanted: ‘We thought that the two axes — the line from the town and of the waterfront — would be the key and the design reflects this notion. By the existence of the screen between the outside and the inside the sense of transparency is enhanced, which comes back to intimate transparency. To some eyes this may seem Japanese, but to others it may feel very contemporary. Glass is definitely an important material to express water. The Karesansui dry-landscape garden uses stone to represent hills and streams without water, and nowadays glass plays the same part as stone. As for the V&A located on the waterfront, we imagined a cliff facing out to sea.’

It’s a good image to illustrate Kuma’s own position in contemporary architecture. A professor at Tokyo University, he encourages students and colleagues in ‘various kinds of research and experiments seeking new materials, along with designing’, and an emphasis on sustainability. ‘To keep up with science and technology is essential in architecture. I would like to see the development of technology be applied to reinforce the relationship between architecture and the environment,’ he says. One experiment is with bamboo: ‘I rather think bamboo should be used more in an urban setting. We used bamboo for

the exterior at the Nezu Museum in central Tokyo [2009]. From our research with experts and past projects, we developed a system of the bamboo being used as the structure, applying shaved bamboo to plywood, as well as the material. I would like to use more bamboo in our projects for cities.’

It is in the smallest projects, however, that Kuma has the most freedom, such as Hojo-an (2012), in Kyoto, a shinto shrine hut inspired by the poet-monk Kamono Chomei. It is a portable hut of cedar, ETFE plastic sheets, and magnets in ‘a kind of tensegrity structure. I am interested in the mobility of buildings as a human who, like other creatures, keeps moving. What matters is its lightness and easiness. Because of its materials and structure, Hojo-an can be built in the reach of human scale.’

Does he see architecture then as a kind of shelter? ‘I would call it a nest,’ he says. ‘As you see in other living creatures, they build their nest and the nest also impacts on the animals living there. It is not only a function to keep you inside. We must remember that the nest itself has its qualities or characters, and your mind is influenced by that.’

Looking again at the black and white photograph, it seems that Kuma’s work is in essence about not forgetting. He shows that architecture and humanity share the same shadows, light, nature and space, and it should not be afraid to share the same fragility and mortality — the impetus for life. As if to demonstrate this, he shows me a new design, for a pavilion at the Château la Coste, Provence, in which a steel spring weaves a path in and out of the trees, as he concludes, with simple poetry: ‘The spiral moves according to people walking, and to the wind.’

14 – Hojo-an (2012-13), a lightweight portable hut at the Shimogamo Jinja Shrine, in Japan’s Kyoto prefecture

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INSIDE THE RAINBOW

Words Philip Pullman

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Children of the Soviet Union had a marvellous treasure trove of illustrated books at their disposal,

a wonderful collection of modern art and expressive design that somehow made it past the censorious

eye of the authorities. Author Philip Pullman dips into a new book that has brought many of the best examples

together, and is swept away by the experience

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The world of children’s illustrated books in the first 20 years or so of Soviet rule is almost incomparably rich. What were they doing, these commissars and party secretaries, to allow this wonderland of modern art to grow under their very noses? I expect the rule that applied to children’s books was just as deeply interiorised in the Soviet Union as it has been in the rest of the world: they don’t matter. They can be ignored. They’re not serious.

But if we didn’t know it already, we can see from the evidence so splendidly spread out in these pages that children’s books are capable of astonishing beauty and an almost unparalleled range of expressive design.

With so much to look at, one’s eye tries to find patterns or correspondences, to get hold of shapes that rhyme. And one that leaps out to me is that of the Jumping Jack, the old wooden toy: you pull a string and his arms and legs shoot out at either side. That shape, a sort of schematised, simplified human figure, turns up again and again (top left, p116). Its pure form occurs in the child’s figure, in the children from China and (presumably) Scotland, and a Russian Young Pioneer leading the way to a brave communist future, and interestingly from behind, doing something very modern and heroic to an electricity pylon. Even the diver (page 112), in a book illustrating clothes worn by workers, takes up the same pose. The textures and colours of the plates from that book illustrated here remind me of Eric Ravilious’s marvellous lithographs in his High Street of 1938, but what a world of difference in the social context!

There is no cubism here, no post-impressionism, no Dada. What there is, is constructivism, and plenty of it, and of its metaphysical parent, suprematism. Basic geometrical shapes, the square, the circle, the rectangle, are everywhere; flat primary colours dominate. El Lissitzky’s suprematist tale about two squares from 1922 (bottom, page 111) puts the principle to work, and Malevich’s famous black circle turns up in the position of a giant full stop in Lidia Popova’s cover design for

Sergei Neldikhen’s 9 Words of 1929 (top right, page 111).But it’s not all geometrical shapes and primary colours.

Some of the textures are beautifully rendered, and almost palpable: was there ever a pricklier hedgehog than this one peering around suspiciously (page 115)? And the leopard (also page 115) looks as if it comes fresh from the brush of Brian Wildsmith. The brilliant rhythm of the flatly printed locomotives (page 114), the utterly bizarre dragon (page 116), sheep escaping across their deep red background (page 115) — the pleasures go on and on. But nothing comes without a context, not even a black circle or a red square.

We have some of the thinking behind the destruction in the book too: in Hints on Upbringing there’s a real mixture of generous good sense (‘Be careful of any trifle which a child considers a toy, even though it may only be a piece of wood or a stone’) with this miserable diktat: ‘Never tell a child about things he cannot see. (This means that fairy stories should not be told to children)’. This, from the land of the Firebird, of Baba Yaga, of the hut on chicken legs! Or the criticism by the psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) of the immensely popular writer of verse for children, Kornei Chukovsky: ‘Chukovsky piles up nonsense on top of gibberish. Such literature only fosters silliness and foolishness in children.’

There is always a voice ready to say things like that, and sometimes a fist, a rifle, or a prison cell ready to back it up. But for a few years Russian children’s books were free of the darkness that descended over the Soviet Union, and the light they shed, a lovely primary-coloured geometrical wonderland-light sparkling with every conceivable kind of wit and brilliance and fantasy and fun, is here.

Inside the Rainbow, with a full introduction by Philip Pullman is published by Redstone Press on 10 October and is available for pre-order at redstone.myshopify.com

1 – How the Capitalists are Armed, B Zhukov, 1931, unknown illustrator

2 – The Children’s International, Yuri Gralitsa, 1926, cover and illustrations by Georgy Echeistov

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3 – It’s Time to Get Up,I Tsarevich, 1932, cover and R Apin photo-illustrations by F Folman and V Bonyuk

4 – Let Us Take the New Rifles, A Yakobson, 1927, illustrations by Vladimir Mayakovsky

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5 – The Journey inside the Electric Lamp, by N Bulatov and P Lopatin, 1937, photography and photomontage by M Makhalov

6 – 9 Words, Sergei Neldikhen, 1929, front and back cover by Lidia Popova 7 – About Two Squares (‘To All, For All Children’)1922, illustrations by El Lissitzky

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8 – Special Clothing, Boris Ermolenko, cover and illustrations, 1930

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9 – I Am a Printer, Konstantin Kuznetsov, 1932, cover and illustrations by Ekaterina Zonnenshtral

10 – Different Animals, 1929, illustration by Yevgeny Charushin

11 – Hedgehog, No 1, 1928, unknown illustrator, cover for magazine

12 – Animal Farm, Yevgeny Shvarts, 1931, illustration by Theodor Pevzner

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13 – Toys, A Olsufyeva, 1928, illustrations by Lidia Popova

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NEVILLE BRODYAHEAD OF THE CURVE

Words Veronica SimpsonPortrait Andrew Meredith

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From putting his visual stamp on youth culture through the Eighties and Nineties to designing survival

strategies for the creative sector, Neville Brody is a man with an appetite for a challenge. We discusses

typology and tactics with one of few remaining gurus of graphic design

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1 (previous page) – Neville Brody outside his London research studio

2 – Arena, Winter 1988, featuring Richard Rogers. Brody worked with Arena from 1987-1990, and went on to design fonts for Arena Homme in 2009

3, 4, 5 – Iconic magazine covers from The Face, where Brody’s innovative styling set the pace from 1981 to 1986

made every school terri� ed of not achieving the obligatory GCSE grades in his � ve approved English-Baccalaureate subjects (English, maths, one science, one language and one humanities subject). Furthermore, no one will be able to a� ord to go to art school — after all, which parent in austerity Britain has the resources to pay the £9,000-a-year fees so that their child can study painting or printing while learning critical and original thinking. Certainly only the very luckiest would-be artists could ever contemplate earning enough in today’s � nancially strapped creative sector to enable them to pay back an £80,000-plus undergraduate student loan.

The sheer short-sightedness of these policies is mind-boggling, as Brody points out, when emerging superpowers such as India and China are shifting their economic focus from manufacturing to creation and innovation. He says: ‘The Chinese government has stated that its motto is switching from “made in China” to “created in China”. [It] wants to switch from being the makers to being the innovators and inventors and the marketers. So it has got the whole package. We are no longer a manufacturing and industrial nation. Our skill set has been innovating and marketing, but if we are not supporting that and don’t have the skills, then what happens?’

You might think the economic argument would convince the education department otherwise, but Brody says the Coalition’s policies go deeper than that. ‘Even before he came to power, David Cameron said the two groups in society that the Conservatives have to tackle are the unions and the teachers. They were developing plans well in advance. The attack on education is to diminish teacher power. It’s about trying to destroy the intellectual class. So you turn school into a mechanistic and vocational space. You get rid of anything intellectual or liberal. It’s all learning by rote.’

But despite the anti-government rhetoric on the balmy summer’s afternoon when we meet, Brody is far from gloomy. He’s too busy developing antidotes. The � rst is through his role at D&AD. Currently celebrating its 50th anniversary, the Design & Art Direction organisation was founded (by David Bailey, graphics legend Alan Fletcher and actor Terence Stamp, among

While you might think the economic argument would convince the education department otherwise, Neville Brody says that the Coalition Government’s policies go deeper than that

augmented over the past 40 years, now that our minds and screens — and lives — are buckling under the weight of visual clutter and unsolicited information? Few would be better placed to argue the toss than Neville Brody. In the Eighties and Nineties he really was a household name — if your household liked reading the era-de� ning magazines he designed such as The Face, or Arena, or listened to Depeche Mode or Cabaret Voltaire, whose iconic album covers he created. Over the decades, he’s been celebrated with a retrospective exhibition at the V&A, published the world’s best-selling book on graphic design, developed whole new families of fonts, steered global advertising and identity campaigns for Dom Perignon, Issey Miyake and Nike, and given The Times and The Guardian newspapers the friendly, modern fonts and layouts they still wear proudly today. Which graphic designer can claim as much in¢ uence in 2013?

But that is really not where Professor Brody’s head is right now. Though he continues to run his own Research Design Studio from o§ ces in London, Berlin, Barcelona and Paris, he has much bigger � sh to fry than lamenting the lost glories of record-sleeve art. Instead, he’s waging war against the Coalition Government’s education initiatives, mustering all the ammunition he can as both dean of the Royal College of Art’s School of Communication and current president of D&AD, to counteract the damage being in¢ icted on Britain’s creative future.

‘It’s neanderthal,’ spits Brody. ‘This current government is studying Victorian models and it believes in the mechanisation of society, which means that everyone has a place and is a cog… and this is the way it keeps the status quo. It’s about funnelling funds from the poorer to the richest. It doesn’t want to educate a freewheeling proletariat. You have to keep the factory running.’

Strong words, but few in the creative sector would disagree. The net result of current educational reform is that very few people will be studying art or design at secondary school because Conservative education secretary Michael Gove has

Has the role of the graphic designer been diminished or

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others) to promote excellence in photography, print and � lm. But recently it had seemingly lost much of its relevance to any design � eld other than the advertising industry, emerging once a year for its big, self-congratulatory love-in: the D&AD Awards.

Brody, who joined the organisation two years ago, said he would only stand for president if it put the proceeds of the awards into education. And he got his way. Now there is a D&AD Foundation (set up last year, under Rosie Arnold’s presidency), which is fuelled by pro� ts from the awards and endowments from members. With this behind it, D&AD is looking to eventually support ‘hundreds’ of art and design students with reasonably generous bursaries (‘enough to make the di� erence between being able to go to college and not being able to a� ord it’, says Brody).

Brody is also pushing his scheme for previous award-winners to become mentors to new, up-and-coming artists, designers and � lm-makers. There is also D&AD-funded research underway to identify the parts of the UK most a� icted by industrial and manufacturing decline, and with the highest youth unemployment, with the intention of identifying what needs to be done to help — where, when and how to provide creative, manufacturing and innovation education and/or training resources. Brody’s face lights up as he recounts that, at June’s D&AD Awards dinner, ‘A lot of people were saying that D&AD has integrity again.’

His other weapon is the RCA, where there has been a major refocusing of aims and intentions. Says Brody: ‘My remit at the RCA is not to create artefacts. It’s to create skilled, dangerous minds. Our objective is to create individuals who will lead and create industry and society. Design is about everything. It might be that someone will leave our school and start creating government strategy. We’re changing the education system within my school to be more critical-thinking and research-based, but with a much bigger opportunity to look at deprogramming, deconditioning and coming out with a sense of ability and self-direction, to be lateral and look at new possibilities. So it’s a shift away from the idea of being craft-based to producing mavericks, like Paul Smith or Heatherwick

or Barber Osgerby, Troika — all RCA cross-disciplinary designers. We are post-disciplinary. Everything’s hybrid.’

Brody has just launched a new course, called ‘information experience design’. It sounds like a typical digital-era discipline, but Brody is not leaping on digital bandwagons. Digital is just one paint on a designer’s palette. He says: ‘We don’t think of the industrial revolution as the steam revolution. Steam enabled the industrial revolution. Digital is just steam for the 21st century. It allows you to drive engines and forge new models for design and distribution. Steam enabled transport. Digital does the same but in a knowledge space. It’s a creative and a knowledge revolution — almost like a renaissance. The RCA is working very heavily in developing the digital public space.’

As a head of department, he must be feeling the pressure to keep courses attractive and student numbers up. Have RCA applications been impacted by hikes in fees? Brody says they are down, but is convinced that the would-be students who are not applying are the ones who wouldn’t have got in anyway. The quality of students is as high as ever, he says — ‘if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t hang around’. Of the RCA as a college of art, he says: ‘The challenge we have is not just to evolve and change but to grow. We have to increase numbers. We are launching new programmes. We are shifting heavily towards practice-based research and forging new ideas about what a PhD is and how labs can work.’

There is no point, he says, in comparing prospects for an art student these days to those that faced him when he burst on to the post-punk scene from London College of Printing (now London College of Communications). ‘Now the dynamic has changed. The way social networks operate is radically di� erent to how street culture evolved. Those old sub-cultural things such as punk just can’t happen any more. Punk was able to evolve and develop � rst in an underground vacuum.’ By the time it emerged into the mainstream, punk had been re� ned and honed, and ‘it was the people at the top of their game that were getting exposure and publicity. Now everything would have been documented and photographed and on Facebook. The situation has � ipped so that the more you communicate

6 – In 2010-11, Brody’s Research Studios was heavily involved in redesigning the BBC’s ‘Global Visual Language’, creating a clean, distinctive and universal identity

7 – The Times appointed Brody to update the design for their main news section; adopting bold, sans serif section headings, the project also engendered the Times New Roman font

‘My remit at the RCA is not to create artefacts. It’s to create skilled, dangerous minds’

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the more you are part of the mass. The less you communicate, the more it probably means you are part of the elite’.

Brody doesn’t bemoan the loss of attention or focus on the creation of a single, de� ning image. He says: ‘There’s a hiatus and a transition going on. I think there will be a post-screen space of some kind. We’ll be swiping stu� from the iPad on to the wall. It might lose its physicality, but by the same token we are opening access to far more people to publish.’ Print will not disappear altogether, he says, but it will become a luxury craft.

Brody is clearly not a man for nostalgia. He says: ‘At the awards I was sitting next to Ekow Eshun, former editor of Arena, and he asked me: “Don’t you miss designing?” I said: “I don’t know what you mean. This is the biggest design project I’ve ever been involved in” — working with the RCA, exploring digital public space, my role at D&AD; I’m so blessed that I’m able to absorb it. I’ve had to ascend the steepest of learning curves. But to be able to bring a kind of vision to that and the thrill of starting to strategise that — craft it, design it, get people on board; it’s been an amazing, rewarding, exciting journey, despite the Government’s attempts to chop arts education o� at the knees.’

Or perhaps because of it: there’s nothing that sharpens a � ghter’s appetite better than a big, tough adversary — or one making so many stupid decisions. You get the sense that this is a battle Brody believes he can win — not playing by the cumbersome old establishment rules, but inventing a whole sleek, streamlined and contemporary set of new ones. Go, team Brody.

8 – NB@GGG, Brody’s 2010 solo exhibition at Tokyo’s Ginza Graphic Gallery

9 – Digital Vs Anti Digital, the D&AD Annual from 2008

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Longden Doors

55 Parkwood Road, Sheffield, South Yorkshire S3 8AH

Tel: 0114 270 6330

Email: [email protected] www.longdendoors.co.uk

Longden doors have graced some of the UK’s finest buildings for well over a hundred years and are a perfect choice to add that extra bit of class to any exclusive hotel, commercial property or private residence, whether city chic or comfortable country retreat. Longden’s skill and expertise has also helped heritage sites, historic houses and luxury graded and listed buildings across the length and breadth of Britain to conserve, restore and refurbish.

Longden’s beautiful, hand finished, solid timber panelled doorsets benefit from modern manufacturing techniques to meet all today’s performance requirements for fire resistance, sound reduction and security.To find out more about how Longden’s solid timber designer doors, manufactured in the UK, can transform the look of your project, please call or email us today.

a touch of class in any setting

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THE NEW REALITY

Words James BridleAugmented images Site Specfic

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Blueprint readers are among the first to view interactive architectural models from a new book,

Site Specific, using an Apple iPad and a free app created by Luma 3Di, reflected upon here by James Bridle.

Download the augmented reality app and scan special images of Snøhetta’s Reindeer Pavilion, Heneghan

Peng’s Grand Egyptian Museum, Harry Gugger Studio’s Lausanne Art Museum and SeARCH’s Villa Vals

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Dovre� ell is a mountain range in the centre of Norway, forming a natural border between the north and south of the country. It’s so entrenched in the national character that it has become an expression for the end of the world — ‘until the Dovre mountains fall’ — used as an oath sworn during the country’s � rst Constituent Assembly in 1814. Snøhetta, whose name means ‘hooded with snow’, is Dovre­ ell’s highest peak, and stands more than 2,000m at the centre of the Dovre­ ell–Sunndals­ ella National Park, 10.5sq km of largely untouched lakes, forests and mountains. The park is also home to the last remaining population of truly wild Fennoscandian reindeer, which have never interbred with their domesticated cousins.

At Hjerkinn on the outskirts of the national park, Oslo-based architectsure practice Snøhetta, which took its name from the peak when the practice was founded in 1989, built a stunning observation pavilion for the Norwegian Wild Reindeer Foundation. A long, low, rectangular building with one whole, glazed wall and a raw steel frame, its core is bisected by a pine seating platform, designed with modern, digital 3D tools but assembled by shipbuilders using traditional wooden peg � xings. Its undulating surface echoes the mountain range; a perfect re� ection of the

tension between the human and the natural, the contemporary and the ancient, the digital and the traditional. To reach the pavilion, visitors walk up a nature path just short of a mile long to a point 1,200m above sea level, meeting spectacular views across the treeless landscape to the Snøhetta massif.

The sensitivity of architecture to its landscape and context is the central concern of the book Site Speci� c (Arti� ce Books, 2013) which features a series of discussions between Karen Forbes, professor of art at Edinburgh College of Art, and number of prominent contemporary architects. In the introductory interview, Peter Zumthor re� ects on the tensions inherent in physical architecture, and ephemeral images, noting that ‘[our] concrete world is made from concrete materials. I try to make compositions of it, with the materials going to create a tension or togetherness which starts to feel right.’

Accompanying the Site Speci� c are three-dimensional digital models of four buildings mentioned in the book: Snøhetta’s reindeer pavilion, Heneghan Peng’s Grand Egyptian Museum, Harry Gugger Studio’s Lausanne Art Museum and SeARCH’s Villa Vals in Switzerland. The specially encoded tracker images are all featured on the next few pages for you to try out for yourself.

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Wild Reindeer Centre Pavilion, NorwaySnøhettasnoarch.no

Blueprint readers are among the very first to be able to test the Site Specific app. You’ll need an iPad2 or higher, and a valid iTunes account, but there’s no charge for the app itself. Simply visit luma3di.com/sitespecific and

follow the link to the App Store. Use the camera on your iPad to scan the special images like the one above in this feature to view projects using augmented reality. For best results, place Blueprint flat on a horizontal surface.

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Grand Egyptian Museum, EgyptHeneghan Peng Architectshparc.com

You’ll need an iPad2 or higher, and a valid iTunes account. Simply visit luma3di.com/sitespecific and follow the link to the App Store. The app is free.

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Of these four models, two are built, two unbuilt, but all occupy or are planned to occupy locations as spectacular in their own way as the Norwegian plateau: the Grand Egyptian Museum, for example, intended to open in 2015, is on a dramatic desert escarpment: a sheer, angled facade patterned with interlocking triangles references the pyramids of Giza, just over a mile away.

It’s hard to convey this kind of scale on a small screen, even with the high processing power of contemporary devices. Models behind glass do not give any sense of vast and awe-inspiring surroundings, or of the tensions sparked by the proposed buildings. For Edinburgh-based design studio Luma 3Di, which produced the Site Speci� c models, this is an essential challenge. Detailed renderings and visualisations have a huge role to play in communicating the reality and intentions of architecture. Jonathan Messer, who set up and ran the in-house visualisation department at Scottish architecture practice RMJM before founding Luma, cites the in� uence of computer games and innovations driven by their development, on Luma’s own approach to recreating architecture within the con� nes of devices such as the iPad.

The Site Speci� c models use graphics frameworks such as the Unity and Unreal engines, which power computer games

such as Battlestar Galactica and Gears of War, combined with photogrammetry, best explained as a sophisticated algorithmic analysis of photographs to layer structures with material textures. Try them for yourself and the ‘wow’ factor is immediately apparent, but ultimately the legacy of closed, game-like environments pervades the experience: the buildings sit in arti� cial isolation, and the viewer spins and zooms through them from a strange, god-like perspective, unlike any human experience of architecture.

Augmented reality has long been freighted with promise, waiting for the technology to catch up. Good examples include smartphone apps that overlay the screen with star charts to allow users to track objects in the night sky, or museum displays which bring up new information about physical objects in their collections. Less successful are heads-up displays for subway stations and other directions in dense urban environments, so scrambled by GPS interference they can lead one at right angles to the intended destination. None of these are the right tools for conveying the mass and materiality of architecture, largely because they try to gloss over the tensions inherent translating lived experience to two-dimensional display.

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No image-making technology, however sophisticated, can truly capture the full subjective experience of encounter with the built environment, in its physical context — the ‘concrete materials’ cited by Zumthor. What is needed from architectural visualisation is an attempt towards a true communication of the human and environmental impact of new buildings, which acknowledge the partiality of such renderings. Visualisations are inherently reductive, indeed their distillations of space and place can be potent with their own polemics, like a form of aesthetic propaganda.

This is why some contemporary visualisation studios emphasise the painterly, arti  cial quality of their creations, using techniques drawn from the history of art, not technology, to communicate emotion as much as physical reality. Visualisation at the right moment of the design process, to communicate broad concepts to clients and the public, or to move the architect’s ideas forwards, can bene  cially shape the   nal design. At the wrong moment, they may freeze it before it is fully realised.

Luma emphasises the necessity of putting these visualisation tools into the hands of architects and a public increasingly comfortable exploring virtual environments through personal devices. The technological achievements required to do so are impressive but the real opportunities for augmented visualisations

need to focus on what interactive technologies can do that other forms of visualisation cannot: communicate real scale, process and time. The value of communication need not just be in presenting pretty visuals, but in increasing wider literacy and understanding of the architectural process. True interaction would allow viewers to explore the history of a building through its construction process, its present embedded in hidden structures and material underpinnings, and its future in environmental impact and use.

An increased literacy in the reality of architecture would bene  t everyone, both within the profession and in its relationship with clients, planning o� cials and the general public. As architecture is increasingly mediated through computer-aided design tools, and generative of ever more data, the potential for visualising this information grow; it is the job of design to engage with this new territory humanely and carefully, to create tensions in order to show how they may be resolved. It is the nature of technology to render its inner workings opaque and illegible, while dazzling with surface spectacle. The parallel to be avoided is one where architecture, an increasingly elite and inscrutable profession, struggles even more to communicate its value because it fails to fully engage with its own tools of representation.

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Musée Cantonal des Beaux Arts, Switzerland Harry Gugger Studiohgugger.ch

To download the free app to an iPad2 or higher, visit luma3di.com/sitespecific and follow the link to the App Store. You will need a valid iTunes account, but there’s no charge for the app.

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To view these images as interactive 3D models, you’ll need an iPad2 or higher and an iTunes account. To download the free app, visit luma3di.com/sitespecific and follow the link to the App Store.

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between heaven and earth

Words Herbert Wright

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For skyscraper experts worldwide, the annual Council of Tall Buildings and Urban Habitats conference is the

highlight of the calendar. We report from its 2013 London event and talk to BROAD Group chairman

Zhang Yue about Sky City — an astounding proposal for a vertical city for 30,000 people, that would be the

tallest tower in the world

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In 1956 Frank Lloyd Wright revealed a vision of a Mile-High Tower (aka Illinois Sky City) — a vertical city for 100,000 souls in 528 storeys. At the London conference of the Council of Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), two announcements brought that vision tangibly closer. Finnish lift manufacturer Kone announced its carbon-fibre-based UltraRope that doubles the range of a lift — currently limited to 500m with heavier, conventional steel ropes. Secondly, the chairman of China’s Broad Group, Zhang Yue, presented Sky City, an extraordinary utopian vertical town 828m high (see page 147). The announcements loomed high above the conference’s topical theme: Height and Heritage.  

The CTBUH is a Chicago-based organisation that has become the authority, forum and clearing house for information about skyscrapers. Its conference attracts architects, structural engineers, developers and others. At the conference’s opening, its executive director Antony Wood warned that ‘this is not a fashion show’. That didn’t stop buildings being paraded, starting with London’s new icons. Developer Irvine Sellar presented The Shard, including that Renzo Piano designed the bus station beneath it: ‘I gotta tell you, he doesn’t design many bus stations,’ he offered. Architect Rafael Viñoly talked about the Walkie-Talkie at 20 Fenchurch Street (‘I know the building looks today a bit isolated’), while the Leadenhall Building (Blueprint 325, April 2013), which was topped off just a week after the conference, had its own whole suite and programme of talks. Later, London would win CTBUH awards for Piano’s Shard (Blueprint 315, June 2012) as Best Tall Building (Europe) and Foster’s Gherkin in the new category 10 Years’ Best. (The latter’s Calgary tower, The Bow, was voted the Americas’ Best).

Graham Stirk of RSHP offered a warning about the local high-rise boom and the arrival of viewing platforms and skygardens above the capital: ‘If we’re not careful, London becomes a series of funfair experiences where only those who have the money can have a ride.’ He continued: ‘We have two responsibilities as architects — to the client and to society at large’. That raises huge issues, but the discussion’s context was just one of them, the public realm. Lead designer of the Leadenhall Building, Stirk said the only place to offer the public was under it, resulting in its vast galleria. Terry Farrell, long

a proponent of ‘place-making’, declared: ‘A big tree affects all around it; a high-rise building changes the whole ecology around it’. He proposed a ‘programme of review of several streets’ around any new tower (more from Farrell in 20/20, page 180).

Worldwide, considerations like public realm are often absent. Jasleen Changani, CTBUH delegate and proprietor of residential architects Studio C, based in Mumbai and designer of towers such as that city’s Aalya apartments, lamented that ‘most future developments are entirely a profit-making process with no contribution to the city’s social fabric’.

Residential developers see lucrative returns from high-rise, nowhere more so than with the global demand for London property. Harry Handelsman, CEO of Manhattan Lofts, presented the SOM-designed Stratford Manhattan Loft Gardens, a spectacular 42-storey tower for Stratford with skygardens, which are fast becoming de rigueur. Squire and Partner’s City Pride tower, which had not been cleared for announcement in time for CTBUH, will have the highest skygarden in London at 239m. It is one of three residential towers around Canary Wharf set to rise more than 200m high. Today’s residential skygardens are descended from Le Corbusier’s communal rooftop on Unité d’Habitation (1952), which included a chidren’s art school, paddling pool and the aspiration of social inclusion.

Düsseldorf-based architect Christoph Ingenhoven may have presented the most unusual skygarden in his practice’s design Marina One in Singapore, which will complete in 2016. He described it as ‘an oasis in the middle of four skyscrapers’, and along with gardens at numerous other levels, they replace the calculated biomass the site would have had as jungle. Another refreshing project shown was the AHMM-designed Villagio II, which may be modest in height but is the tallest building in Accra, Ghana. Traditional local Kente weave informs facades, and there’s a communal swimming pool on the roof.  

What of the heritage issue? European cities agonise over the impact of skyscrapers on historic cityscapes. Paris particularly is torn about allowing skyscrapers in the city proper, where Haussmann-set 19th-century height limits have since been adjusted to 37m. UNESCO has threatened to remove World Heritage Status from historic sites in Liverpool, Cologne, Prague, Seville and Westminster because of planned skyscrapers sullying

1 De RotteRDam Rotterdam 150m,44storeys, OMA,2013

2 one CanaDa SquaRe

London 235m,50storeys CesarPelli,1991

3 StRata London 148m,43storeys BFLS,2010

4 touR FiRSt Paris 231m,50storeys, Stenzel,Dufau&Dacbert,

1974 remodelledKPF,2011

5 CommeRzbank toweR

Frankfurt 259m,56storeys

Foster+Partners,1997

6 williS builDing London 125m,26storeys Foster+Partners,2007

7 meRCuRy City toweR

Moscow 339m,70storeys FrankWilliams,2013

8 HeRon toweR London 230m,46storeys KPF,2011

9 mg toweR Ghent 119m,24storeys Jaspers-Eyers,2012

10 RöneSanS toweR Istanbul 186m,40storeys, FXFOWLE,2014

11 tuRning toRSo Malmo 190m,54storeys, SantiagoCalatrava,2001

12 tHe leaDenHall builDing

London 225m,50storeys

RSHP,2014

13 Capital City toweRS Moscow 302m&257m,

75&65storeys NBBJ,2010

14 20 FenCHuRCH St London 160m,37storeys RafaelViñolyArchitects,

2014

15 tHe SHaRD London 306m,72storeys RPBW,2012

16 30 St maRy axe London 180m,40storeys

Foster+Partners,2004

Vertical Europe: Iconography

1 (previous page) – OneBlackfriars,aka‘theBoomerang’byIanSimpson,isduetojoinLondon’sskyline

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views of them, but all this received scant attention. About the only signi� cant discussion was London’s protected viewing corridors of St Paul’s and Westminster. Terry Farrell declared that ‘we’ve Haussmannised the sky. To preserve all views is a lost cause’. Nevertheless, when RIBA president Angela Brady, chairing the discussion, asked for a show of hands on whether the corridors should be scrapped, the room was almost unanimously in favour of keeping them.

London clearly dominated the conference because it has lots of skyscrapers, heritage and not least architects and developers. It was down to architect Ian Simpson, designer of Manchester’s Beetham Tower and Birmingham’s Holloway Circus Tower, to spell out that when it comes to high-rise, ‘a chasm divides London and the regional cities’. His presentation highlighted how it costs twice as much to build in London and the time from commission to completion can be 10 times more, but the resulting value in London is also 10 times more. Later he told Blueprint: ‘I don’t believe any tall buildings will be built in the regional cities for at least two to three years. It is due to the depressed economy, and... that there is no value in residential accommodation at the moment.’ Luckily for Simpson he has London projects, including One Blackfriars (some already call it ‘the Boomerang’), a mainly residential, 170m-high, 50-storey tower enclosed in a sculptural outer glass skin.

Big Glass remains the fashionable facade treatment for big buildings, especially statement towers. An evangelist for the ‘smart combination’ of low-tech design, with high-tech elements, German architect Werner Sobek even revealed a glass tower for Ekaterinaburg, Siberia. There ‘people are reaching at a bit of sun, so we have full glazing,’ he explained. But dissent against glass is growing. Make’s Ken Shuttleworth has long been vocal. He reiterated his message at the closing presentations: ‘There’s been an orgy of glass. It’s all out of date!’ Nevertheless, he graciously labelled The Shard ‘a fabulous building’ and called for viewlines of the Gherkin (which he worked on under Foster) to be protected.

Big Glass and sculptural forms may still be on the march in London, but as Shuttleworth pointed out, they characterise buildings designed before the 2008 economic crash delivered ‘the death of bling’. He reports that with the 54-storey Morello

Tower, starting construction next year in Croydon, ‘we concentrated on materials, not shape’. Later, chatting with Blueprint, Antony Wood was even more vocal about glass: ‘It should have been over 20 years ago. What’s ridiculous is that we’re doing gymnastics — vented facades, low-E glass technologies et cetera — to cover the problems we created in the � rst place. We need to start building towers out of vegetation!’ That may sound mad, but there are architects working on it.

So, what are the global trends in high-rise? Obviously, skyscrapers are getting taller and mushrooming in numbers — in 2014, there will be more than 900 towers over 200m high, an increase of a � fth in just two years, and by 2019 height will have reached 1000m ( Jeddah’s Kingdom Tower by Smith+Gill Architecture of Chicago is under construction). Prefabricated modular structures will become the norm, and mixed use will increasingly mean more than just a hotel on the upper ¢ oors.

A building’s energy performance has long set the sustainability drive, and embedded energy and recyclability are now tickboxes on the checklist. How high-rise plugs into the city, whether socially exclusive or inclusive, and the previously mentioned question of public realm, are now on the agenda. In places such as Hong Kong, skyscrapers have � nanced stations. That idea may travel, but already rail hubs and high-rise are seen as a natural � t, and even Gulf cities are building metros as skyscrapers proliferate.

Bob Lang of Arup naturally took an engineering perspective. Wind-load has been the critical factor in skyscraper structures, but temperature and seismicity will be more important, he said, because high-rise has shifted to hot, earthquake-prone places. One example he gave was the 50-storey tower by RSHP and Legorreta+Legorreta (the practice founded by the late legendary Ricardo Legorreta) for BBVA Bancomer, being built in seismically active Mexico City. He described its megaframe rising from soft ground as ‘ductile’.

As humanity’s inexorable urbanisation de� nes this century, high-rise increasingly de� nes the urban habitat. A global professional high-rise forum is vital, and CTBUH provides it. Next year the conference is in Shanghai, which builds more and taller than London ever can. The conference is set for yet greater heights of its own.

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2 – The 50-storey BBVA Bancomer Tower by RSHP and Legorreta +Legorreta in earthquake-prone Mexico City

3 – Mumbai is the locationfor the 170m-high Aalya tower by Studio C

4 – Marina One in Singapore by Christoph Ingenhoven is termed ‘an oasis’ amid tower blocks

5 – An aerial view of the Kingdom Tower, Jeddah, which is due to top a height of 1,000m

6 – The 42-storey Manhattan Loft Gardens is underway in Stratford, London

7 – Relatively modest in size, the Villagio by AHMM is nonetheless the tallest building in Accra, Ghana

8 – The Iset Tower by Werner Sobek in Ekaterinaburg, Siberia, is due to complete next year

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Chairman Zhang’s Brave new world

The urbanisation of China is the single biggest transformation of any society, anywhere, ever. In 1980, a fifth of the population was urban. Now more than half is, and by 2025 another 300 million will migrate to cities. Planners grapple with the issue. Enter Zhang Yue, chairman of China’s BROAD Group. His urban proposition is extraordinary: Sky City, a genuinely vertical town on 202 levels in which everything from schools to parks would provide a life for 30,000 souls.

At 838m high, Sky City will exceed the world’s tallest skyscraper, Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, by 10m. Many have visions, but Zhang personally broke ground at Changsha, Hunan Province, in July. Then work stopped in a dispute about local building permits. Whether this setback is temporary or not is still unclear. Zhang had earlier told Blueprint, ‘We’re not building one building, we’re going to build many of them in the coming days.’  

Zhang was in the capital for the CTBUH London conference, staying in a 18th-century, converted brewery. The room’s curtains were drawn, and from the shadows falling across the sofa he described his ‘three visions’ for the million square metre Sky City: ‘The first one is to conserve land. The second, to conserve energy. And the third, to allow people who live inside to have a very high quality of life.’

The Burj Khalifa took five years to build, but Sky City’s structure should take just seven months. BROAD Group’s Broad Sustainable Building (BSB) division has already demonstrated previously unfeasible construction speeds. The 30-storey T30 Hotel at Dongting Lake, in China’s Hunan province was built in just 15 days (and people who’ve stayed like it). Modular

construction is the basis of BSB’s methods, and Sky City’s 3,000-plus construction crew are like industrial assemblers. Zhang says that ‘it’s 14 hours to build one car. It should be like that’. Ninety per cent of Sky City will be factory made — slightly more than the West’s most advanced modular high-rise, The Leadenhall Building (Blueprint 325, April 2013). There, safety put a limit on speed, but Zhang brushes that aside. Although some in the construction industry have questioned BSB’s safety record, Zhang says that at T30 there were ‘zero injuries’, not even ‘where someone broke their nail ‘. In the West ‘90 per cent of people probably don’t know each other when they come together to build a building’ and that leads to safety problems, among others, he says.

Sky City is essentially an earthquake-resistant steel cage matrix, served by 92 lifts and triple-glazed. From six storeys of basement, the structure, with a footprint of less than a hectare, rises to a roof at 727m, above which is a ‘sky tower’ mast. In plan, four symmetric, orthogonal wings contain almost everything, with three stepbacks on which are skygardens. Health and school facilities are in the lowest floors, then offices, then apartments to the first stepback at level 60. ‘Top class’ apartments reach to level 120’s stepback, then ‘luxury’ apartments to the third at level 170. The central area is split: one side a continuous five-mile sloping public path 3.9m wide — Zhang says that residents’ ‘centre of living revolves around this road’. Beside it is a stack of 56 10m-high, column-free internal spaces, each of 240 sq m, whose use will vary from a bewildering variety of sports to shops, catering, entertainment, libraries, parks and two acres of organic farms. Between this and the sky tower is a 32-storey hotel with a swimming pool on level 202. Lifts will rise further, into the mast to access a restaurant, then at 830m, a coffee house. The BROAD Group logo tops it all.

Sky City aims for maximum sustainability. Zhang says ‘the air quality inside is the cleanest on Earth’, yet Sky City’s HVAC will use just 70kWh per square metre a year, a fifth the normal Chinese level and less than a tenth of other supertalls. Zhang knows his stuff — the BROAD Group started in the energy-guzzling air-conditioning field. Driven by an environmental passion, he spent 20 years improving technologies, and the UN honoured him as 2011 Champion of the Earth. He will apply ‘all possible, practical methods for energy conservation’ and lists insulation, CHP, ventilation recovery, LED lighting, regenerative lift braking, and grey water systems. China has the world’s biggest carbon footprint and Zhang knows one building will make scant difference, but it will demonstrate his ‘ideals, ideology and technology’. If they are followed, the impact will be massive.   

‘Buildings beyond 100 storeys tall are going to become a

China is changing far quicker than the West did, and it may not take long to see if the more socially mixed Sky City works b

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tennis court, hand-ball court, squash court, cinema, concert hall,music room, vertical farm,

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library, pool room,training room, fi sh pond, small forest, restaurant

Sky City

In Plan

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Floors 121 to 170 62.4m

Floors 61 to 12093.6m

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9 – Night vision: Sky City should be home to 30,000 who need never leave due the facilities that will be provided

standardised tall-building form,’ declares Zhang, but he disagrees that they will have no sense of local identity. He contends that architects have ‘made buildings look too strange... If we depart from functionality to design our buildings, then naturally different places will arrive at different designs of buildings. So, the less design there is, the more character there is. This is my view.’

It seems an odd logic, but China’s hutongs, the embodiment of local community, were after all not designed by architects, for whom Zhang seems to hold little regard. He contends that OMA’s CCTV building has no connection with Beijing, nor The Shard (‘the really pointy building’) or the Gherkin with London: ‘We’re being influenced by the architect’s words.’ Instead he offers a resident’s viewpoint. ‘They see buildings just like shoes and clothes. As long as you wear it and it fits, it should be enough,’ he explains. ‘Gilded or silver-plated things or strange forms are actually things residents don’t need, but architects need, or people who sell the buildings.’

Sky City shares its functional design spirit with modernism, but when asked, Zhang says ‘I haven’t heard of Le Corbusier. I like Lewis Mumford.’ The 20th-century American theorist challenged matters like obsolescence and ‘monotechnics’ such as the car. Zhang’s ethos incorporates Mumford’s stress on the human with new ecological concerns. He says that ‘in the times of hutong, China only had a 100 million people’, whereas now China has almost 1.4 bn. There’s simply not the land for everyone to live low-rise, which leads to ever more cars and roads. Zhang contends that daily destinations — work, school, shopping and so on — ‘should be within a 2km radius. That’s the best. A 5km radius I would say is the maximum. The reality in China is the daily activity radius is beyond 20km. This is huge’. Sky City eliminates activity radius.

Blueprint put it to Zhang that while mass high-rise, high-density living works in the East, it has generated crime, drug abuse and social breakdown elsewhere. Could Sky City do the same? ‘No’, he says. ‘Maybe you are too pessimistic about Westerners. I don’t think there will be this problem. When you open your door, you have community. This is a very ideal model.’

But in this utopian environment, where everything’s provided, what about individual expression? ‘Of course there is room for individualisation’, he replies. ‘In one city, there are many different types of characters. We will not restrain these characters. Other than anything criminal, you can do anything.’ Indeed, he even says never leaving the building ‘is very possible, because there are hospitals. You can be born inside and die inside’. But step outside, and Sky City is surrounded by forest. It conserves 200ha for green land, ‘so actually, you’re closest to nature’. Zhang himself is no fan of established cities. ‘I like very few places but I’ve seen some places in Germany where you walk maybe a few steps and you can see the farmland’.

Zhang’s presentation of Sky City at CTBUH left a packed hall stunned. Arup’s Bob Lang saw no infrastructure ‘to empty the building in one go’, but Make’s Ken Shuttleworth declared: ‘I think it’s amazing. There’s real lessons to be learned.’ It’s the vision of Sky City’s ‘very high quality of life’ that may baffle the West most. Tim Johnson, chair of CTBUH, let slip: ‘If our life gets that programmed, we’ll probably be brain-dead’.

The West took decades to overcome the disaster of Corbusian social housing and only now is building residential towers again. ‘If we rely on our own instincts, we shouldn’t have these kind of problems,’ says Zhang. China is changing far quicker than the West did, and it may not take long to see if the more socially mixed Sky City works. Let’s wish this brave new world well.

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ELMGREEN & DRAGSETGOLDEN BOYS

Words Shumi BosePortraits Andrew Meredith

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Preferring to see themselves as artworld outsiders, Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset began their

collaboration in 1995 by subverting the idea of the white cube. Having recently done the same for the bellicose statues in Trafalgar Square they are now taking on the V&A and its collection, through the

medium of a fictional architect’s apartment

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By-laws dictate that no more than two people may sit at a single table on the pavement in Kensington where I stand, parched and confounded, on a blazing summer afternoon. I’m trying to grab a drink with Scandinavian art pranksters Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset. The local council also prohibits us from claiming two tables in a row on this particular stretch. So finally, we sit as if outside the headmaster’s office, chairs against the wall, giggling at the Kafka-like absurdity of inflexible regulations. There could be no better place to start talking to these long-term rule-breakers, whose collaboration over two decades is notable for consistent and acute irreverence.

‘Especially in this city, there’s such a widespread fear of chaos,’ offers Elmgreen, who spends some of his time living in London’s Covent Garden. ‘There’s this crazy belief in regulating people’s behaviour with neon jackets and CCTV. My experience is the more rules you make, the more fun it is to break them.’

Copenhagen-born Elmgreen is more voluble, with a drier humour than his Norwegian collaborator. Dragset bases himself in Berlin, where the duo created their important Monument to Homosexuals Persecuted Under Nazism (2008); quieter at first, he is prone to sudden and infectious peals of laughter. Recalling their grimly titled Omnes Una Manet Nox (One Night Awaits Us All) at Louis Vuitton’s London flagship store in 2012 — which included a bed intended for staff to use during their regular

nine-to-five — he says: We had to change the atmosphere of the shop floor. In the beginning, the staff were afraid to sleep, we had to get the manager to encourage them!’

Breaking rules — or at least poking fun at artistic conventions — heavily informs Elmgreen & Dragset’s collaboration, which began in 1995. As a latecomer (or as the two insist, outsiders) to the art world, Elmgreen & Dragset displays a liberating impudence in tackling mechanisms of control. Entering the contemporary art scene of the mid-Nineties, the two found in it a particular freedom and energy — both in terms of the potential to work in various disciplines and in its energetic commerce. But maintaining a maverick distance helped them to interrogate the ecology of the art world from within — taking on the white cube, that most ideologically charged of architectural containers, as a primary target.

One of Elmgreen & Dragset’s early performance pieces, 12 Hours of White Paint (1997), demonstrates its bemused reaction to the formulaic vacuity of identikit gallery spaces, which proliferated at the time. The pair spent a whole 12 hours continually washing down and repainting a typical white cube with white paint until all semblance of depth, perspective and ‘place’ became blurred. The tools of the contemporary gallery space were turned on itself, pointing to a deliberate erasure of context; this evokes the duo’s attitude towards political and social questions, which they tackle with directness and acuity

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1 (previous page) – Elmgreen & Drasget in the fictional architect’s studio

2 – Social mobility Fig. 2 (Emergency exit), an installation for The Welfare Show (2006)

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3 – Powerless Structures, Fig.101 was commissioned by the Mayor of London to occupy the Fourth Plinth

4 – Painting becomes a Sisyphean task, in 12 Hours of White Paint (1997)

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in the majority of pieces. The Welfare Show at the Serpentine Gallery in 2006 featured a cash machine (with an abandoned baby beside it) and a text commissioned from MP Tony Benn — no oblique academic references here. ‘The Welfare Show held the last leftovers of the Welfare State, the sentiments of New Labour. Now that’s definitely over,’ says Elmgreen.

Elmgreen & Dragsest’s work only recently vacated Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth, one of the most prominent public art spaces in London. The latest figure in its long-running series Powerless Structures sat here from February 2012 to April 2013. Bellicose and triumphant in his posture, a little golden boy sat on a rocking horse, goading his static steed into perpetual war. A previous work, Reg(u)arding the Guards (2005), is still more explicit in dealing with structures of power: it features a group of uniformed security staff with gazes fixed solemnly on each other.

Depending directly on architectural and spatial qualities to create layered atmospherics, the pair’s productions question prescribed behaviours, coded into (the physical apparatus of ) our built environment. ‘We were interested in people and space in the use of architecture: how architecture influences our movements, identity and actions,’ says Dragset.

Some of their works involve fairly serious construction work, too. The solo exhibition Celebrity: The One and The Many (2010-11) involved building a four-storey apartment block in an atrium of Karlsruhe’s ZKM Centre for Art and Media. Visitors

moved voyeuristically through it, observing a tableaux of impoverished, lonely inhabitants engaged with (or escaping from) reality through mass media channels. In another part of the installation, visitors are trapped on the wrong side of a glamorous party — different modes of exclusion, manifested through the careful staging of space.

Their forthcoming exhibition at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, entitled Tomorrow (1 October–2 January) makes a similar attempt at implicating the visitor in an artificial narrative, even as it takes a dig at the conventions of viewing art in a gallery. For the duration of the installation, the ‘rooms’ that Tomorrow occupies are not a gallery space at all, but the temporarily uninhabited apartment of one Mr Norman Swann, architect. With half-smoked cigars, artfully faked grime stains, dishevelled bedclothes and a fusty mixture of antique and 20th-century furniture, the transformed Textile Galleries bear a convincing similitude to a richly furnished West End apartment in full, if slightly solitary, use.

The stage-set suite is extremely evocative. The carefully considered placement of creature comforts holds a sense of the uncanny; a space in which to read a life lived almost to the end, through subtle clues of inhabitation. These intimate cues have been arranged with meticulous attention to detail, planting back-dated postcards, archival copies of architecture periodicals and collected objets d’art — more than 100 of which come from the Victoriaand Albert’s vaults. Exhibiting museum pieces in a naturalistic setting — with no labelling or signage whatsoever — has pushed the boundaries at the V&A, and set curator Louise Shannon some serious challenges.

Working with the artists for more than two years, one major hurdle has been in negotiating the display of artworks with eye-watering insurance values; the greatest of these must surely be a 19th-century oil painting by Sir Edwin Landseer of the Newfoundland dogs famously dear to him. Other loan items include beautiful examples of Oriental and equine ceramics and bronzes, a Louis XVI mirror and a poster for the seminal 1956 exhibition, This Is Tomorrow.

That you’re actually in a museum rather than someone’s apartment washes over you only occasionally, each wave a testament to the artists’ success in blurring reality and fiction. Approaching and interacting with the refined trappings of Mr Swann’s life is a strangely tense experience. It conveys the voyeuristic sensation of rifling around the cupboards of a host in whose home you are an especially nosy guest. And yet — are these not artworks from the V&A’s priceless collection, and if so, why are we allowed to touch, handle, breathe on them? And don’t some of these pieces seem a bit wrong here, somehow too familiar?

Fragments of Elmgreen & Dragset’s recognisable back catalogue lurk among the period replicas and artefacts borrowed from the V&A. Motifs from the artists’ greatest hits almost blend in,

For the duration of the V&A exhibition, these ‘rooms’ are not a gallery space, but the apartment of one Mr Norman Swann, architect.

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5 – opposite: An early floor plan for the Tomorrow installation at the V&A

6, 7 – The artists built a four-storey apartment block at ZKM (2010-2011), in which voyeuristic visitors found fictional narratives

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but for their deliberate exaggerations, giving themselves away with a bluffer’s whistle. Rosa, a sculpture of a maid at about two-thirds scale, is a piece from 2006. She has appeared in other installations too, like the ‘Celebrity’ show at ZKM, as has the perturbed schoolboy of High Expectations (2010). Likewise a gilded vulture, prophetically perched on Norman’s bed, also cast a carrion-hungry eye over Harvest, a solo show at the Victoria Miro gallery and the Louis Vuitton store, both in 2012. In Brechtian fashion, these echoes jar the visitor from a total suspension of disbelief. In effect, the fragments of Elmgreen & Dragset’s previous works assume personalities and narratives themselves; friends who show up from time to time, but with different stories to tell.

The title, Tomorrow, against a portrait of this absent and somewhat ossified individual, conspires to melancholic effect. How well do the artists know Mr Swann? ‘Too well,’ says Elmgreen, wryly rolling his eyes. ‘We’ve been planning the exhibition for a few years!’

Like Loyd Grossman in an episode of Through the Keyhole, I pad through the ‘apartment’ wondering who might live in a house like this; nosing through Norman’s postcards, admirable bookshelves, scrapbooks and finally creeping into the architect’s studio. ‘He’s not very successful; he’s only a part-time academic. He submitted to a lot of competitions that he didn’t win,’ says Elmgreen. ‘The show is also a tribute to failure: having strong ambitions but not being really able to get them out. Like many of the Utopian modernists, he has a very different social background to those in the social housing schemes he designed.’

As inspiration for the Tomorrow show, the V&A was obviously impressed by The Collectors, the duo’s immersive

installation at the 2009 Venice Art Biennale, which also earned a Special Recognition from the Biennale jury. In the Nordic Pavilion, a meticulously curated depiction of a mysterious art collector’s home (Mister B) was piqued with a dose of narrative intrigue. As at the V&A, the visitor was asked to play detective. Meanwhile, the adjacent Danish Pavilion was dressed as a home for sale, ‘shown’ to visitors by actors playing estate agents. So why choose to fictionalise an architect this time? And what’s the meaning in asking the viewer to forget their own situation in a large museum in favour of his apartment?

Pragmatically speaking, in order to avail the installation of the museum’s collection, it was important to describe a creative or artistic professional. There were different options, the artists tell me, and the architect ended up winning. But there must be more to it, I persist: in the noble absurdity of imposing moral and physical ideas on the world, the figure of the architect continues to be ambiguous and admirable. ‘I always used to tell my grandmother that I wanted to be an architect. I had the impression that this was a very fine thing to be; every time an architect used to visit, she would put on extra perfume and tidy the house,’ grins Dragset. ‘Though there may have been other reasons!’

Here is an architect whose values are recognisable in their modernist social motivation, suffused with a sense of unrealised potential. Swann’s architectural concerns, evident in his clippings of Corbusier and Cumbernauld, speak of problems that persist today — the shortage of affordable housing, the provision of high living standards at the thin end of the wedge. That the world has changed around Mr Swann is rendered poignantly in his most high-tech bit of kit: an old Apple Macintosh II, so far removed from today’s gadgetry as to seem almost comic.

‘When you read the script, it’s a bit like a Bergman film — you don’t necessarily like the characters but they’re in a conflicted point in our lives,’ says Dragset, whose early career began in performance art and writing screenplays. He is referring to the extraordinary script — running to 64 pages — that accompanies the show in lieu of any kind of formal catalogue. The story therein fleshes out what the visitor traces in the vestiges of space, adding some shockingly unexpected plot-twists.

Mr Swann’s architectural optimism, if he had any, would have been intellectually radical in the same vein as the many influential architects and planners whose efforts were channelled through the GLC, CLASP and post-war initiatives. The major shift today is in political, or rather economic will; in former poet Elmgreen’s words, ‘this rude, rough neoliberalism, new money from all over the world, and new parameters. He’s old Britain, he has all the mindsets of old Britain, brought up in very strict class system but sympathetic to the idea of welfare, the state.’ Dragset adds: ‘There are a lot of people like that in Britain and in Europe, without much optimism left.’

8 – Rosa (2006) makes her fifth public appearance in the Tomorrow installation; here she is at the Venice Biennale

9 – High Expectations (2010) also reappears, becoming meshed with the story of Norman Swann

10 – Prada Marfa (2005) makes an absurd gesture by taking the iconic luxury brand out of all context

Swann’s architectural concerns, evident in his clippings of Corbusier and Cumbernauld, speak of persistent problems that persist today

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Banal domestic architecture might explain how, in Michael’s opinion, museums have replaced some of the experience of going to church. ‘People live in such shit spaces most of the time, they want to go to big, beautiful places like museums. Maybe they don’t care what’s in it, but the skylights! The ceiling heights! It’s what you used to get from the cathedral.’

Elmgreen & Dragset’s collaboration has evolved alongside their relationship — boyfriends for the first decade or so, they are now more ‘like buddies and brothers in one, maybe’. As former poet and performance artist respectively, their work has gradually become more narrative and less ephemeral — less strictly conceptual. I’m surprised that the artists are happy to grant access to the space, the script and various visualisations weeks before the show opens — but as suggested by the anomalies in Mr Swann’s apartment, the duo seems to enjoy revealing their own sleight of hand.

‘When I was young I used to get frustrated with the traditions of Christmas; why did it have to be the same tree, every year?’ confesses Elmgreen. ‘It’s same with the institutions, they prepare a show, they open the doors, then they close and dismantle it. It’s fun for you to come and see it in process, see how we fool around.’ Is this, perhaps, another sly dig at the reluctance of institutions to show their messy, even quixotic workings? ‘We challenge, not provoke — never provoke...’ protests Elmgreen, as Dragset rejoins: ‘What we’ve found is that many people in the institutions are waiting to be changed; they are quite happy for someone to come in from the outside, make them see things in a different light, staff start talking to each other and there’s a breakdown of normal hierarchy.’

And it’s true that the artists’ real success is not limited to the fine-grained artifice of their theatrical, politically nuanced

productions. The Prada Marfa store, for example, takes the idea of brand consumption to a ludicrous situation: placing a perfect facsimile of the luxury fashion outlet in the Texan desert. It works beautifully: not only in the painstakingly accurate detail of the store — which was convincing enough to cause a break-in, even though the only shoes on display were right-foot only — but in the statement, the audacious absurdity of its deluxe existence, on the edge of nowhere. Elmgreen and Dragset triumph through pushing seemingly rigid institutions to break and subvert their own boundaries. At its most poignant — and darkly funny — their work reveals the fragile, quivering heart of human avarice, ego and intellect behind various spatial and societal constructs. Like the crushing, private disappointment of arriving at a nightclub after the party of the year has ended, or the loneliness of entrusting one’s working future to electronic resumés, sent from a dehumanising tower block into the equally dehumanised digital ether. Or like the dust-sheeted dreams of a Utopian, socially minded architect, surrounded by inherited and imperial wealth. Perhaps his time is Tomorrow.

11 – The artists, Dragset (left) and Elmgreen, in Norman Swann’s fictional studio at the Victoria and Albert Museum

‘People live in such shit spaces most of the time, they want to go to big, beautiful places like museums... It’s what you used to get from the cathedral’

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Post World’s End ArchitEcturE

Portugal

Words gonzalo Herrero Delicado and Vera Sacchetti

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In the third of our Post World’s End Architecture reports, we look at Portugal. Once the apex of

contemporary excellence, the country’s architecture scene has paralleled the Eurozone crisis, with a fall

from grace. But there may be hope: a new wave of architects is uniting with the community to create provocative projects with the potential

to reclaim the civic domain

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When the Pritzker Prize winner was named in March 2011, Portugal’s architects were overjoyed. The Porto-based Eduardo Souto de Moura was the second Portuguese architect to be distinguished with the award, after Álvaro Siza’s triumph in 1992. The accolade officially helped set in stone — both inside and outside of Portugal’s borders — a national architectural aesthetic. But two months later, in May 2011, a €78bn IMF-EU financial bailout was approved and with it the collapse of the country’s economic system was made official. Young architects fled the country to greener shores in Brazil, Angola and the UAE, where large-scale projects abound.

And yet the crisis may well have been the best thing to happen to Portuguese architecture since the 1974 Carnation Revolution, which freed the nation from half a century of fascist dictatorship. The country that has produced two Pritzker-Prize winners has also created a powerful, crystallised professional architecture elite, nurtured by the years of economic boom that followed the 1986 entry of Portugal into the EU — when

European funds allowed large-scale public works and a national infrastructure overhaul. Such a professional group actively engages in the aesthetics and processes of the masters — consolidating what could be deemed a Portuguese style.

In a counter-move fuelled by the crisis, the past two years have seen a rise in the formation of small, experimental studios that seek alternative ways to practice architecture. Their founders are young, motivated, well-educated; many have lived, studied and worked abroad. Driven by a strong idea of what architecture should be, many have been disillusioned by their first, more traditional work experience. Idealistic on the whole, some are downright subversive, while others rely on humour and formal puns. Their work is fundamentally small-scale — from performance to self-build housing — but their methods offer glimpses of what could be a systemic change, offering living proof that even a crisis can precipitate opportunities for civic engagement and the profession.

In the context of their surroundings, these architects work

in multidisciplinary teams, collaborating with artists, designers, social scientists and engineers. Their scale allows them to focus on basic, fundamental issues of architecture, such as housing and the domestic space.

The results and ambitions are wide in scope and range. Lisbon-based studio ateliermob, for example, was honoured at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale for Working with the 99%, a self-built neighbourhood mapping project, while Arrebita! Porto uses specific architectural interventions to revitalise the historic centre of Porto, where roughly half the dwellings are empty.

If the country’s economic woes have opened the door for rehabilitation projects, many of these practices are taking the opportunity to test methods and create change, rather than conducting plain aesthetic operations. In Lisbon, this can be seen in projects by architect José Adrião; multidisciplinary self-build practice Polígono, and Artéria, which is creating a map for the rehabilitation of the city’s historic centre.

Simultaneously, new opportunities for financing these kinds of projects suddenly abound, such as the Lisbon Municipality’s BIP-ZIP grants for interventions in critical areas of the city, or private funds, such as the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s FAZ competition, which awards large sums to projects involving social intervention. Both have been awarded to several architecture and urban intervention projects.

Similarly, large cultural initiatives in the realms of art, architecture and urban intervention — such as the recent 2012 European Capital of Culture in the northern city of Guimarães — open doors to explorations of public space, temporary installations and performative acts of architecture, from Like Architects’ large-scale formal puns that force passers-by to reconnect with their surroundings, to Pedrita and Ricardo Jacinto’s Unidade, a ‘loud, clunky, bright yellow contraption’ that brings industrial production processes — creating concrete seating — to a public square.

For these young practices, public space can become a stage for research or combat. Aurora Arquitectos’ catalogues document and celebrate typologies in Lisbon — including rain pipes, vents and bricked-up windows. O Espelho (The Mirror), is a broadsheet periodical and political manifesto pasted on walls around the capital, provoking the public rather than rarified theorists. And

while editorial projects find their way into public space, even the traditionally rigid and closed-off academic world is starting to engage with the real one, through the work of individuals such as Pedro Bandeira and Paulo Moreira.

Pushing the limits and boundaries of the practice, these initiatives are creating more than a fertile terrain for exploration — they are effectively building the foundations for large-scale change. Surprisingly, this impulse is slowly finding its way to the mainstream. Headed by André Tavares and Diogo Seixas Lopes, the new editorial board of the Jornal Arquitectos, the Portuguese Architect’s Association official publication, is tackling experimental issues and themes. Significantly, Portugal’s biggest architecture event, the 2013 Lisbon Architecture Triennale, promises to be experimental in a way the country has never seen. Its title this year is Close, Closer; myriad events are programmed to highlight these small-scale practices and their engagement with local citizens and stakeholders, bringing the discourse of architecture back to the streets.

1 – Casa do Vapor, by EXYZT and ConstructLab (2013) is a temporary community hub for the fishing village of Cova do Vapor, Almada

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Architects as mediators — While challenging Portuguese architects to redefine their role, the country’s economic woes have created success stories, including Lisbon-based studio ateliermob. Founded in 2005, the practice focused on a traditional competition model, but was forced to reinvent itself in 2008, engaging in a series of urban intervention projects that connect different agents and stakeholders. Fully assuming the role of architect as mediator, ateliermob acts across variety of scales and contexts. Its Working with the 99% self-built neighbourhood mapping and rehabilitation project in the northern periphery of Lisbon is funded by one of the Lisbon Municipality’s BIP-ZIP grants. Its open-air theatre in Rio de Moinhos is a striking, multifunctional concrete structure that serves as a community meeting place. Through complex long-term projects, the studio’s founders actively engage in the country’s political and educational spheres

and are seen as an inspiration. At a smaller scale, the

temporary public space Casa do Vapor (Vapour House) acts as a hub, connecting artists, architects and students from a number of countries to community agents of the self-built South Lisbon neighbourhood of Cova do Vapor. Kick-started by the international collective EXYZT, this repurposed wooden construction was built collectively; it is now a neighbourhood meeting point, home to educational and leisure activities. It received a Lisbon Architecture Triennale ‘Crisis Buster’ grant.

While international architects find a fertile terrain to work in Portugal, a few others are sticking with the role of mediators even as they establish international collaborations. For example, studio blaanc borderless architecture has developed projects that extend as far as Brazil and Mexico. In Oaxaca, it is building sustainable housing in collaboration with the local community, as the pilot project for the NGO Adobe for Women.

2 – ateliermob’s Open-Air Theatre in Rio de Moinhos (2013)

3 – NGO Adobe for Women was founded by blaanc borderless architecture and CaeiroCapurso, two Lisbon studios

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Rehabilitation as a method — Lisbon-based studio Artéria’s reflections on the goals and limits of rehabilitation led to systematic approach that materialised in its 2012 Edifício Manifesto (Manifesto Building), renovated in the heart of Mouraria, a dilapidated neighbourhood at the centre of the city.

The development of the Edifício Manifesto took place in partnership with the neighbourhood association, as part of a holistic process that not only allowed the studio to develop and reinforce its own beliefs, but also to question assumptions and preconceived notions on rehabilitation itself and how to make it sustainable. The studio has continued to reflect on a model for urban rehabilitation that encompasses social, cultural and economical interventions, in a range of projects including a map of old buildings to buy and renovate in Lisbon.

Similarly, in the city of Porto, the Arrebita! Porto (Smarten up!

New domestic dimensions — A number of young Portuguese architects engage in explorations at the domestic level: architecture’s most basic unit. José Adrião, for example, has made a name for himself with a series of detailed, carefully curated house renovation projects, and the recently founded practice Polígono uses domestic space to test out a multifaceted, small-scale, self-build approach to architecture. From the renovation of its own office space or a room in a traditional family house, to the self-built construction and rental of the São Miguel 13 apartment, the studio advocates a multiplicity of roles for the architect, from consultancy to financing and construction. Each project serves as a petri dish not only for materials and techniques but also for alternative economic models. Polígono aims for sustainability in its projects and attempts to break the cycle of over-inflated construction budgets by taking matters into its own hands — literally.

Porto) project has been developing a sustainable renovation pilot project. By creating a network of diverse agents — from contractors and material suppliers to newly graduated architects and engineers, — the association is now working on renovating a building from scratch, in an effort that they hope can be replicated to a city-wide scale and become a catalyst for social transformation in the city.

Addressing a social need through architecture, Arrebita! Porto was one of the winners of the 2011 edition of FAZ, a competition that funds social intervention ideas. The 2013 edition of FAZ honoured the Rés do Chão (Ground Floor) urban intervention project. Developed by a team of four young architects, the project seeks to rehabilitate the ground floors of buildings in Porto’s historic centre — many of which were previously occupied by retail spaces that were forced to close their doors — creating a system that links building owners, municipalities and communities.

4 – Painting a ceiling rose at Casa de la Luna by Polígono; below, the practice office

5 – Edificio Manifesto, a before and after of a dilapidated cottage renovated by Artéria (2012)

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Performative spaces — While many young architects undertake explorations in the domestic sphere, a series of public cultural events in recent years has opened the way for explorations of public space. Most notably, the 2012 European Capital of Culture (ECC) featured the Performance Architecture cycle which proposed five diverse temporary occupations of public space in the city of Guimarães, curated by Pedro Gadanho — the Portuguese curator of architecture at New York’s MoMA. Among these, Pedrita and Ricardo Jacinto’s Unidade brought the noisy reality of industrial production to a square, creating an furniture assembly line powered by passers-by.

Similarly, Porto-based LIKE architects occupied a series of fountains throughout the city with a limited set of ready-made props, transforming them into ‘public pools’ and promoting an unexpected use for pieces of urban fabric. The studio specialises in curious

replications of industrially produced products — from fruit crates to IKEA lamps — to create spatial solutions that seek to question and re-evaluate our relationship with public space. Its markedly formalist approach distinguishes it, and finds success in subtle interventions such as the 2011 Christmas illumination project for the Lisbon square of Rossio.

In the same vein, MOOV’s Kitchain project proposes a modular table that since 2009 has been the site of impromptu dinner parties which subvert traditional usage of public space. The table was originally designed as the central meeting space for Feibourg’s Belluard Bollwerk International Festival, and has since been redesigned for subsequent editions of the festival, integrating new modifications and possibilities of use with each iteration.

6 – LIKE architects’ stunning spatial interventions using mass produced objects

7 – Kitchain, from MOOV, is a modular table for impromptu and itinerant dining events7

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Academic provocateurs — Although architectural academia is prone to isolation in Portugal, a few researchers have been connecting academic investigation with real-world problem solving, becoming active cultural agents in significant contexts, or acting as provocateurs by way of speculative proposals. Paulo Moreira, who commutes between London, Porto and Luanda, has conducted extensive research on the spatial and social nature of informal urban development in the former Portuguese colony of Angola, developing a series of mapping workshops with local students and the community called Mapeamento Colectivo da Chicala (Collective Mapping of Chicala).

Porto-based architect and scholar Pedro Bandeira launches constant provocations using a multidisciplinary approach. Specific Projects for a Generic Client is a series of humorous intellectual explorations that take a specific moment in the history of architecture as a starting point. Bandeira’s references to history and scholarship are constant, as well as his subtle mockery and questioning of the present. His most recent project — under the name of Pierrot Le Fou — will lead to a performance at the forthcoming Lisbon Triennale called The Future is the Beginning.

Mapping the surroundings — Beyond temporary interventions, public space in Portugal is being used as the stage for numerous demonstrations and political protests. An old political slogan proclaims ‘The street is ours!’ and the semi-permanent state of protest maintained by many young architects has overflown into outlets such as O Espelho (The Mirror). This editorial initiative was kick-started in the summer of 2012 by a collective of architects, artists and journalists: it consists of a public newspaper fly-posted on city walls and distributed around town. Since its inception, topics addressed have ranged from architecture and public space to political themes of the moment, and the paper’s clearly politicised initiative has won a 2013 Lisbon Architecture Triennale ‘Crisis Buster’ grant.

In contrast, for Lisbon-based practice Aurora Arquitectos public space becomes a source of inspiration in a genuinely formal dimension. The studio has been documenting a series of typological variations throughout the capital city, in a series it calls Catalogues. From typical rainpipes to the evidence of the a cyclical dialogue between graffiti and clean-up markings, Aurora’s collections of images form a curious encyclopaedia of absurdities commonly found in Lisbon’s built environment.

8 – Redacted graffiti, as catalogued by Aurora Arquitectos

9 – Fly-posting pages of O Espelho (The Mirror) around the city of Lisbon

10 – Paulo Moreira’s mapping workshop in Chicala, Angola (2011)

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Lisbon’s third architecture triennale, titled Close, Closer, starts in September. Under guidance from chief curator Beatrice Galilee and her team of Liam Young, Mariana Pestana and José Esparza Chong Cuy, this year’s edition takes a left-field and speculative view of spatial practice, shaping a city-wide programme of events, discussions and installations.

Although an infant on the circuit of worldwide cultural events, with its first edition only in 2007, the Trienal de Arquitectura de Lisboa has secured a reputation as a thoughtful and engaging addition to the architectural calendar. This year’s addresses ideas close to the bone for Lisboetas. Split into four main programmes of Future Perfect, New Publics, The Real and Other Fictions, and The Institute Effect, it will take civic interests and Lisbon itself as the focus for discussion.

To bring spatial practice (of which architectural production is just one element) ‘closer’ to new and broad audiences, the exhibitions, talks and fringe events organised by the curatorial team examine the political, technological, institutional, and critical contingencies.

Manuel Henriques, executive director of the Trienal de Arquitectura de Lisboa, recognises that attracting the attention of the architectural audience is not a problem; the challenge lies in engaging the imagination of local people. This aim has moved the Trienal away from the formal discipline of architecture and towards embracing broader socio-political issues. Lisbon Open House, introduced last year, invited Lisboetas inside the city’s landmark buildings, often for the first time. The number of visitors was twice what had been expected, demonstrating a growing interest among locals in engaging with their built environment.

Henriques recognises the particular hardships that Lisbon and Portugal have faced following the Eurozone crisis but says that this edition of the Trienal can suggest ways in which one can act on the city despite constrained circumstances.

In conjunction with the main event of the Trienal, Henriques promises ‘crisis busters’, an array of funding prizes for community-focused initiatives; these run alongside the Good Neighbourhood scheme, ‘a hyper-local programme of cultural events… which breaks boundaries between the institution and the people.’

‘Because of all this activity, local people are starting to take a renewed interest and even take pride in where they live,’ he says. The speculative nature of Close, Closer, with its focus on challenging established organisational structures and the formation of new forms of exchange, resonates at a time of volatile economic conditions and tough consequences.

It is not just the people of Lisbon who have been feeling the strains of living and working in the city; getting the Trienal itself up and running was a considerable challenge. Having worked on the Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism & Architecture in 2009 and the Gwangju Design Biennale in 2011, Galilee is no stranger to the organisational challenges inherent in international cultural events. However, where the culturally aspirational and robust coffers of China and South Korea afforded relatively large budgets, the situation in Portugal presents ‘an extremely uncertain terrain.’ Challenging constraints and financial volatility have formed, rather than destroyed the Trienal’s spirit, claims Galilee: ‘We’re in guerrilla warfare, and have been quite belligerent about maintaining the quality and diversity of our programme.’

11 – Close, Closer curators, from left to right: Liam Young, Beatrice Galilee, José Esparza Chong Cuy and Mariana Pestana

The third Lisbon architecture triennale takes place against a backdrop of hardship. However, as Anne Bellamy discovers, its ‘belligerent spirit’ promises a socially charged programme full of surprise and delight

GETTING CLOSER...

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12 – Located in a public square, Frida Escobedo’s Tilting Stage is a precarious platform for civic discussion

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That her team’s clarion call has been heard is evidenced in the diversity of associated (that is to say, independently funded) projects, as well as an imaginatively curated programme. ‘We have this incredible array of projects and participants, our foot-soldiers; it has a sort of fighter spirit!’

Despite financial worries, the programme has been developed as planned; the overall aim of its provocative initiatives not only pose questions for the present state of spatial and architectural practice, but will hopefully set up examples for future communities, as a legacy for the city. Galilee reveals that for her, ‘that sense of a legacy is really positive and productive. It’s not just about remembering beautiful things you have seen but also having something slightly more humane and civic’.

The four curated sections will be playing host from 12 September to 15 December to a wide variety of events, installations, discussions and publications, as well as the independent associated projects.

Future Perfect, curated by architect and educator Liam Young, offers up an ‘interactive iceberg’ by the deliciously named Marshmallow Laser Feast, equipped with GPS sensors that tracks your movements, and adjusts its own landscape and soundscape, for an immersive sensory experience; other confirmed participants include Bruce Sterling and Neri Oxman.

For physical and intellectual nourishment, curator and spatial practitioner Mariana Pestana has curated The Real and Other Fictions which, among other participations, features the Planetary Sculpture Supper Club. Collaborators from the Centre for Genomic Gastronomy will cook up a series of extraordinary thought-provoking feasts; for example a sauce made of plants

bred from mutations — which questions how we use and abuse intensive agriculture and bioscience in the kitchen. Dinners will be attended by artists and architects as well as prominent members of the city government and media commentators.

Led by Dan Hill, FABRICA will be transforming the MUDE (Museo do Design e da Moda) into a space that will house a constantly rotating programme of new ‘institutions’ for The Institute Effect. The Benetton-funded communication design academy will be designing and furnishing the space with all the expected — and some unexpected — accoutrements of a cultural institution, in order to frame questions towards the validity of such organisations.

But it is José Esparza Chong Cuy’s New Publics that should provide the most gripping series of events — quite literally. Visitors may have to grab on to something (or someone) to keep a balanced perspective atop Frida Escobedo’s Tilting Stage. The hemispherical central platform is installed at Praça da Figueira, and forms the location for a provocative programme of public discussions, performances and talks. The Blueprint series Post World’s End Architecture will feature as a Close, Closer Associated Project at Lisbon Architecture Triennale. On 14 September Blueprint will host an informal round-table discussing innovative approaches in architectural practice across the Iberian peninsula. Guests include Portugal’s Polígono and ateliermob, plus Andrés Jaque and Zuloark from Spain.

For further details and a map of Lisbon Architecture Triennale venues, please visit blueprintmagazinebeta.co.uk

12 – Space, menus and discussions complement each other at ‘The Planetary Sculpture Supper Club’

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176 – 177

The MomentIn the first in our series that asks designers and architects what was their career-defining ‘moment’, Johnny Tucker talks to Pritzker-prize-winning architect Richard Meier

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Farrell 20/20Blueprint took Terry Farrell back to his MI6 building, and here are some choice cuts from the 20/20 seminar he subsequently gave

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Book — MVRDV BuildingsAs the Dutch practice releases its first monograph, Thomas Wensing considers the critical position of MVRDV

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Exhibition — Ice Lab: From Science Fiction to Cold RealityDele Adeyemo explores the sci-fi world of design for polar research stations in the Antarctica, which have taken over Glasgow’s Lighthouse

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Book — The Images of ArchitectsJack Self finds this book of images by architects both illuminating and highly predicable

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Book — The Spectacle of Disintegration — Situationist Passages out of the 20th CenturyThomas Wensing talks to McKenzie Wark about his third book, which focuses on the later works of the Situationist International

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Exhibition — Lowry and the Painting of Modern LifeHerbert Wright visits Tate Modern’s exhibition documenting the life and work of painter LS Lowry

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Exhibition — Manuel Estrada: Sailing throughGwen Webber discovers the work of Manuel Estrada as the American Institute of Graphic Arts hosts its first exhibition of a single artist

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Book — DixonaryJohnny Tucker takes a stroll down the 30-year-long, highly personal and very visual, memory lane of Tom Dixon

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ArchiveSome of the biggest names in architecture and design today celebrate 30 years of Blueprint

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You might think meeting Le Corbusier or working with Marcel Breuer would be the key events in a young architect’s life, but talking to Pritzker prize-winning Richard Meier it turns out that the true defining moment of his career was when he decided to go it alone and picked up a domestic commission, from a young couple with two children — Mr and Mrs Smith.

The now famous Smith House in Darien, Connecticut is situated on a rocky hillside overlooking water. Completed in 1967 this deeply European rationalist/constructivist building gives all the impression of being made of concrete, but keeping costs down and in keeping with the New England housing stock it’s constructed in timber.

Meier takes up the story from the beginning: ‘I’d worked for Marcel Breuer for three years and at that time I thought I’d learned a lot, and I’d always wanted to sort of work on my own.

‘I had a two-room apartment —

by making small models. I think the first model might have been an inch-and-a-half high in cardboard and then it just kept progressing. It evolved, but it didn’t change from the original idea, it just got more refined. I think the building was the result of exploring “What is the idea about this house?” It’s kind of a reversal, in that the open side is, in a sense, the back side, the water side. The entry side is closed down as the more private side.

‘New England houses are built of wood you know, and it’s much more economical to build in wood, not concrete. This is a small house and

I slept in one room and I worked in the other room. So I was working in my apartment and I got a telephone call one day from some people named Smith, and they said they’d like to talk to me about the design of the house. And so we met and they said: “We’ve been told that the best way to have a house designed is to find a young architect who doesn’t have much work, is not going to charge a big fee and will put a lot into it.”

‘I’d designed a house on Fire Island for a young couple who taught at Princeton and they didn’t have a lot of money, and the house was built in nine days for $9,000. That was published in The New York Times and I think that’s how they heard about it, and they said “If he can do a house for $9,000, he can do a house for us!” [he laughs]. And so I think that is how they came to me… we got along very well.

‘I went up and I looked at the site they had just purchased. They had great views to the water — thought it was fabulous. It was unique, the way the water wraps around. There’s a cove on the northside where there are steps that go down to a beach.

‘Apparently somebody had had a house designed for the land, but it came in so expensive that they decided to sell the site. It’s very rocky and the house that was designed there was a one-level, spread out over the rocks so the foundation costs were enormous. I said: “That’s not the way to build on this site. If you build vertically and minimise the foundations then it can be done economically”, and that is exactly what the Smith House is.

‘I began by doing drawings and

every inch of it is different. There is no repetition, so to build in concrete would be have been very prohibitive.

‘I remember Jim Stirling was in town one weekend and he rang me up and said he’d like to go and see it. We were walking round it and he said to me, “It’s wood, not concrete!” He was so surprised.

‘In retrospect, this building meant a great deal to me. It received a good amount of press and that led to my doing other houses and then eventually to the larger commissions.

‘This was going to be the Smith’s weekend house. As it turned out, many years later they moved there and made it their permanent residence. I haven’t been back in many years though. The Smiths no longer live there. I’m told the people who own it now keep it up really well. But I don’t know them.’

The Moment Richard Meier thinks back to the Sixties and recalls the beginning of his solo career, which really kicked off with a weekend home for Mr and Mrs Smith

Richard Meier in conversation with Johnny Tucker

1 – Architect Richard Meier, with the newly built Smith House in the background

2 – Meier’s drawing and plan for the house

3 – The Smith House, in Darien, Connecticut, where ‘every inch is different’

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There is a fascinating chain of developments; Vauxhall Cross is one of these... In between the railway viaduct and

the river is this tremendous sequence of planning and non-planning and opportunism. It is now almost the best bit of London, where a young person would be assured to think there was a plan. But each of these areas running along the river is extraordinarily haphazard; what has been realised is incredibly dynamic.’

Blueprint 20/20This summer Terry Farrell gave the inaugural Blueprint 20/20 lecture, returning to his MI6 building in Vauxhall Cross to discuss it frankly, with the benefit of perfect hindsight. Here are some excerpts from a lively and entertaining presentation Full lecture at:blueprintmagazinebeta.co.uk

1 – Sir Terry Farrell

2 – Developments along the South Bank of the Thames from Sir Terry’s 20/20 presentation

3 – The non-specific Government building soon after completion

The developer had an enquiry from the Property Services Agency for a Government

headquarters building, and they didn’t tell us who it was. We asked and they said they couldn’t tell us – but the planning consent went right through in record time…’

1 Butlers Whard & Design Museum2 City Hall & Potters Field3 London Bridge & Borough Market4 Tate Modern & Globe5 Coin Street & OXO Tower6 South Bank Cultural Centre7 Old County Hall & London Eye8 St. Thomas Hospital9 Lambeth Place10 Duchy of Cornwall Lands11 Vauxhall Cross12 Nine Elms13 Battersea Power Station

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We had done this scheme very much on the hoof. It wasn’t, we thought, going to go ahead. By then, we had

been involved for 10 years and had seen all kinds of schemes come and go. But when they signed it off, we couldn’t alter the signed drawings for the planning applications.’

Interestingly, whenever we went to negotiations and discussions with the planners and

politicians, we had to call the roadside “the front” and the riverside “the back”, otherwise the meeting was a disaster.’

We had these trees. They were very large trees, about 8m high, and they were bought from Italy and moved

to Edinburgh – and we were asked “Why would you ruin them before they come here?” It was so they would experience a cold climate and by the time they came south to London they would think they were in Italy again… The trees needed outside maintenance contractors, and after about six years they decided security was endlessly compromised, so they got rid of them.’

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4 – Original watercolour of the river elevation showing the trees that went to Scotland

5 – Clockwise from top left, plans of the 10th, seventh and fourth levels

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I was in Tokyo for a conference and I was watching the CNN news in the middle of the night.

It featured a story about the fact that the KGB had officially said they existed, and, what’s more, they were giving tours around their building in Moscow. Then they suddenly flipped to my building and said that this was MI6. That’s how I found out.

I had lunch in the building once – I’ve only been in the building twice, it’s hard to get in there – with a man called Mr Dearlove. You couldn’t

make it up. He was M... He told me I’d really helped enormously because until then – until this building went public and the existence of MI6 was acknowledged – they couldn’t tell their wives and children who they worked for.

They had all been under this cloud because of the Official Secrets Act. They had all made up stories about how they worked for the Ministry of Agriculture or similar. He said to me the fact that my building was so in the public eye… suddenly meant they were able to come out.’

6 – The lighting scheme was done physically and in situ, in the days before mobile phones made communication so easy

We were very keen on lighting at night, with the river and the reflections. And we experimented a lot and

we did it ourselves. We stood on the opposite bank and we moved lights around the building until we got the right effect. I’ve learned that you don’t really know how the lights are going to work until you have experimented in reality. So we had lights on long cables, on two or three cold nights in 1992. We adjusted the lights, and we had walkie-talkies and were shouting “leave it there” or “move it there”.’

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I like style. I’ve seen style change not only over the period of my lifetime, but also today there is also more free

style than there ever was. You can’t really classify this era in a way that you could In the past. I think that’s true of clothes; there was a time when everyone wore the same things – in the Seventies all young men wore flares, but today there are flares, tight trousers, all things, and the same with music. I think that postmodernism was more important as a philosophical term, there was a postmodernism in

music, in theatre and in movies. And all of it was wonderful; it changed things and you can never put the genie back in the bottle.

There are true postmodernists in the Michael Graves-committed sense. If you looked at what I did at Charing Cross and MI6, that’s not really post modern. That’s not what they meant by postmodernism. However at the time, even Prince Charles’ classicism was called postmodern by some. I think for me it was a liberating, it shifted everything, particularly towards focus on context and urbanism and listening to the

I have been asked what I would do now [about the MI6 building]. It wouldn’t be a stylistic thing: What I would do

now is think is very hard about another aspect of post modernism, which was a great learning curve for me at the time.

I would look a the whole setting, the whole relationship, with the pathways and the walkways, the whole context of human life and the urbanism around it.’

consumer, and what the consumer wanted.I still get more letters on MI6 and get much more interesting responses from laypeople on MI6 than any other building I have ever done. I think that’s more important than being a star. I don’t think I see it as being stylistically slavish.’

7 – Two TFP visuals for urban development of Vauxhall town centre, looking to put people and the community back at the heart of everything

7

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In 1990 Rem Koolhaas organised a symposium which posed the question ‘How modern is Dutch architecture?’.The lecture identified an intellectual and critical malaise in the country’s discipline, right at the moment when a new generation of architects emerged.

Koolhaas argued that society had been completely reformulated along late-capitalist lines in the Eighties, that socialism as a progressive force had ceased to exist, but that the formal repertoire of contemporary Dutch architecture was still alluding to a triumphalist modernity rooted in the early heroic period. How could it be that, at the end of the tumultuous 20th century, the formal language of architecture had remained so consistent, he argued.

and Bart Lootsma’s positivism for what it is, it is undeniable that something was happening in the Netherlands, however, and its lively architectural climate did become, for a while, the envy of architects across the world.

The blossoming of Dutch architecture from the mid-Eighties to the early Noughties had to do with a favourable economic and cultural climate, a mix of credit-fuelled economic growth and a public sector that perceived ‘Dutchness’ and Dutch design as a good business model. This model has in the meantime all but crash-landed. The economy is slow to recover and austerity politics have rolled back progressive social and cultural programmes.

Even though Koolhaas clearly stated that he did not exclude himself from this critique, as he too was heavily indebted to modernism, it is ironic to note that the practices coming out of his own OMA, such as MVRDV, Neutelings Riedijk and others with different beginnings (West 8, Mecanoo, Wiel Arets, UN Studio), have never attempted to cut their modernist roots, and often pride themselves in extending Dutch modernism and its ‘formal universe’.

The point Koolhaas was trying to make was lost, however, which is that modernity as a daring, progressive force was spent in a society that prefers the bottom line and is essentially risk averse.

The self-congratulatory triumphalism of the Dutch eventually led to the publication of the book Super Dutch, written by Bart Lootsma, and it was again Koolhaas who took it on himself to point at the supposed critical deficit of the whole movement.

Leaving Koolhaas’ disapproval

Book MVRDV Buildings

By Ilka and Andreas RubyPublished by NAI 010, €65 (£56)Review by Thomas Wensing

It is against this backdrop that MVRDV (acronym for Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs, Nathalie de Vries) succeeded in becoming a global practice in its own right. It did this by publishing numerous data-based theoretical studies, such as FARMAX (1998), MetaCity/Datatown (1999) and KM3 (2005), and by its quirky and original buildings.

The practice has now published its first monograph; MVRDV Buildings is a reflection on the practice’s built work over these past two eventful decades. It is edited by Ilka and Andreas Ruby, two self-confessed admirers of MVRDV, and it offers a mainly image-based tome and relaxed read. The book is specifically not intended to be a glossy advertorial, but qualifies more as a revisit and reinvestigation of the projects, with the texts consisting of reportage-style descriptions of the work and interviews with users and passers-by.

This methodology of popular involvement went so far as to mine the web for images, which results in a multiplicity of views on the life of the buildings. If I were to be overly critical I would say that the book does little to stretch the classic format of the monograph; after all the projects are still featured through images, (shoddy) drawings and a blurb, but in the context of MVRDV it is nice not to be distracted by boldly coloured diagrams. The book also rectifies the overexposure of the more spectacular works in favour of more modest and interesting projects. I have in mind here the patio dwellings in Ypenburg (The Hague), the Lloyd Hotel (Amsterdam), and the Celosia apartment building in Madrid. Furthermore, it is to MVRDV’s credit that the more critical client and user observations have not been edited out, in fact they are answered.

The contributing authors did fortunately take MVRDV to task on windswept holes doubling as public spaces, greenhouses as extensions to hospitals and so on. As far as I’m concerned this questioning did not go far and deep enough, however. The book’s authors for instance assert that ‘MVRDV reclaimed modernism as an unfinished project’, and then state that the office has the capacity to ‘produce design spectacles on end’.

This oxymoron makes me curious about which modernist core values MVRDV is actually exploring. I am not so ungracious as to question the social motivation of MVRDV, since I do believe that it genuinely strives for more equity, changes in behaviour and sustainable solutions. It is, in fact, much more socially engaged than OMA, but the question remains whether MVRDV expresses a truly critical attitude, and if so what it is that the practice is critical of.

It is to MVRDV’s credit that the more-critical observations of clients and users have not been edited out, but indeed are answered

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In the middle of the hottest summer for a decade arrives the Ice Lab, an exhibition by the British Council on the new architecture and science in Antarctica.

The exhibition opens at The Lighthouse in Glasgow, Scotland’s centre for architecture and design. It takes its name from the white glazed brick tower designed by Mackintosh, which rises high up from a new entrance foyer to offer a panoramic view of the city.

Intrepidly ascending the steep, neon escalators towards Gallery Two, where the exhibition awaits, a cool blue light reflects against the icy brickwork. In anticipating the Ice Lab, the journey feels like climbing up through the interior of a glacier.

The first sight is of oversized but carefully machined aluminium fixing toggles. Whilst their structure captures a resourceful aesthetic, the luxurious rolls of speckled green felt that hang from them define the dominant forms of the installation. Meeting the floor like a photographer’s infinity wall, the felt creates an oddly naturalistic backdrop to captivating images of the research stations that stand defiantly in the landscape, engulfed in the psychedelic light of the aurora australis.

This proves to be a deliberate decision. Exhibition designer Oliver

Indeed, sci-fi enthusiasts young and old, will no doubt play at matching Antarctic stations to their nearest spaceship lookalikes. Who could argue that from above the Princess Elisabeth bears more than a passing resemblance to the Starship Enterprise? Look closely and you can draw references to the most iconic productions of that time, Star Wars (1977), Thunderbirds (1965-66) — in fact Thunderbird 2 from the hit British television series was a genuine inspiration for the design of Halley VI, says architect Hugh Broughton, who adds, ‘I love the idea that 50 years down the line, in Antarctica, some of that conceptual thought from the Sixties comes true.’

That a space-age aesthetic should dominate comes as no surprise. With the lowest temperature ever recorded at -89.2C and regular winds of 160kmph or more, this terrain is the most inhospitable

Goodhall, of We Made That, explains: ‘We were particularly keen to bring a rich materiality to the exhibition. This might not be entirely expected for a landscape of ice, but we were influenced by a lot of the vivid colours in the exhibited imagery and the otherworldly disquiet of Herbert Ponting’s use of tinting in the 1920s film The Great White Silence.’

Floating in the centre like a cluster of spacecraft are scale models of the five featured high-tech research stations: Britain’s Halley VI by Hugh Broughton Architects; Princess Elisabeth by the International Polar Foundation, India’s Bharti by German practice bof architekten, Korea’s Jang Bogo by Space Group, and the Iceberg Living Station by Danish MAP Architects. As a collective the projects rekindle a nostalgia for 1960s and 1970s science fiction when, inspired by space flight and the atomic age architects, designers and film-makers concerned themselves with visions of the future.

Those immortal moments in 1969 watching Neil Armstrong descend from the Lunar Module on to the surface of the Moon were perhaps the greatest point in the history of humanity, where exploration and the endeavours of science captured the imagination of the entire globe. Yet an age of curiosity and infinite possibilities was undermined by Cold War fears of new destructive technologies. Science fiction with its interstellar fantasies provided reassuring visions of a united humanity, creating a whole visual genre in the process.

Exhibition Ice Lab: From Science Fiction to Cold Reality

The Lighthouse, GlasgowUntil 2 OctoberReview by Dele Adeyemo

of environments. Antarctica is the only continent to not have an indigenous people. The coldest, windiest desert on earth, it is the closest we have to a truly alien landscape. Aerodynamic profiles and state-of-the-art high-performance building envelopes are essentials for settlement here.

Going deeper than aesthetics, a profound sense of collaboration and internationalism is enshrined in the Antarctic Treaty of 1959, which states: ‘It is in the interests of all mankind that Antarctica shall continue forever to be used exclusively for peaceful purposes and shall not become the scene or object of international discord.’ The research being conducted at these stations addresses issues affecting the whole world, beyond the capacities of any one country.

From understanding global warming and the rate of melting ice, to speculating on the origins of the universe, the scientists stationed in Antarctica are engaged in a heroic endeavour critical to our future, in the midst of the most forbidding of environments.

Ice Lab uncovers the ingenuity involved in designing and building the research stations which enable scientists to exist in the only place on Earth where they can do these experiments. The British Council’s Vicky Richardson says the idea for Ice Lab was to create an opportunity for several departments with different expertise to work together, while he curation, by Sandra Ross of The Arts Catalyst, skilfully interweaves the science, art, architecture and engineering involved.

That said, the exhibition is strongest in conveying the sheer sense of awe when faced with this strange part of the world. The playful tactility of displays of fascinating artefacts engenders a childlike inquisitiveness, taking the viewer back to a place of innocent wonder.

In true explorer fashion, the exhibition will travel, first to Manchester, then connecting with the British Council’s international network, to Germany, India and Korea.

A Space Age aesthetic dominates... Antarctica is the closest we have to a truly alien environment

1 – Photographs and simple graphics give details of the ice labs’ construction

2 – Rolls of green felt create a naturalistic backdrop for images of research stations

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The problem with trying to understand a subject by reading about it, Plato writes in his Seventh Letter, is that language cannot say what is named by the name. In other words, anyone can bandy about ‘architecture’, but there is no way of accurately explaining what that term means. And books claiming to define architecture in some new, more authentic way will probably be around as long as the word exists.

Of course, no matter how articulately we present ourselves something will always be missing in our description of architecture — there will always be more to add, and that something is the most important part. Plato suggests that the only way we can gain the ‘light that is kindled by a leaping spark’ is by ‘rubbing together’ words and images, because the spirit of the thing ‘exists neither in voices, nor icons, but in souls’.

In his pictographs project, Valerio Olgiati attempts to ‘show the roots of architecture, and expectations concerning projects’ through a parade of very small, captionless images. These diminutive drawings, sketches and photographs are interpretable as icons, and proffer ‘a universal view of the perceptible origin of contemporary architecture’. Olgiati began in 2012 at the Venice Biennale, when he asked 40 or so well-known architects to send him a set of reference images that they felt captured the impetus of their work, and the spirit of architecture as a whole. The Images of Architects is the edited compilation of that project, and it is a beautiful little book — roughly the dimensions of a Roman brick, cloth-bound in imperial purple with black velvet end papers.

Since architects have a penchant for pages without text, you might think a picture book would at least be easy to get through. However, ‘images’ bears no relation to the pornographic satiation of typical coffee-table monographs; it takes as much concentration as a technical report. The images demand to be interpreted, and there’s something at first intriguing, and then a little crushing, about that. It feels somewhat insular, requiring a particular understanding of how architectural images work in sequence — that Heinrich Wölfflin-like activity of endless coupling and uncoupling to construct new historical narratives.

The problem with the book — and

snapshots from the Seventies of Las Vegas and some collages of Philip Johnson, while Glenn Murcutt split his collection into one-third aboriginal paintings, one-third corrugated iron photos, and one-third high-modernist masterwork. Ben van Berkel has focused on formlessness, featuring intricate biological specimens and bright, colour streetscapes of New York, vaguely reminiscent of those generic photos that come in Ikea frames. Meanwhile Alejandro Aravena unimaginatively listed the canonical work from any Introduction to Architecture class: the Parthenon, the Pantheon, the Basilica of San Marco, the Villa Rotunda, the Barcelona Pavilion, and so on.

The biggest disappointments were Caruso St John and Peter Eisenman — the former for its stuffy Georgian sitting rooms and stock-photo cloisters (half cast in afternoon

the challenge set by Olgiati — parallels that faced by the discipline: when we juxtapose so many examples of strong individual praxis and personal aesthetic, what results is strangely vacuous and unfulfilling. There are simply too many architectures, too many histories, a psychedelic palimpsest of competing visual definitions. In the words of art critic and philosopher Boris Groys, images are ‘homogeneity without universality’.

The dubious intellectualism of the Americans; the earnest sincerity of the Japanese; the uninspiring, literalist banality of the English — all serve to perpetuate a certain elitism among architects, especially given the architectural elite invited to contribute to this volume in the first place.

To give you a flavour of the book’s inevitable predictability: Venturi Scott Brown displayed

Book The Images of Architects

Edited by Valerio OlgiatiQuart Publishers, £49Review by Jack Self

shadow); the latter for his utter repetitiveness. For at least a decade, Eisenman has been giving the same lecture all around the world: from Rainaldi through Le Corbusier and Piranesi, concluding with an analysis of Terragni’s Casa del Fascio (the subject of his own thesis). To my personal distaste, his contribution to the book was basically the PowerPoint side of this lecture.

Nonetheless, there were definitely a few surprises: Sou Fujimoto has a wonderfully coherent set, redolent of a Studio Ghibli film — bustling Asian streetscapes, dappled shadow on tombs in summer. One fantastic shot shows a Japanese shop owner surrounded by colourful knick-knacks, seemingly overcome by the immensity of all the plastic shit crowding her in. Opposite is a serene fig tree in Singapore, its buttress roots forming

a cathedral for children to play in.But there was only one entry

that I felt really did the structure of the book justice, and that was Mario Botta’s. Clearly reading the complexities of the challenge, he has wrestled to depict more than his own interests. His third image is an icon of a martyr. It is intuitively recognisable as religion itself (in the abstract) and not, as with John Pawson, a picture of a structure that happens to be religious. Opposite the suffering saint is a Picasso sketch, a deformed face contorted in agony.

With just two little squares Botta captures the universality of human suffering, the eternal struggle to make sense of our being and the architect’s constant negotiation of the absolute and the subjective. Similarly, Botta’s last slide, a typographer’s diagram of a capital letter, A, evokes the richness of proportion, structure, authority and the perfection of nature.

But Botta’s first image is the most poignant: a sketch by Carlo Scarpa that simply says ‘Verum Ipsum Factum’, in reference to a branch of philosophy not so far removed from the concerns of Plato. It means the truth defines itself, and suggests that architecture is not, perhaps, a thing in the world at all. Rather, it comes into being only through recognition and labelling. This is a subtle (and perhaps obtuse) way of saying that architecture is whatever we say it is, and therefore any attempt to construct even a fleeting ‘universal view’ by Olgiati is a beguiling, yet utterly impossible task.

One fantastic shot shows a Japanese shop owner surrounded by colourful knick-knacks, seemingly overcome by the immensity of all the plastic shit crowding her in

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The Spectacle of Disintegration — Situationist Passages out of the 20th Century is Ken McKenzie Wark’s third book on the Situationist International, after The Beach Beneath the Street and 50 Years of Recuperation of the Situationist International. The new book discusses the later work of the group and focuses on the material practices as well as the criticaltheory. Thomas Wensing spoke with McKenzie Wark at his office in Manhattan:

TW: So first off, what I find intriguing about your bibliography is that you have a gaming background. You have written Hacker Manifesto and Gamer Theory, but then you write three books about the Situationist International. How did that happen?

MW: The Situationists got the idea of détournement from the poet Lautréamont, who was famous for the Songs of Maldoror. It turned out that in the Fifties Maldoror was hugely plagiarised, and the Situationists were the only ones who defended the practice of the theft itself by arguing that there is no private property in culture. That is a real, quite radical proposition. There are tens, or even hundreds, of millions of people all over the planet who are basically taking possession of their own culture, and they share it with each other. To reappropriate it consciously, that is what the Situationists call us to do. Can you correct it in the direction of hope?

TW: Let’s talk briefly about the society of the spectacle, and what is meant by it. The premise of your book is that we are now witnessing the complete disintegration of the so-called spectacle. So, could you explain what is meant by the spectacle, and who is behind it?MW: It is not a conspiracy, it is a system of social relations mediated by images. It is a doubling up of the system of production of things. What is really enabling about what Debord does, writing in the middle of the Cold War, is to expose that East and

West are two versions of the spectacle. In the East it is concentrated; it revolves around Khruschev, or Mao, or whoever. In our version it revolves around pictures of cars and models and it is diffuse, but it is still a transformation of ‘being’ into ‘having’, and then of ‘having’ into ‘appearing’. It is the two-stage declension with which we live.

Then he revisits these ideas in the Seventies and observes that the states of France and Italy are integrating elements of the concentrated spectacle into the diffuse ones. These are Western states, but they have become opaque and secretive in the manner of a Stalinist apparatus; they have started to deceive themselves. At this point the state can no longer perform the function of historical vision and leadership. The result of this process is not an integrated spectacle in my mind, but that it evolves into the disintegrating spectacle. We all know that we are presiding over slow-motion ruins in the making.

TW: You use the metaphor of the Pacific gyre in your book. The gyre is a current in the Pacific Ocean in which plastic gets collected and just

MW: I was involved in something like an avant-garde movement in the Nineties, one of the names was Nettime [nettime.org]; a network of writers, activists and artists from one end of Europe to the other, out of which came Hacker Manifesto. Then I wrote Gamer Theory, which is the negative version of network technology, and what is now called ‘gamification’.

I wrote these two books, but then I thought I should have done a bit more research on the pre-history of this. The book we all read was Society of the Spectacle, by Guy Debord. So I went back and read it again, and it turned out to be a much more captivating story than I thought. The most interesting chapter is not the first one on the spectacle, that everyone knows, but the second last one on détournement, which is the idea that all culture is common, that we all plagiarise. I wrote about the Situationist International because the existing accounts don’t really help in the here and now.

TW: You talk about détournement. I understand that détournement, to put it in computer terms, is different from remixing. Can you explain what the difference is there?

Book The Spectacle of Disintegration — Situationist Passages out of the 20th Century

by McKenzie WarkPublished by Verso, £16.99Interview by Thomas Wensing

revolves without end, without ever biodegrading. What surprises me is that even though such knowledge becomes increasingly available, is that society never seems to be able to address the root causes of problems; it only repackages it.MW: Right! Well, that is the spectacle. We just give it a different wrapper and a different colour; we wrap it up in green, but it is still the same thing. So to understand science as part of a system of social relations we have to go back and ask: ‘How are things made?’ The historical, materialist question is crucial, you know: ‘How do we socially produce this life?’

This rereading of the Situationist tradition is trying to get back to that. In The Beach beneath the Street and in this book, The Spectacle of Disintegration, I explain that it is not just theory that they were doing, there are practices of making as well. And that is why I restored the figure of Asger Jorn, or Constant, in the earlier book, and in this one the cinema of Debord and René Viénet.

TW: It is astounding that Debord was not a filmmaker in the classical sense, he actually made films by cutting them up. There is the physical labour of making these films. So, you touch on something really interesting there: which technology gets developed is currently decided by a whole network of financial and industrial interests. When you put making back into individual people’s hands, that has a real transformative potential. This aspect of the Situationists, to promote doing things yourself — could this be replicated on a larger scale?MW: Yes, exactly. And I want to be clear: they were not just doing that. But one of the things to ask is this question — what was Debord making? He made 12 issues of a really gorgeous journal, a really fascinating object, the contents of which were without copyright.

So why are you producing a beautiful object, but then the contents are free? What is the dialectical relation you are setting up there? So there is the journal, and he is a filmmaker. On the one hand he is famous for expelling everybody from the Situationist International, and on the other hand he always has collaborators in all these things.

I tracked down his film editors and spoke to them to figure out how he got film editors to do new kinds of cinema. I think in the 21st century we need to extract different stories out of the avant-garde, in order to move forward, and one of the stories here might be to re-establish that relationship between critical making and critical theory. Can we do them together again? That strikes me as very, very important at this particular time, because they have become completely separate realms.

That is the spectacle. We just give it a different wrapper and a different colour; we wrap it up in green but it is still the same thing

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In LS Lowry’s Going to the Match (1936), crowds bizarrely lean forward into the wind as they converge on a football stadium, keen for the action inside. Crowds converging on Tate Britain for Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life come to witness another match, which pitted the Lancashire painter against the status quo of the art establishment.

Its interest after the First World War was the avant-garde, rather than portrayals of drab Manchester or Salford. Nevertheless, Lowry’s work was gradually recognised, and by the Thirties was exhibited in Paris, then London. When the band Status Quo

celebrated Lowry’s work with its first hit in 1967, Pictures of Matchstick Men, it froze his dark, simple figures into the national psyche, but that tritely obscured the significance of Lowry. It was he who revealed the ‘masses’ of industrial society and its habitat. Tate Britain delivers its goal of restoring his significance. The score so far: Status Quo 1-Lowry 2.

It is not quite as simple as working class vs bourgeois art. Lowry himself was a rent collector who voted Tory, raising the question: was he merely documenting ‘modern life’, or speaking for the people he moved among? Certainly, class struggle is not expressed like Stalinist heroic-realist propaganda art. In Lowry’s drawing of Speculators (1924), four awkwardly stiff men could just as well be clerks. There’s no trace of satire — imagine how George Grosz would have portrayed such people in the contemporaneous Weimar Republic! On the other hand, The Cripples (1949) shows characters as bizarre as any Grosz caricature. It is hardly a

sympathetic view. Charlie Chaplin endearingly represented the individual worker in Modern Times (1924), but Lowry’s people are largely anonymous (a powerful exception, not in the show, is the portrait Unemployed (1937)). Even in Pit Disaster (1919), there is a absence of emotion in the bereaved family depicted.

The ubiquitous ‘matchstick man’ is usually little more than a stiff, darkly-dressed constituent of the crowd. Yet Lowry is fascinated by streetlife, recording incidents like fights or prayer meetings or the visit of a hawker. He is detached from events though, merely an observer.

Lowry’s view then, seems apolitical and depersonalised. The ‘modern life’ exhibited here is defined by the urban industrial landscape, which had emerged in the 19th century. In the show’s first room, the Tate includes works by the likes of Maurice Utrillo, which seem irrelevant, and van Gogh, who recognised the emergence of industrial society. (The latter’s 1880 drawing Miners in the

Exhibition Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life

Until 20 OctoberTate BritainReview by Herbert Wright

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Snow, not in the show, shows nine uncannily Lowryesque figures against an industrial Belgian backdrop).

The show’s big surprise to many will be some works by Adolphe Valette, Lowry’s teacher. He would surely be recognised as one of France’s greatest Impressionists but for his main works being about Manchester. Here, his York Street painting (1913) makes the boomtown’s murky light glow like a Whistler nocturne, steam diffuse like a Turner, and the air itself as heavy as Monet’s. His other masterpieces are hoarded in Manchester Art Gallery.

Lowry’s city paintings could not be more different. ‘I only deal with poverty and gloom,’ he said, and the latter sets the visual tone. In dull, drab colours, looming mills and smoking chimneys appear in flat layers like

1 – Industrial Landscape (1955)

2 – Adolphe Valette’s oil painting York Street Leading to Charles Street, Manchester (1913)

3 – Going to the Match (1936)

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successive stage backdrops, paler with distance, marching across vistas below a sky which blends into a grey horizon. Working as an air-raid watchman in the Second World War, he would have seen Manchester from rooftops, but he painted with a floating viewpoint before then.

The cityscape is repetitive scenery, and the focus falls on people moving across their foregrounds, like studies in dynamic crowd behaviour. The far subtler shading and angles of drawings of streets and buildings on show demonstrate Lowry to be a master of massing and perspective but, by comparison, the paintings deal with space almost childishly.

Nevertheless, his formulaic cityscapes work because they are shorthand for the reality of Manchester when it was the workshop of the world. A deeper, atmospheric treatment like Valette’s simply would not have captured the sheer endless grimness of the place. Lowry communicates that directly. He was particularly successful when he

painted industrial wastelands emptied of people, or indeed any life at all. The Tate quotes George Orwell in The Road to Wigan Pier describing ‘flashes’, stretches of dead, polluted water in the landscape. Lowry presents these in paintings such as The Lake (1937), a stunning nightmare view of an entire, vast ‘flash’ feature. Nowadays, we would recognise this as an eco-disaster, but back then, they were considered to be just part of an everyday industrial world, where nature had no place. It gives Lowry an unexpected dimension as a proto-environmentalist, offering a warning similar to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, but 25 years earlier.

There are other places he painted far from the ubiquitous crowds. St Augustine’s Church, Pendlebury (1924) looms so bleakly that you could imagine Father MacKenzie sitting in it, writing the words of a sermon that no-one will hear. The Empty House (1934) is no Edward Hopper masterpiece, but captures a similar sense of stillness and isolation.

He was commissioned after the war to paint for the Festival of Britain, and we get cityscapes much the same as before, but larger. No celebration of a brave new world emerging. Ancoats Hospital (1952) is not an endorsement of the NHS as a Utopian ideal, but a crowd of outpatients who seem thawed out from three decades earlier in an old waiting room where the only signs of modernity are the strip light casings above them. Lowry’s gritty industrial world was beginning to slip away, and its replacement by the post-war landscape of high-rise social housing and motorway schemes was not something he addressed.

Lowry’s style may have been naïve, but it revealed like no other artist the 20th-century working-class world. Some say it is relevant to places where industry booms today, such as the Pearl River Delta or Gujurat. Maybe so. How wonderful it would be if Lowry could be shown in such places, to inspire local artists to document their worlds, because they too will fade in time.

His formulaic landscapes work because they are shorthand for the grim reality of Manchester when it was the workshop of the world

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The AIGA in New York doesn’t do design monographs. Its mandate since it began in 1914, as the American Institute of Graphic Arts, has been to promote professional graphic arts and to educate an audience beyond designers. Even its location on Fifth Avenue, away from the cultural cluster of galleries and design agencies downtown, provides a somewhat untapped footfall.

In the past 10 years, the AIGA has felt the need to expand its programming in response to the amorphous professional categories that graphic design encompasses. For its latest show, Sailing Through Design, the 22,000-member organisation has defied its own exhibition guidelines to host the work of a single Spanish graphic designer, Manuel Estrada.

His designs, or at least his exploration of possible designs, are spread across the pages of 52 notebooks whose spines have been pasted to one of the gallery’s walls like the frayed wallpaper of a wild

imagination. Leafing through the carefully constructed and passionately conceived ideas not only reveals Estrada’s thought process, but also his vulnerability and what AIGA director Ric Grefe identifies as ‘universality’. ‘The real value of any designer is empathy in understanding human-scale responses,’ he says. Though notebooks area familiar emblem of creativity, and used as a marketing tool for companies such as Moleskine, making space for pages sprinkled with buildings on legs, stick-people climbing winding paths made of text and speedily etched symbols is an act of generosity rather than a cliché. In this way, visitors are given unparalleled access to Estrada’s creative ramblings.

Dedicated primarily to editorial design, the sketchbooks’ entrails range from collages to drawings and mixed media. These are complemented by a series of glass cabinets that hold seemingly random objects: an upturned leather shoe with chalk-drawn arrows on its sole; a wooden mask with white and red bristles; a pair of rusted horseshoes. These aren’t

of shiny brogues, one black, one white, sit side by side, photographed from above. There is a precious moment when discovering Estrada’s internal dialogues on paper, showing the shoes in alternate colours and patterns: a visual struggle to represent the most powerful contrast.

In some ways Estrada’s work is an antidote to manicured exhibitions and the recent focus on design’s social impact or the ubiquitous strategy design, as championed by larger design agencies, such as IDEO and Frog as well as the AIGA’s own community-based work with the UN.

Though the majority of the work on show is Estrada’s editorial designs, the prominent positioning of his designs of logos seem at odds with the craft-inspired dynamic drawings. Hung over the space’s centre like medieval

polished, consummated products, but part of the armoury of props that Estrada enlists, discovers, repurposes and sometimes builds from scratch, such as the twisted smoking pipe for The Hounds of the Baskervilles, to create glimpses of environments, scenes that he then photographs to create witty, satirical and sometimes darkly obtuse book covers.

Estrada’s engagement with objects, concepts and representation gives the viewer an intimate way into a visual culture that is deeply concerned with message. Finding what links the sketchbooks, the objects and the final outcome requires some investigation, immersing the viewer in an archaeological encounter. This subtle sense of uncertainty and intimacy is a welcome shift from conventional design shows, which often tend to present design as a finished product.

On one notebook cover, a pair

Exhibition Manuel Estrada: Sailing Through Design

Until 11 OctoberAIGA, New YorkReview by Gwen Webber

ceremonial banners, the large printed logos for corporate and cultural institutions – including multinational oil company Respol, Madrid City Council’s information service Linea Madrid, and Madrid’s free library lending service Bibliometro — add drama but demand explanation that isn’t available. Their overbearing imagery saps the energy from the other phenomenological work.

The exhibition also formalises the AIGA’s founding mission by making the building blocks of graphic design the heart of the show. Indeed, Estrada is an ideal choice for this kind of affirmation as his working process reveals the underbelly of a profession that many only come in contact with once it is an outcome, on a shelf, as a poster or a magazine.

The show is a clear reminder that there is room for graphic design to be a conduit for both empathy and vulnerability.

The show is a reminder that there is room for graphic design to be a conduit for empathy and vulnerability

1 – Estrada’s illustration for Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago’s book The Elephant’s Journey

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Back in the Eighties there used to be this very grimy (in the oily, rather than musical, sense), theatrical, agit-prop, industrial music band called Test Department. Their output was a heady mix of politics and metal beating and grinding. For me, the band’s apotheosis was a gig it did in an old maintenance depot under the flyovers near Paddington.

I recently saw a flyer for that gig — the Unacceptable Face of Freedom. One name on it stuck out, Tom Dixon. I haven’t had a chance to ask him, but it must be the same Tom Dixon, the self-taught designer with a strong penchant for welding. Has to be.

That was more than 25 years ago and now, celebrating 30 years of Tom Dixon design, Violette Editions has brought out this very personal, 600-page look-back through his work and influences, in his own words. Based around individual products, this is a tour through the

of the book laid out as a more or less chronological (with some theming) series of spreads of images with a printed interleaf separating them. The left-hand page of each spread is an picture of something that influenced, informs or draws a parallel with the piece of work shown on the right-hand page. The interleaf contains apposite soundbites or anecdotes about the object, the period it was from, or the gestation of ideas during that time. It’s a rigid format that could easily feel contrived, but actually works rather well. There are naturally a few lame pages of info — album filler tracks — but not that many.

As you move through the tome you learn about a designer driven to create and ready to make mistakes to keep his hands busy. Early on Dixon talks about his lack of formal design education and how he had to get out there and just make chairs, a lot of chairs: ‘Of course some were ugly, some really embarrassing and some completely structurally unsound, but it meant that I taught myself all manner of things about balance, shape, making, materials, production, and ergonomics through my own mistakes and

life of a designer who has been there and done that (and learned from the successful mistakes).

He’s been the design auteur — that’s where he started off, welding together chairs from ferrous objets trouvés and he’s been the new designer on the block, getting the attention of the Italian manufacturers (Capellini with the S-chair). He also made the quite unexpected leap into the corporate world, as creative director of the then Ikea-owned Habitat, which was still a major design-led force on the high street in those days.

He has gone on to use that global-sourcing nous and retail savvy, for his eponymous company, with everything from an eclectic, metaphorically and literally, range of left-field commercial products for the home (the Eclectic range: moneyboxes, to door stops, to scented candles), to lighting and furniture aimed at the specifier and the knowledgeable design consumer.

The book starts off strongly autobiographical, but as it proceeds becomes more of a catalogue of works, influences and processes. After a brief but enlightening introduction, it moves to the meat

Book Dixonary

by Tom DixonPublished by Violette Editions, £35Review by Johnny Tucker

not from a book or teacher.’He’s a doer, not a talker and

that’s also evident in both the format of the book — it’s like a lecture based around slides – and that he comes across so clearly obsessed with material, process, structure, like a ‘proper’ designer, if we’re honest.

But lest we forget, he was at Habitat for seven years (he was also creative director at Artek), where he wasn’t designing, but controlling and refining, and the experience barely warrants a mention. That’s a very long way — in quite a short time — from his goggles and gloves days. There’s virtually no contextual design discussion and no toes are trodden on or noses put out of joint here. This is ‘me, Tom Dixon, and how and why I make things’, with amenable autobiographical detail that puts you in mind of Nigel Slater’s Toast — a nice patina, nothing too challenging.

Its an enjoyable, often light read and I’m certainly not going to condemn him for creating candles — something that bothers him enough to mention — because they’re an individual TomDixon take on a retail/middle class-home staple and have a nice smell about them — like the book really.

Early on, Dixon talks about his lack of formal design education and how he had to just get out there and make chairs, a lot of chairs

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30 years ago Deyan Sudjic (editor) and Peter Murray (publisher) had the idea of creating a ‘design, architecture and style’ magazine and, after hawking their plan around the creative community, managed to garner enough funding to start publishing Blueprint in 1983. Art director Simon Esterson gave it a look, that, to this day, Richard Rogers (see page 210) remembers as ‘fresh and exciting’, though Murray remembers that they perhaps didn’t choose the best picture of Eva Jiřičná: ‘She was a bit shiny.’ (page 207)

Launch issue associate editors included Dan Cruickshank, Jonathan Glancey, Loyd Grossman and James Woodhuysen. Over the next 62 pages, we take a look back, selecting one cover from each year and returning to the cover star to ask what that time meant to them and what key changes in their profession have occurred over the three decades that Blueprint has been publishing.

FROM THE ARCHIVES

The last 30 years of Blueprint in the words of:

1983 Eva Jiřičná | Eva Jiřičná Architects1984 Ron Arad | Ron Arad Associates 1985 Richard Rogers | Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners1986 Paul Smith | Paul Smith 1987 Nigel Coates | Nigel Coates1988 Neville Brody | Research Studios 1989 Michael Hopkins | Hopkins Architects1990 Eric Parry | Eric Parry Associates1991 Terry Farrell | Terry Farrell & Partners1992 Nicholas Grimshaw | Grimshaw Architects 1993 Philippe Starck | Starck1994 Marc Newson | Marc Newson1995 Jacques Herzog | Herzog & de Meuron 1996 Elizabeth Diller | Diller Scofidio + Renfro 1997 Sam Jacob | FAT 1998 Steven Holl | Steven Holl Architects1999 Eric Kuhne | CivicArts/Eric R Kuhne & Associates2000 Iain Borden 2001 Fernando Gutiérrez | Studio Fernando Gutiérrez2002 Steffen Sauerteig | eboy 2003 Luke Pearson | Pearson Lloyd 2004 David Greene | Archigram 2005 Peter St John | Caruso St John 2006 Charles Jencks 2007 Zaha Hadid | Zaha Hadid Architects 2008 Craig Dykers | Snøhetta 2009 Eduardo Souto de Moura | Souto Moura Arquitectos 2010 Norman Foster | Foster + Partners 2011 Terence Conran | Conran and Partners 2012 Thomas Heatherwick | Heatherwick Studio 2013 David Adjaye | Adjaye Associates

Interviews conducted by: Johnny Tucker, Veronica Simpson, Shumi Bose, Herbert Wright

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1983

‘In 1983 when Blueprint was published for the first time I was working on the Lloyd’s building in Richard Rogers’ office. It was a fantastic experience which definitely marked the rest of my professional activities. It was a 24-hour-a-day job but I would not change it for anything. It was the first building in London which was really out of the ordinary. And not just a little.

‘In the intervening decades, after the Lloyd’s building, the architecture started changing drastically. It is hard to imagine what the Docklands was like, what the City of London was like and what the public buildings, shops, restaurants, museums looked like. The generation of post-war architects eventually got to fulfil their dreams, technology was moving ahead allowing new stars like Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind and many others to build what was previously considered unbuildable. The collaboration of architects and engineers produced remarkable results. Glass technology completely changed possibilities, which the previous generation had only dreamt about. And there was the lottery, facilitating new public and cultural buildings, an awareness of green issues and urban concepts... I could go on for ever.

‘To demonstrate shifting sensibilities, two moments across the years particularly stand out. The first concerns an Austrian client, who asked us to build a hotel in Prague but to design a “facade only in order to get a planning approval”. I persuaded him to let us completely re-design the existing proposal because the facade without any interior consistency was not going to be convincing.

‘When we had successfully obtained the planning approval, he started looking for an architect to design the interiors. I questioned him about why we could not continue and he replied: “Eva, to have a modern building with modern interiors, it is suicide.” We subsequently completed the project inside and out and he made a fortune on his “disaster”.

Eva JiricnaEva Jiřičná Architects

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‘The second incident that comes to mind is when we had completed the Orangery at Prague’s castle and I was walking in the castle’s royal gardens and spotted a few Canadian students climbing on the actual structure. They were sharing their admiration with the details and materials and concept issues, taking photographs and obviously enjoying themselves. Before my architectural pride had inflated to bursting point, I spotted an American couple – obviously intellectuals: in glasses with large dark frames, serious faces, he wearing a bow tie and she in an Armani suit with Hermès scarf. They looked at each other in visible disgust and he muttered: “What a shame!” They just couldn’t bear to see something so modern up against the historic castle. Thank- fully, we’ve moved on since then.’

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1984

‘I think 1984 was a time when we needed something like Blueprint to write about us and Blueprint needed people like us to write about. I always say that when I started doing what I did then, I had no one to join. I needed to invent my profession. It would have been different if I lived in Milan. But I’m glad I didn’t. It all happened because someone had told me that they had booked a space at the Milan Furniture Fair and they had nothing to show, so would I bring something. For some reason we had a great success first time we went to Milan. Nobody was doing what we did — everyone was busy with bad taste and Bella Figura. It was after that time we met Joseph [Ettedgui] and got involved in his shops.

‘I never intended to join the design scene. Then Vitra asked me to design for them [resulting in the Tom Vac chair]. Rolf Fehlbaum [CEO of Vitra] was profiled in Blueprint as “the man who loved chairs”, and he called me “one of the most interest-ing designers in London”. So then first I read that I was a “designer” in Blueprint. But I always felt like an outsider to the profession. When I graduated from the AA it was more like an art school, because no one was building anything in England in those days. I tried to be a good boy and get a job. It didn’t last very long — I realised early on that I’m not cut out to work for other people. One day I just didn’t come back after lunch and that was when I did the Rover chair — I walked from the office and passed a scrapyard behind the Roundhouse and found the old red leather car seat. I didn’t know making that into a chair was going to suck me into this design world.

RON ARAD Ron Arad Associates

‘The biggest change in the last three decades has been how computers have penetrated the process of design — the shift from the physical to the digital. You can do a lot more with less people in a shorter time. It opened up possibili-ties, but it also brings a lot of junk with it. My show in the Design Museum Holon (see page 40) is about the shift from hammers to pixels. Does the shift to quantity at speed mean that quality suffers? I don’t know. There’s always been a lot of things to look at and some things to enjoy. Are people better photographers now that everyone has a camera? Maybe the good thing that this proliferation brings is that we are more open to the visual, things are more accessible. Maybe it means that people don’t miss out on things. Things don’t get better, there are just different ways of making.’

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1985

‘In 1985, London was in a very bad state. We’d had no work for two years previous to Lloyd’s and I’d more or less given up architecture, yet again. As I remember, John Young [long time collaborator and founding partner of the Richard Rogers Partnership] was trying to become a taxi driver! People were talking about moving to Frankfurt and 1985 was just about the pits — London was losing its confidence. In a way, I always measure things next to that time and the difference is, now that London is on top of the world, there’s no real competitor apart from maybe New York. So there’s been a vast change for the better.

‘Lloyd’s was amazing. We were unbelievably surprised to win; we really were the outsiders. One has to remember RIBA president Gordon Graham who was a key person both on Lloyd’s and on Norman’s Shanghai [Norman Foster, Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, Hong Kong]. Lloyd’s, who were well known for not knowing much about architecture, went to the RIBA and Gordon Graham recommended a shortlist. Without Gordon, I don’t think either Norman or myself would be anywhere near where we are today.

‘I would say that environmental responsibility has been the biggest change, in my lifetime — the fact that we now realise that we’re living in a society where if we don’t do something about it, it will lead to climate change.

‘We’re very conscious that we have to integrate environmental factors into buildings. The house we’ve just built in the Royal Acad-emy courtyard is unbelievably environmentally efficient. The change towards making cities for people instead of cities for cars, is also a key difference that started around that time [the Eighties] — a much greater consciousness of public space and public domain.’

RICHARD ROGERSRogers Stirk Harbour + Partners

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1986

‘In 1986 I had two shops open in London, one in Floral Street, Covent Garden and one in Avery Row, in the West End of London. So I would have been very busy with that! In terms of the bigger picture of what was happening, I had started to expand into Japan which really was a turning point. I went to Japan and opened the first shop in 1984; by 1986 I had probably got about six shops there.

 ‘Since then, I think that modern design and particularly architecture have become a lot more accepted around the world, whereas a lot of the key cities were really holding on to tradition for many years. Now, I think there is a balance between tradition and modernism.

‘One of the big turning points was Frank Gehry’s Guggen-heim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. The mayor, Iñaki Azkuna, was really brilliant in commissioning that because it drew attention to this town that, really, many people had never visited or been to, at that time. This then created a domino effect with many cities around the world doing the same. Nowadays, there are so many iconic museums around the world. I think modern architecture has had a big effect in the last 20 years.’

‘When Blueprint first started, it was at a time when there were not nearly so many publications on modernity, modern objects and on people and architecture. So I think it was really ahead of its time — as today this is so important. The graphic design and art direction was very modern so I would say it was very pioneering and luckily it’s stayed that way’.

PAUL SMITHPaul Smith

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1987

‘Being featured so prominently in Blueprint in 1987 coincided with my first projects completed in Japan. At this time, Tokyo was a booming success that everyone back in Europe wanted a taste of, and the same went for me over there. With my then partner, Doug Branson, I went on to complete over 20 projects in Japan, including three buildings and numerous interiors. With its extraordinary courage and patronage, I liken this period to the heyday of the Medici. It set the pace for my work from then on, shaping both my highly charged narrative design style and my professional way of working. My goal now, as then, is to realise my designs with artistry.’

‘What changes in the last 30 years have impacted most on design, in my view? Two phenomena spring to mind. The first is the creeping prevalence of digital design techniques. When it comes to developing architectural spaces, digital design has completely outmoded the plan and section design mentality. Before computers, in the early 1990s, many of my projects had ambitious curved surfaces that had to be drawn by hand. The second is the increased industrialisation of architectural design. There seem only to be very large offices employing literally hundreds of people or the small studio with a much more flexible and, hopefully, inventive agenda. Not very many sit in the middle.’

NIGEL COATESNigel Coates

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1988

‘In 1988, I had completed the first of two books for Thames & Hudson, and the V&A had put on an exhibition of my work to coincide with the publication. That show went on to tour Japan and elsewhere in Europe, which really launched my international work. This kick-started my love affair with Japan, which has continued ever since. 

‘Since then, two huge shifts in design spring to mind: one is the influence of digital design and the internet, and how that has impacted the viability of print media, which I predict will become a luxury in future — books will certainly be a luxury, but also the way in which design disciplines cross-fertilise and mingle with other forms of communication, technology and interaction. We are post-disciplinary; everything is hybrid.

‘The other shift is one I am currently doing everything in my power to counteract — that is the UK government’s desire to drag us back to a Victorian era where the arts are marginalised, schools produce obedient cogs for the machinery of this government’s chosen economic engines, art schools are for a few privileged elite, and people are not encouraged to question, challenge or experiment. Through my role as president of D&AD, I’m hoping to raise funds to help people who might otherwise not be able to afford it get through art college. And through my role as dean of the School of Communication at the RCA, I’m hoping to help develop skilled, dangerous thinkers, problem solvers, individuals who will lead and create industry and society. Design is about everything — far more so now than in 1983 when Blueprint launched. What an exciting opportunity.’

NEVILLE BRODYResearch Studios

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1989

‘By 1989, we had been in practice on our own account for 12 years. During this time, we had built 12 new buildings, including Schlumberger’s Research Centre at Cambridge, the Mound Stand at Lords and our own offices in Marylebone.

‘This period also included four years working with Michael Dickson of Buro Happold on the first of our membrane structures for Basildon Town Centre. Contracts had been let and site huts erected and then the New Town Commission sold it off. The project was aborted. However, nothing is ever lost. We had become proficient in the use of membrane structures.

‘In 1989, we completed the small round stone Cutlery Factory for the Mellor family, on the base of a redundant, overgrown, rural gasometer. Although small, the building has done well for both the client and architect and was the first of a number of projects together.

‘Also in 1989, the rebuilding of Bracken House was on site, opposite St Paul’s. On the drawing boards / Apple Macs, we had the new Opera House at Glyndebourne — structural brickwork and timber — and the new London headquarters for IBM, by Heathrow Airport: three stories high, exposed structural steel frame, expressed inside and out [without concrete casing], engineered by Arup. I think Mies would have enjoyed the technology.

‘And in the pipeline in 1989, the enormous complexity of two autonomous clients, Parliament and London Transport, sitting one above the other on the corner of Parliament Square — which was to become Portcullis House and Westminster Underground Station.

‘Two and a half decades later, and it doesn’t get any easier. The build rate of the projects, for which one has prepared a concept design, is still only one in 10. Projects are more complex and, for us, more international, which has certainly proved rewarding.’

MICHAEL HOPKINSHopkins Architects

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1990

‘Just around the corner was the bludgeoning of the 1991 economic crash. I was in the middle of my most intense period of teaching — 14 years at Cambridge from 1983—97 and was between sabbatical teaching stints at Harvard and the Tokyo Institute of Technology.

‘Since then life has been about practicing in London with the odd passionate fling further afield. There’s a curious cycle of decades: projects that last most of one, like St Martin-in-the-Fields or the Holburne Museum, or half of one, typically like the commercial buildings in London.

‘In this decade, the second after the millennium, a focus has been the dialogue between the two cities of Westminster and the City and what makes their differences, architecturally speaking, so pronounced. Woven through these preoccupations is the cycle of experiments with the latent potential that materials carry. The first from the 1990s was with stone: Pembroke, the needle at London Bridge and Finsbury Square. The second was with metal: Bedford School, Aldermanbury Square and Threadneedle Street. The third has been with faience: New Bond Street, Bath and Piccadilly.

‘Another conscious continuity is trying to work with a broad range of scales: some furniture; always a house; the urban buildings and more singularly, masterplans. It takes a decade or two for the design thinking and research of an architectural school studio to manifest itself and I am for the kind of slowness that architecture has in common with film-making or the experiments of a research institute. Working in one city has the drawback and advantages of a gathering density of voices in close proximity but there is no escaping the fact when you walk around a corner that architecture is a framework, when it goes live, for the less tangible realities of gesture, language and habits that are part of an extraordinary city without end.’

ERIC PARRYEric Parry Architects

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1991

‘What the cover says to me, over 20 years on, is how ironic life can be. The cover and its sub-heading and background picture suggest the opposite to the reality that then emerged, as I was not to build in London for over another 10 years. We had just finished building three prominent London buildings which were the subject of a Blueprint Special edition [Blueprint Extra 09 ‘Three Urban Projects’, published in 1993] — Embankment Place, Alban Gate and MI6 — but they were to end that run of London buildings all of them commissioned in the 1980s.

TERRY FARRELLTerry Farrell & Partners

 ‘At that very time, July/August 1991, I was to win a competition for “The Peak” in Hong Kong which formed the basis of a new office and a much more rewarding decade of work in that city. This led on to growing work and offices in China (Shanghai and Beijing) and so the cover and its timing was indeed far from heralding an era “in Wren’s Shadow”. It has taken us 20 years to rebuild the London office but it has grown again in the last two or three years and now at last equals the Hong Kong office, in size and activity. We all feel, whether by luck, or design or just life’s ironies, our two offices are just the right two cities to be in.’

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1992

‘The early 1990s was a rather bleak period for the architectural profession. Fortunately, we weathered the storm and 1992 was actually a high point for us. We had both the Waterloo International Terminal and the British Pavilion at Expo ’92 finishing that year; arguably two of the most important projects for our practice. Waterloo completed in 1992 and was opened by the Queen in 1993. At the time, the client billed it as “the most important project in Europe”. Our Expo ’92 scheme meanwhile, marked the beginning of the practice’s first project to consider sustainability, energy use and climate.

‘What developments of the last three decades have most influenced my profession? The arrival of CAD was obviously very important for the architectural profession. I remember we got rid of our last drawing board in 1988, when, coincidently, we had a show at the RIBA which was sponsored by Apple. The recognition by the industry of sustainable issues has also been key. We perceived this early; I raised the need to conserve energy within industrial buildings at an RIBA conference in 1980.        

‘The renaissance of rail travel has been personally significant; it has enabled large public buildings like the Waterloo International Terminal to be built. It’s also allowed travel from city centre to city centre, and highlighted the importance of cities as opposed to urban sprawl. Finally, the “adoption of the millennium” by the whole UK and the subsequent investment in public buildings it has inspired was also significant. Without it the Eden Project wouldn’t have existed!’

NICHOLAS GRIMSHAWGrimshaw Architects

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1993

‘I live alone, with my wife. We live very alone in the middle of nowhere… we live in the middle of the mud where we produce oysters. I work alone outside of fashions and trends. There are no conversations with anyone.

‘I never read any magazines, especially any design magazines now! My feeling is that some magazines, to sell more, have tried to make a confusion between design and art and between design and fashion. That’s why we see so many ridiculous things now. Some designers seem ashamed to design a chair — they want to design a piece of art. It’s a little stupid, because it’s a lot more difficult to design a chair than art or fashion. I prefer artists who want to make commercial design to designers who want to make art.

‘I think and I hope a magazine will try and put design back on track, to remind people design has a job to help people have a better life, to be very political, very philosophi-cal, very radical and direct. Can design save life? I’m not sure. Can it help people to have a better life? I think so. Today we have so many big issues in front of us we need to be looking for the values that save life, at creativity — not trends — to help civilisation.

Design is normal today. Design is not enough. The big difference is that business has understood that design can create a company. Look at Apple — there is no invention there, just a design company. We must not fall into the trap that Raymond Loewy set more than 50 years ago, that design was just created to make more business. Design has to help people — it is a big difference.’

PHILIPPE STARCKStarck

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1994

‘In 1994, I founded the company Pod (later Ikepod) with Oliver Ike to manufacture my watch designs. The same year, limited edition alumini-um pieces were shown at the Wormhole exhibition in Milan. The pieces shown included: Orgone Chair, Alufelt Chair, Orgone Stretch Lounge, Event Horizon Table.

‘I continued working with Italian manufacturers Cappellini, Flos and Moroso, releasing pieces such as the Helice Lamp, Hangman and the Mini Event Horizon Table. I released the “Gello” table for French company 3 Suisses. In Paris, I meet Benjamin de Haan, with whom I formed a business partnership, Marc Newson Ltd. And I began working on my first solo exhibition, Bucky, de la Chimie au design, at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris. which opened the following year.

‘The key developments of the last couple of decades are clearly around technology — like what you’re able to do with an iPhone. If someone had dropped an iPhone on your lap 10 years ago you’d be speechless. It would be like a trip to the future. That’s kind of what I do as a designer; my job is trying to imagine what we’re going to need in the future. It’s got to be contemporary or there’s no point.

A lot of design is obsolete by the time it comes out.

‘Then there’s the computer, which is a very powerful organisational tool for a designer. It allows me to direct and control the interpretative relationship between my design and a manufacturer. I can encode my data and transmit it intact. That’s why computers are important, but they are nowhere near spontaneous enough to compete with the agility of human conception. They cannot propose productive mistakes or imaginative leaps. Yes, a computer will tell me that I can’t do certain things — for example, that a certain tangent between two lines can’t exist. But give me a pencil or a piece of clay and I’ll show you how it can be done. Until the day when I can put my hands in rubber gloves and make something inside a computer — meaning that I can bypass the current language or data required to translate and encode communication to the machine — and transfer information directly through my fingertips, then it’s still necessary for me to draw and make prototypes.

MARC NEWSONMarc Newson

‘Rapid prototyping and stereolithography allow you to design an object in virtual space and transmit the data to another machine to “grow” or “print” that object in 3D. These machines will very soon be available for domestic use; kids will probably have access to a technology that can produce the toys of their imagination. However, the worst thing about this possibility — in my opinion — is that it removes the experience of making things; it replaces experience with commodity.

‘Finally, there’s sustainability. It is such a buzzword these days and it is ultimately very challenging for designers to be completely ethical, not only environmentally but especially morally. My ultimate litmus test of sustainability is not to create future landfill but rather objects with inherent value that people can live with for a very long time and pass down to future generations.’

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1995

‘In 1995 we got the commission for the Tate Modern, which opened up new doors for us in many ways. We had started our practice very early, and had built a good foundation for what we were interested in and wanted to do. Then with this great London project on our books we could really start to do other international projects with more visibility but also with more public responsibility. So there were quite a few years before, where we grew very slowly, but prepared all the ingredients, so to speak, to cook real meals. And from this point on we could do it! And this moment in time was also when others of our generation — Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Jean Nouvel — started to realise their larger scale projects which demonstrated a new attitude in architecture, very different from the previous generation which tried to escape modernism and fell into the trap, or rather the dead-end, of postmodernism.

‘The good thing which started in the Nineties was the development of architecture as platforms and generators for public urban life, the negative aspects came along with fame, giving architects attributes like rock stars which ultimately led to those egocentric, overly iconic projects that everybody is sick of now. Today we are witnessing an interesting phase because somehow the hype has gone, the architectural expression of individual style and form is dead and every project needs to be defined on a more pragmatic and conceptual basis.’

Jacques HerzogHerzog & de Meuron

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1996

‘The 1990s were a heady time. It was the height of postmodernism, the culture wars, and identity politics. The internet and video technology were hitting the mainstream and we, then Diller + Scofidio, had our heads down, doing our best to engage with all of it. In 1996 we were getting attention for projects like Soft Sell and Slow House. That year, we completed two major video installations: Indigestion, which we travelled extensively; and Jump Cuts, a permanent installation in San Jose, CA. We collaborated on two theatre pieces: Moving Target with Frédéric Flamand and Charleroi/Danses; and Monkey Business with Hotel Pro Forma and Dumb Type. These projects, across the disciplines of architecture, performance, and installation art, were experiments subverting the distinctions between “live” and “mediated” experiences.

‘Which developments have impacted most on our practice since then? Beyond digital modelling and fabrication that have changed the way all architects work, advances in robotics and real-time responsive systems had a direct impact on our work.

‘In designing Blur for the Swiss Expo in 2002, we employed a primitive form of artificial intelligence. A built-in weather station collected real-time weather data — temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, and dew point. The conditions were analysed to regulate water pressure in a variety of zones to 35,000 fog nozzles, producing a fine mist from the lake water below. The result is a building of atmosphere, a dynamic inhabitable made of natural and man-made forces, an experiment in de-emphasis on an environmental scale.

ELIZABETH DILLERDiller Scofidio + Renfro

‘For our retrospective at the Whitney Museum the following year, we collaborated with Honeybee Robotics, one of the firms behind NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover (the Mars Driller), to develop Mural. Reflecting our discomfort with the alleged neutrality of the white walls of the museum, the gallery partitions subdividing the museum’s fourth floor into content-specific spaces were slowly destroyed by a “dissident robot” A common drill operated by an intelligent navigation system randomly perforated the museum’s walls, contaminating the isolation of the light and sound controlled spaces.

‘In the end, we consider architecture as a technology unto itself: a big special effects machine that delights and disturbs the senses while it keeps out the rain.’

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1997

‘In 1997, FAT was in a process of metamorphosis, in its chrysalis stage, changing from its larval form of a loose collective, sloughing off its adolescence before emerging as an architecturally active butterfly. We had probably just completed the KesselsKramer interior design in Amsterdam, and were pushing to get into building real buildings. It took a real force of effort to do this, something that often felt like a Sisyphean task, to take a set of interests and concerns and transform them into built reality. We were connected at that time with like-minded young Dutch practices, like NL Architects, and Crimson Architectural Historians — with whom we’re designing the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture next year.

‘Over the last 30 years, it is perhaps noticeable how little has changed, how many established practices are ploughing the same furrow. Look at Zaha’s office, for example, or Ben van Berkel’s Canaletto building on City Road — these guys have been doing the same thing since the early Nineties, and no one seems to worry about moving on. Compare that to how culture used to evolve with such astounding speed — for example it’s just a decade between Sergeant Pepper and the Sex Pistols, then another to acid house; contemporary culture seems a very different proposition. Maybe that’s something to do with the time we live in — everything exists simultaneously and is equally connected. Maybe culture doesn’t progress in the straight forward way it used to. That might explain how come we’re in the third decade of the Eighties revival.’

Above: (Left to right) Sam Jacob, Charles Holland, Sean Griffiths

sam jacobFAT

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1998

‘In May 1998, I flew from New York City to Helsinki with my mother, father and future wife to celebrate the opening of the Kiasma Museum. Now, my mother has passed away, and my dad is going to be 93 on September 18, and I am still in love with architecture.

 ‘Over the last 30 years, detail, material, proportion and scale in architecture have become more important than ever. I look back on the Kiasma Museum, a competition win of 516 entries, as the project that launched Steven Holl Architects into international cultural works. It was our first computer-drawn architecture, starting from a 5in x 7in watercolour concept.’    

STEVEN HOLLSteven Holl Architects

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1999

‘In 1999, our international work began to expand. Lecturing around the world brought to five continents our research and innovation of Bluewater [despite Blueprint! Ed] and the opening of Cockle Bay Wharf in Darling Park, Sydney. 

Our ideas of civic society updated the Enlightenment ideas of civil society: places that empowered rather than enslaved the individual; treating customers as guests instead of consumers;  honouring an individual’s aspirations more than their status quo; celebrating the heroic routine of everyday life; restoring the storytelling quality of architecture and the pageantry of cities. Our office expanded globally into Waterfronts, retail/leisure mixed-use centres, and the master designing of cities. Still, today, this is our triad of expertise. 

‘Which developments have impacted most in the intervening decade? Explosive experimentation of design in developing nations and cities has ignited the search for form. New property booms have failed to find a glove-fit to their own culture by copying forms that never worked in the West. The internet has created the most savvy, articulate, enlightened global expectations for taste, style, fashion, trends and design. And a more cosmopolitan consciousness about tolerance for diversity of faith plus a trust in secular business ethics has allowed designers from around the world to work in exotic, growing places... so long as they honour the uniqueness of that society’s past and future. 

‘The age of the “iconic building” is passing. Buildings that lay waste to a city and make a society’s public realm residual have shown that this conceit of architectural bombast has outlived its experiment. Instead, iconic civic places restore the genius of the legacy of all great cities.  Celebrating a city as a marketplace of ideas is the only way society and civilisation advances. 

ERIC KUHNECivicArts / Eric R Kuhne & Associates

‘We are shifting from an economy of greed and a politics of fear to accept the mantle tossed high above all of us by the Enlightenment. The ‘mantle of understanding’ that architecture and cities are the dominion of a society’s ethos... not the money-lenders. Each generation must capture its spirit in the buildings and cities they pass on. That spirit is not measured in return on investment, but in its ability to ennoble a society.’

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2000

‘In 2000, I was finishing off three academic studies: one on skateboarding, one on how people’s everyday experiences of architecture make constant changes to buildings and cities, and another on intersections between critical theory and historical evidence as ways to think about architecture. I wanted to see how all of these things — particular buildings, places, people, activities, ideas and intentions —come together to help create truly dynamic and invigorating architectures, from the scale of the skateboard and human bodies to those of urban space and even global networks. Today, I am still following the same path.

 ‘Over the last 30 years, what I notice most is how my favourite city, London, has changed beyond all recognition, from being relatively moribund and stagnant into a fabulously energetic capital — full of great designers, architects, musicians, foodies and creative types, but also bursting with unusual street life, different voices and world cultures all rubbing up against each other. It ain’t perfect — what city is? — but that is part of the attraction, doing what all really great cities should do, continuously challenging, surprising and unsettling as well as locating, affirming and comforting. London is now truly modern.’

IAIN BORDENThe Bartlett, UCL

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2001

‘In 2001 I had just come back to London from running my own graphic design company in Barcelona to be one of the directors at Pentagram. It was a weird time. There was a lot of money being thrown at new technology, and it was seen as a whole “brave new world” that would revolutionise design, with a lot of design companies switching their focus completely and lots of web design companies and specialist new media agencies being created. In the end, it was more like the Wild West. A lot of it fell flat on its face. That was a good learning period for the industry.

‘At the time I had no interest in the technology. I was fairly sure that print wasn’t doomed at all. It looked like we were missing out on something, because all my business was print and a lot of my business at Pentagram was print-oriented. But in that sense I was confident because I was going into an organisation that represented those values I admired.

‘Now with the passing of time you think: what were they all so worked up about? Look at where we are now: the technology that has survived and thrived is what feels natural. Apple has pioneered that trend and done it very well. We’ve come a long way.

‘But there’s something very personal about print. Print will never die for me. It might become a luxury but I’d much rather read a book that has been published than an iPad edition.

‘Enjoyment and use of design has become mainstream — there are so many design companies now, and so many “citizen designers”. I worry that there’s no proper strategy, that people think “if it looks good, it is good”. There’s no consideration of how it works. We’ve amassed a rubbish dump of “good taste” that doesn’t work, and a lot of “good-enough” mediocrity.

‘As a designer, technology has enabled very quick decision-making: you have to be consistently good at high speed, like driving a Formula 1 car. You have to be very confident in what you do. In that respect technology has been good. But there’s a downside. Technology has increased the pressure. There’s no time to reflect. As a designer, you need time to reach in, to see, to test; it’s almost like we’ve lost patience with all this. Clients have lost patience, and designers are under stress. I’d like to see the computer as a typesetting tool or an artworking tool and that’s it. I’d like to have more thinking time, and be

FERNANDO GUTIERREZStudio Fernando Gutiérrez

more contemplative about what we do. When I see the work being done out there it often feels rushed and heavy-handed. But I still believe in the power of good design.

‘For me, social issues are very important and what I like to do with my design is reflect social issues and culture and keep that flame burning. I’m involved with museums and I work with artists and galleries and I find that fascinating. Art touches so many things. That’s the beauty of being a designer — that you’re able to work in so many areas that interest you and go deeply into them and discover things.

‘I don’t see myself as an author. I help to deliver an idea but it’s not about me or my style, it’s still much more about the idea.’

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2002

‘Our work was international in 2002, and still is. We can work from anywhere now and have never really had local clients. We are now making wooden toys as a sideline. It’s expensive, but it’s fun, doing something that’s not digital. At the moment, our big project is moving office. We are in a loft building, and now we’re moving to a shop on a street and we want to try selling a lot of our posters and toys, maybe opening one day a week. We like the idea of meeting the people that like our stuff. It’s a new experience. We were asked to create a mosaic for an art fair in Italy. It lasted two or three months then they took it down before we saw it. It would be pretty amazing having one of our mosaics on a skyscraper in New York.’

Pictured from left, Svend Smital, Steffan Sauerteig, Kai Vermehr

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2003

‘In 2002 we were launching our design for Virgin Atlantic’s ground-breaking Upper Class seat. Until that point, we had worked on shop interiors and furniture, but nothing related to airlines. We had won and installed the Westminster street lighting project, which we developed with Artemide. We had also just launched Knoll Scope, an integrated desking and storage system. The fusion of these different strands of work was what attracted Virgin to us.

‘When we started, clients were quite distrustful of multidisciplinary studios. Now, there’ is more convergence, openness and exchange with clients and within the industry. Virgin was the first client to embrace this change in design, where the creative approach is deemed more important than specific experience. It was a timely opportunity to demonstrate our flexibility. We were working on two other important projects: Tom had just had a baby and I was expecting one. So it was an exciting time for us personally and professionally.

‘Over the last 30 years we have witnessed extraordinary changes in design as a whole. For product design though, the greatest change has to be the tools and machines we can access. The speed with which an idea can be tested and realised in

3D form has changed, and this leads to a ripple effect that transforms the entire process. There seems to be a loss of a more tangible world weighed against the benefit of a faster, digital world. Technology has made so many things more accessible and instantly gratifying, but at the same has cheapened certain experiences and inhibited ways of thinking. Perhaps the speed of technology 30 years ago was more suited to the speed of design thinking. The near instant nature of delivering a solution or, should I say, an image of a solution, means client expectations are elevated in terms of project turnaround, but perhaps at a cost to finding more interesting solutions. We don’t have adequate thinking time any more. Thinking and going through the layers of different ideas to come up with a solution or proposal takes time.

‘And lastly, perhaps it’s the emergence of hacking that we find exciting and also unsettling. With the aid of technology and shifts in thinking, the blending of ideas and thus ownership, becomes more prevalent. Its a kind of punk approach which is a reaction to bland global production that means we find the same product all over the world. The upside can be greater efficiency — the downside can be a

deficiency in truly independent ideas and thinking. Having taught at the RCA for a number of years, there is without doubt a change in attitude and beliefs with respect to product design. From the advances in technology to the advent of hacking, it is an exciting time for designers, new guard and old. It will be interesting to see how design continues to evolve’.

Below: (left to right) Tom Lloyd, Luke Pearson

Luke Pearson Pearson Lloyd

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2004

‘In 2004 I was working with Samantha Hardingham preparing the L.A.W.u.N (Locally Available World unseen Networks) display in the windows of Selfridges on Oxford Street, for what was then National Architecture Week. The display included too many very hot electron-ics and a stuffed duck. We were employed in the Research Centre for Experimental Practice (EXP) at the University of Westminster and the installation was the beginning of a series of collaborative projects we made pursuing the conceptual themes presented by the Invisible University (IU). The IU prospectus was launched a year later which developed into the publication of L.A.W.u.N 19 and exhibition L.A.W.u.N 20 at the Architectural Association in 2010.

‘Over the last thirty years, and since the clarity of the early days of Archigram, all I seem to have achieved is to be buried in a mountain of questions and doubt. There is, however, no doubting the fact that it is the technologies of representation and research that have radically changed the way we design and think. Should we mourn the loss of our inability to know the author of a drawing? Can we claim that identifiable dogmas have been replaced by the client or in architec-tural education that discourse has been suppressed by vanity tutoring? That the social agenda that inspired modernism lies suffocated by the temptations of seductive surface? Or might we be encouraged by the fact that now a student can pass their architectural exams by making a film instead of drawings? I would suggest that this is the most cheerful consequence of the last 30 years...the drawing now has to move!

DaviD GreeneArchigram

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2005

‘In 2005 we finished a number of small buildings, after a long period of not building much. It was a coming together after an intense period of work, trying to give some ideas physical form. Decisions that were a struggle then now seem natural. It was like learning a language. The Brick House was on Blueprint’s cover and the shadowy interior remains, I suspect, our emblematic project. The site was a scrap left over between and behind other buildings, and felt like the last piece of land left in central London. Most architects would have given up on a situation like that and advised the client to find another site for their house. We were young then and driven to make something powerful out of it.

‘Over the last 30 years there has been a rise and then a collapse in the confidence of architecture to give expression to global market forces, which have nevertheless remained ever-devouring. The collapse is a good thing. Architects should be more sophisticated and on the side of resistance.

‘Thinking back to when Blueprint started, makes me think of Aldo Rossi and Robert Venturi. Adam and I graduated in the mid-Eighties, and Rossi was a hero then and now. His work was grounded in culture and history, his buildings were full of imagery, they were poetic, physical and affecting. I hope that now people are tired of spectacle, there will be a return to these things.’

Pictured from left, Adam Caruso and Peter St John

Peter St JohnCaruso St John

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2006

‘In my answer to this original story, I argued that this question posed on the cover was ridiculous. But it does relate loosely to a very important idea: that architecture has an indirect impact on health, even though it is hard to measure. A doctor from the NHS, who debated the point, put forward a surprising point of view. He said that if the architecture is bad then doctors and nurses do not show up for work, and if they don’t show up for work it is, of course, rather lethal for the patient. The other indirect influence of architecture on carers and patients (and the one relevant for Maggie’s) concerns feedback. If you show carers through the architecture and ambience that you care for them, then they too will work harder and care about the patients: so you get a virtuous circle. Thus, you could say bad architecture amplifies a vicious circle and good architecture augments a positive culture; but then it is hard to define exactly what good architecture is, apart from the culture that uses it.

‘A much larger debate is underway in the NHS and society at large about these issues, and of course architects must play an important role in getting the indirect influence right. My belief is that in the long run, and statistically,

Maggie’s Centres will make a difference for patients in their quality of life and longevity. I have argued the reasons for these beliefs in many published papers and books, but it has not been proven and would take a 10 year matched-pair study of patients (which we hope to run someday). So what can we say with confidence? Sixteen Maggie’s Centres are up and running, several more are in the pipeline, and generally patients and carers have responded to the buildings and environments very positively. But, of course, it is the service and ethos of our carers and staff that make the most direct contribution, and it is the role of architecture to support that spirit and culture.

‘My personal view is that all 16 of these centres have been well designed; they are creative, risk-taking, friendly, informal and a marvellous demonstration of how architects can rise to a serious challenge. I am extremely grateful to the profession: it shows the utopian streak and competitive response are still very much alive.’

Charles JenCks

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Soft Air technologyTM

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Roca London Gallery: +44 (0) 207 610 9503 www.rocalondongallery.com

THE FIRST WC TO HAVE THE CISTERN INCORPORATED WITHIN IT.

IN-TANK

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2007

‘In 2007, we were about 150 people — we have 350 now. Maggie’s [cover image above] is a very humble building, with little architectural gymnastics. The centre was designed as a transition between the hospital and the natural landscape behind the building. The ambition was always to create fluid space in every project — and since 2007, we’ve really tried to achieve even greater fluidity in the work; increasing the complexity to where it becomes like a landscape. It’s not linear; it changes according to what is appropriate for the project. It has more to do with ideas — not of literal landscape — but of the invention of landscape; like land formations. It’s interesting, in 2007, we also began working on the Heydar Aliyev Cultural Centre in Baku, which will open next month and the project really blurs the boundaries between architecture and landscape.

We won the Hong Kong Peak competition in ’83. There was such a buzz in the AA in that period, everyone was on the brink of doing something new. Alvin Boyarsky, the students and staff at the AA at that time have been seminal to the past thirty years of architecture. I think computing that encourages more complex geometry has been very exciting. We are also working with

incredible advances in material and construction technology. Peter Rice’s work was formative, matching innovative engineering with new, untried ideas and concepts. In every period there is a new challenge and we have a whole section of our office researching new design and construction techniques; collaborating with many industries to test new methods and materials.

‘In 1995 the Blueprint pavilion at Interbuild was our first built work in the UK. The situation in Cardiff had devastated us, and I had to pick up the pieces. In that period, we did one competition after the other — and we didn’t win any. Perhaps there was a stigma against us — but they were all great designs relating to ideas of topography and landscape. Like the pavilion, they were very powerful projects and interesting in their complexity — very tough and soft at the same time; elegant and resolved in terms of planning.

ZAHA HADIDZaha Hadid Architects

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Diagon

www.girsberger.com/diagon Girsberger London, Tel. +44 (0)20 7490 3223, [email protected]

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2008

‘In April 2008 we were opening the Norwegian National Opera & Ballet. We were midway through design of two similar projects in very different contexts, the World Trade Center Memorial Museum in New York City and the King Abdulaziz Centre for World Culture in Saudi Arabia. We also took on the Hunt Library in North Carolina and the Maggie’s Centre in Aberdeen. Our work was focused primarily in Europe and America.

 ‘We have seen significant efficiencies in building methods and prototyping. This has affected our work but these pockets of research have not had a big effect in the building industry yet. We have acquired several automated tools that help us build full-scale prototypes. Also in this time we have witnessed enormous political and social challenges in the world. We now promote more social attributes to be integrated into our design thinking. For us it is a balance of intellectual sustainability and environmental resilience.’

Craig DykersSnøhetta

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2009

‘In 2009 I was invited by Paula Rego to create the Casa de Histórias near Lisbon. She writes me a letter to say this: “My name is Paula Rego, I am a painter.” I knew that already! Here in Porto, the work is private and the good architects teach in the schools. In Lisbon, it is much more public and the good architects work outside the schools. There are a lot of jobs from the government.

‘A lot has changed over the last 30 years. I started [as an independent practice] in 1980. Before the Portuguese revolution of 1974, all the information, magazines, books exhibitions were about postmodernism. I decided it was intelligent to take something of the ideas of Mies van der Rohe, because it was simple, clean, it was like fresh air against the postmodernism. Mies van der Rohe said that “architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space”.

‘Now I work in France, the last country in Europe where they pay. Portugal is paying zero, Italy zero, the Swiss have stopped, England, nothing. In France, I have two competitions: a school and housing, mixed social and private.’

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AN ICONIC BRITISH BRAND

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2010

‘In 2010 I was 75 and as busy then as I am now. I travelled almost a quarter of a million miles, visiting 27 cities in 11 countries across four continents (over the last twelve months I have flown more miles to more places).

‘We completed major projects including the zero waste, zero carbon Masdar Institute in Abu Dhabi, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Sperone Westwater Gallery New York, Circle Bath Hospital in the UK, a civic centre in Kazakhstan and a winery in Spain.

‘It was an equally exciting time for new commissions. That Summer Steve Jobs phoned me and invited us as a family to Cupertino — in effect marking the start of our New Apple Campus. It was at the same time as we were working on the cultural masterplan for Hong Kong’s West Kowloon — later to be announced as winners of the competition in March the following year.

‘On a personal note I competed in my seventeenth cross country ski marathon in Switzerland’s Engadine Valley — one of some 11,000 participants — with a time of 3 hours 33 minutes (this year and last I was faster at 3 hours 12 minutes, finishing third in my class). In 2010 I curated the Buckminster Fuller Exhibition at the Ivoryspace Gallery in Madrid — a labour of love — and gave my first lecture as Humanitas Visiting Professor at Oxford University.

Over the last 30 years we have learnt much and continue to do so — building on our core values by exploring better ways of working, innovating and pioneering new technologies. We have extended our investment in research and created more specialised groups — from workplace study, sustainability, space planning and project manage-ment to scientific evaluations of the afterlife and performance of our buildings. We have also returned to our roots by integrating engineering skills — environmental and structural — back into the practice. The range of our work has expanded dramatically — now embracing infrastructure and products as well as architecture.

NORMAN FOSTERFoster + Partners

‘During this time we moved into our custom-designed studio overlooking the Thames, which has since expanded to become a mini-campus with workshop facilities capable of producing full-size prototypes.

Thirty years ago, our Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank tower was nearing completion and we were around 70 strong. Since then we have grown to over 1000, spread around the world. But the average age across our studios is still just over 33 — about the same as when the practice was founded in 1967. The other constants are a passion for design and a belief in the importance of research and sustainability.’

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2011

‘2011 was an absolutely terrific year, I really enjoyed it. Obviously there was my 80th birthday, which people made a terrible fuss about, but for me there just seemed to be a great energy around the design industry and also my business. Our first collections for Marks & Spencer were launching, Boundary in Shoreditch was really taking off and plans for The Design Museum’s move to the Commonwealth Institute were starting to take shape. It was a great catalyst for many of the projects we are working on now. When I turned 80 people around me started looking back on my life but I certainly wasn’t — I was planning the next few years ahead and looking at our next big projects.

‘I think the last 30 years has been a great period for architecture and, broadly speaking, the industry has seized the moment. I think this is reflected in the increased public perception and enthusiasm for design and architecture. Let’s not forget some very good architects 30 years ago have become masters in their field, the best in the world, and gone on to produce some truly special work that has transformed our cities, public spaces and the way we live today.

‘Globalisation, the acceptance of modernism, new materials, innovation and intelligent improve-ments in technology have allowed us to live in environments that we could have only dreamed of three decades ago. I also think the quality of education in both architecture and design has become even better; our schools, colleges and universities are thriving with students drawn here from all over the world. It has certainly been a great time for Blueprint to have been covering the subject over the last 30 years, something it has done quite brilliantly and intelligently.’

TERENCE CONRANConran and Partners

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2012

‘2012 was a special year for my studio. The first of our new buses started running on the streets of London in March and in May a book about our work was published which coincided with the opening of an exhibition of our projects at the V&A Museum. Then, on 27 July at 12:33am on the night of the opening ceremony in the Olympic Stadium in Stratford, seven young athletes lit 204 small flames which came together to make London’s Olympic Cauldron, the single flame which burnt for the two weeks of the games. For us the lovely memory of the end of the year was gradually receiving all the photographs from the participating countries of individual copper cauldron pieces being held by proud chairmen of Olympic committees from all over the world standing in front of miscellaneous international contexts with or without filing cabinets, desks, flags, trophies and other Olympic paraphernalia.  

‘Whilst the design that Blueprint covers is as interesting as ever, over the last 30 years cities themselves have become less and less so. As I travel more and more I keep having the sense that every city I go to was a more interesting place 30 years ago. The rapid rise in living standards in many parts of the world is good and necessary, but seems to produce similar solutions all over the planet. Whether it is a shopping environ-ment in Alaska or an office block in equatorial Singapore, local distinc-tiveness seems to be crushed by conventional approaches to global improvement and procurement. Also the familiar format of a few flashy new culture buildings doesn’t help as much as city makers think it does. True citywide distinctiveness needs to work much harder and come from somewhere deeper...’

THOMAS HEATHERWICKHeatherwick Studio

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2013

‘In 2013, there’s a real mix of work happening and the projects are spread out all over the world, which is really interesting for my practice. It is particularly exciting to be working for the first time in India, where we are designing a silk- weaving facility in Varanasi. A number of our projects in Africa are gathering speed — the concept store we have designed in Lagos will complete towards the end of this year and many other projects are at the early stages. We recently opened an office in Ghana, which has taken on the work.

 ‘My US office is still focused on the National Museum for African American History and Culture in Washington DC, which is on site and due to complete in 2015. Also in Washington, we are working on a Four Seasons development. In New York, a social housing scheme in Harlem is on site and we are designing an art centre for Colgate University. In addition, we have a Knoll furniture range due to launch in October. In the UK, we are working in Hackney on a large-scale regeneration scheme and in Portland on a memorial to extinct species. Finally, we have work in China, now, and will soon establish a local office there.

‘Over the last 30 years which developments have impacted most on the practice of architecture? The international nature of my own work is, I think, a result of one of the key developments, which is the revolution in communication. The fact that we can now communicate inexpensively across many time zones means that we can deliver high-quality projects with an integrated global team. I can engage locally in different contexts with consultants all over the world. Geographic spread is no longer a factor when creating the right team and you can work with consultants who bring the culture of the place to the project.

 ‘The other key development for design would have to be technology. It has completely changed the way we work — especially with respect to the speed with which you can now design highly complex buildings.’

DAVID ADJAYEAdjaye Associates

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