Architonic examines how contemporary architects are capitalising on the benefits of these forgotten alleys, gaps and passages and transforming them into practical and desirable urban property. The unrelenting development occurring in many urban centres makes it increasingly difficult to find attractive sites for new buildings, with any land that is available often bei...
In The Time Machine, HG Wells wrote: “there is a tendency to utilize underground space for the less ornamental purposes of civilization.” In that book, Wells imagined a future in which industry had been completely located underground, whilst above ground all was green and leafy. At the end of the 19th century, it was perhaps understandable to imagine a future where this ...
The Sir Paul Reeves Building is a significant new addition to AUT University’s Auckland city campus and a milestone in their master plan development. Where there was once a series of low-rise workshops, there now stands a 20,000-square metre academic tower and podium for the School of Communications and AUT’s undergraduate student population. The atrium is both a home fo...
Architonic speaks to Vogt Landscape Limited, the architects behind a public realm project that has been a challenge of speed and endurance, but that they hope is fit for both Olympians and for generations of future inhabitants. While the architectural press has been paying plenty of attention to the statement stadia and triumphal sculptures emerging in London’s Olympi...
Wellness. Not the most elegant-sounding of words to the ears of a native English-speaker. But despite its somewhat awkward, neologistic ring (it’s fair to assume the term was coined as a counterpoint to the notion of ‘illness’), the practice itself of consciously attending to, and caring for, the body in order to effect emotional well-being has a long and healthy heritag...
Cities are sites of 24-hour activity, and if you’ve ever been lost in one at night, taken an evening stroll, or tried to find a taxi after stumbling out of a nightclub, then you’ll appreciate the importance of safe and well-lit streets. Such practical concerns mean that urban lighting is often overlooked as a source of elegant and inspirational design. However, the need ...
Of the nine venues erected on the site of this summer’s Olympic and Paralympic Games in London, three of them – the Basketball Arena, Water Polo Arena and Riverbank Arena – were designed to be completely dismantled following the competition’s conclusion, and their parts reused or recycled. The most architecturally ambitious and striking of these is the 12,000-capacity Ba...
Hybrid use, flexible floor plans, alternative usage, sustainability – these are some of the topics architects consider when planning a building. How will the site develop, which renters will move in – ideal scenarios for this do exist, however, this can be planned only to a limited extent using factors such as building style, flat size, amount of rent, and infrastructure...
Founded in 2009 by the School of Arts, Culture and Environment at the University of Edinburgh the Journal Architecture & provides a platform for innovative ideas in design and research practices. 'Architecture &' is a themed publication, edited by Dr. Cary Siress, with each issue featuring a select topic set in conjunction with that of architecture. The aim is to unde...
Driving along Maine’s intestinal coastline, words and phrases like “bottom line” and “hardscrabble” appear in street and farm names. Appropriate: The local climate can be challenging, and its craggy land able to drive an Anne Proulx character to madness. Toward the very edge of shore, though, conditions taper into softness. Moss wipes rocks clean of their edges, peni...
"Undisciplined" is a synonym here for the term "interdisciplinary", which has become rather unfashionable nowadays, and – as the title suggests – describes an occupation across various disciplines with the subject of space in art, architecture and design. The book is a collection of texts which have arisen out of an exhibition and a symposium which took place in Vienna i...
Cultures like that of the Romans, for example, valued not just the scientific but also the educational and entertainment aspects of literature. As a result, having your own library was a status symbol for Roman citizens, and public libraries also arose in ancient Rome for the use of the people. Knowledge is power – and this saying has generally been reflected in the typi...
It's probably no surprise that our sense of scale changes as we grow up. I once revisited my primary school as an adult and was struck by the narrowness of the corridors, which had once seemed so generously wide, by the size and weight of doors, whose opening had in those early years of my life required well-nigh Herculean effort, and by the almost comically small Robin ...
Even the most spectacular trade fair stand disappears again as fast as it was set up and remains only an ephemeral memory. However this two-volume photographic record, the result of a cooperation between publishers Frame and Gestalten Verlag, provides not just an inspiring encyclopaedic collection of such stands but is also a colourful memento album. Volume 1 collects st...
Starting with the concept of 'individual design for living', what forms, themes and tendencies determine the parameters for today's housing design?In this volume the editors around Peter Ebner at Munich's Technical University compile contributions from 29 international firms of architects, who present their latest apartment block and housing projects. These include stude...
The act of “BUWing” is well known term among Warsaw’s young adult population, and it is not just a random invention. Rather, this neologism, the root of which is the abbreviation for the Warsaw University Library (Biblioteka Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego), aptly captures a phenomenon that encompasses a mode of spending time, studying and leisure – a myriad of activities all...
Against the visual cacophony of new buildings evident in so many Chinese cities, the Suzhou Museum by I. M. Pei with Pei Partnership Architects stands out, or rather stands back, in its simple elemental contextualism. Rachna Kothari revisited it to reassess its success and finds an architecture of experience not imagery. The design of the Suzhou Museum, which was conc...
The patina a building gains through weathering and use is to be expected and can be a beautiful thing, but rapid deterioration in a relatively young building like that witnessed at Mauricio Rocha’s Art School in Oaxaca, which only opened in 2008, is shocking and smacks of shoddiness. Lev Bratishenko talked to Rocha about the background to the building’s present condition...
Our science correspondent, Claire L. Evans, reviews a wildly funny new sci-fi collection of tall tales about Henry Ickles, architect of quantum structures and “huckster of the highest order”. The late Arthur C. Clarke was famous for, among other things, a set of axioms known as “Clarke’s Laws”. The most frequently-cited of these is undoubtedly the third, which states ...
Christian Schöningh came to Berlin in the early 1980s to study architecture. Infected with the DIY culture of Kreuzberg’s squats and affected by Berlin’s urban policies of the time, including the lively discussions generated by the International Building Exhibition 1984/87, he soon discovered that the classical role of the architect to be rather limited. So he started to...
A little south of Cologne in an utterly unremarkable residential area, curator and uncube author Oliver Elser discovered a small brick building hiding in the bushes. It is Haus Nagel, designed in 1966 by German architect Heinz Bienefeld (1926-1995), one of the most uncelebrated yet remarkable architects of post-war Germany. The building’s inconspicuous outer skin contras...
Every space on this blog is carefully crafted by architects and designers, often in concert with homeowners and their own personal style. But we would not be able to feature them as we do without the help of luscious, textured, colorful photographs. The images in this post were selected from the portfolio of photographer Tom Ferguson. This Australia-based photographer ha...
This is however about to change as the luxurious condominium One Athens, the first of its kind in the city, is nearing its completion. Developed by Cyclamino S.A. (a partnership between the Joannou family and businessman Miltos Kambourides), this ambitious project, unique both in vision and quality for Greek standards, sees the transformation of a 1960’s listed building...
Titled ‘Archist’, the project comprises a series of illustrations of imaginary buildings inspired by famous works of art. Beginning with the question: what would a house designed by Dalí or a museum by Miró look like, the resulting images demonstrate what Federico Babina believes is the ''implicit partnership between Architecture and Art.'' They sometimes treat the faca...
Athens’ Parthenon, Rome’s Pantheon, Agra's Taj Mahal, London’s Marble Arch and Michelangelo’s masterpiece ''David'' are just some of the historic instances where marble has been used. The word ‘marble’ is derived from the Greek ‘marmaros’ and is interpreted as ''a snow white and spotless stone'' (source), despite the fact that marble has many colour variants. Types of ma...
Originally conceived as an ‘on the side’ project outside of the realms of their normal jobs, Freunde von Freunden is now a well-known online interview magazine that likes to ‘take a peek’ into the homes of its interviewees in its search for authenticity and unpretentious urban-life realness. Inspired by the raw and unpolished aesthetic seen in magazines like The Selby (o...
Still, the new 232-page monograph ABCDCS is a very welcome tribute to the designer's 28-years of creating remarkable spaces. Published by Assouline, the book is very much a David Collins Studio project and is something, as the studio's communications director David Kendall says, Collins was 'obsessed with'. 'It really developed out of a 56-page book we prepared for a ...
For the past few years, Loewe has been on a reinvention race. From a new design direction for its stores led by Peter Marino to the September 2013 appointment of London-based designer Jonathan Anderson as creative director, the Spanish leather goods brand has been undergoing a steady transformation. The next step on its journey is a fresh new identity, unveiled today. ...
Architonic looks at some recent projects demonstrating the contemporary effects that can be achieved using perforated materials. Perforated screens and shutters can help to add a distinctive personality to a building’s exterior, as well as performing an important function. In the Mediterranean region, louvred shutters painted in bright colours give the towns and villa...
Both in the ancient world and the present day know-how has always been a vital aspect of the economy and of a state's survival in itself, and it has therefore been carefully guarded. Cultures like that of the Romans, for example, valued not just the scientific but also the educational and entertainment aspects of literature... The development of writing in ancient E...
In the classic children’s story, three little pigs build houses to hide from a hungry wolf. The hungry wolf huffs and puffs and blows down the first little pig’s house of straw and the second little pig’s house of sticks, but the third little pig was too clever for him. The third little pig built his house out of bricks, which saved his bacon. The safety and robustness o...
Architonic takes a look at some recent projects that combine the brilliance of Buckyʼs ideas with twenty-first century technology, resulting in complex yet efficient structures with a futuristic aesthetic. Geodesic construction is founded on the principle that the triangle is an inherently stable form, independent of size, and that a triangular framework held together...
The Alpine inhabitants of the Middle Ages avoided the mighty peaks and icy heights of the high Alpine regions. Nowadays they are accessible for tourism. Alpinism the way we know it today dates back to Romanticism, which is when several Alpine associations like the German Alpine Society (Deutscher Alpenverein) or the SAC (Swiss Alpine Club) were founded. They provided bas...
The forthcoming Olympics in London look set to cost approximately £9.3 billion, much of which will be spent on the architecture and infrastructure required to house the events and the 23,000 athletes and officials who will participate in the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) hopes that the new venues...
Here, we examine some recently completed, ongoing and future projects that show how imagination and intelligent design can deliver striking transformative effects. There are few more wasteful processes than tearing down an existing building and replacing it with something entirely new. Although this, as some might argue, egregious misuse of energy and raw materials st...
Turkey may grab the headlines for its EU tug-of-war and glossy design events, but it is the independent, cut-and-paste eclecticism of one of its Black Sea neighbours – Romania – that is capturing the imagination of those interested in grassroots design with a soul. Romania has had a hard time in recent years. Left bruised by some undeserved blame for the backlash agai...
