The business of architecture
Last month, a group of predominantly British architecture studios penned an open letter to Autodesk criticising its poor performance over recent years. The group, including Zaha Hadid Architects, Grimshaw, Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners and other prominent studios, condemned the increasing cost of ownership of Revit, its constantly changing licensing arrangements, and failure to keep pace with product... Continue Reading →
I’m in Venice. It’s hot and humid and teeming with tourists, a cacophony of languages and accents, cheap souvenirs and selfie sticks. The water is aquamarine and pungent, a bouquet of toxic algae and dead fish. The ancient buildings guard the banks of the canals, their mostly shuttered windows reinforcing a pervading sense of decay.... Continue Reading →
Winning proposal by Herzog & de Meuron + HASSELL What is it? After two years, 117 Stage 1 submissions from around the world, 1 unauthorised exhibition, exhaustive work from 6 architectural teams on Stage 2 submissions, jury deliberation, extensive media coverage and two weeks of public voting, the results for the Flinders Street Station design... Continue Reading →
What is it? The long awaited release of the shortlisted entries for the Flinders Street Station Design Competition. Public voting on the entries opened early last week, with our assessment on sixth, fifth and fourth places published yesterday. We have marked each project out of 5 in the four criteria that underpin both the original design brief and... Continue Reading →
What is it? The long awaited release of the shortlisted entries for the Flinders Street Station Design Competition. Public voting on the entries opened early last week, with full documentation now available on each of the six projects. In addition to the project boards, we are able to access drawings, area summaries, project descriptions and... Continue Reading →
Who is he? Santiago Calatrava is a spanish engineer-turned-architect famous for his expressive, dramatically curving structural compositions. He has completed projects all over the world - our recent travels have brought us to some of those across Spain, Portugal, France and Italy. The projects shown here via photograph include the Oriente Train Station in Lisbon,... Continue Reading →
What is it? Frank Gehry's first building in Australia, the Dr Chau Chak Wing building at the University of Technology Sydney, revealed last week and discussed in an IndesignLive post viewable here. IndesignLive makes some peculiar comments about the design ideas behind the building: "The east-facing façade will be made of a buff-coloured brick reminiscent... Continue Reading →
What is it? The MAXXI National Museum of Art from the 21st Century is a recently completed and much lauded project by Zaha Hadid in Rome. So far, it has won the 2010 RIBA Stirling Prize and, just last month, the 2010 World Architecture Festival World Building of the Year award, both prestigious and well-contested accolades.... Continue Reading →
What is it? The third installment of the annual World Architecture Festival, running in Barcelona since 2008 under the creative direction of Paul Finch. It comprises seminars, an exhibition and project presentations by architects who have entered the festival awards programme. What do we think? We had the good fortune of witnessing high quality projects... Continue Reading →