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Mies, Classical Modernist | |
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California Architecture Awards | |
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UK Celebrates Architecture Week | |
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Stabilizing the Leaning Tower | |
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UK Celebrates Architecture Week RIBA president Marco Goldschmied said he was "heartened" that the schemes encompass both large-scale projects such as Nicholas Grimshaw and Partners' Eden Project, already touted as the favorite to win the Stirling Prize, as well as small-scale works demonstrating good architecture on low budgets. The Czech Connection Throughout the week, the Czech Centre in central London ran presentations of Czech publishers, foundations, galleries, and exhibition programs. One of them was Andel Memory, an hour-long documentary about the transformation of Prague's Smichov district from a state rail yard brownfield into a modern city suburb. The film focuses on the building of Zlaty Andel (Golden Angel) a mixed-use shopping mall and office complex. Dutch company, ING Real Estate, the same developer who invited Frank Gehry to build the "Fred and Ginger" building in Prague during the mid-1990s, commissioned the building and asked French architect, Jean Nouvel to design it. The film provided a refreshing insight into the process of creation from design to completion in November 2000. The friction between French architects, Czech engineers, and Dutch developers provided much of the entertainment because of inevitable differences in language, design interpretation, and building regulations. Daniel Libeskind's Contribution The Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park near the Royal Albert Hall in west London invited architect Daniel Libeskind to create a temporary structure on the Gallery's Lawn. Called Eighteen Turns, it follows the spiral concept proposed by Libeskind for an extension to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Built of aluminum provided by Hydro Aluminium Extrusion, with the help of engineers from Arup, the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2001 attracted the attention of the casual passer-by as well as the architect junky. The temporary structure continues the series of annual architectural commissions by the gallery, which began with one to Zaha Hadid last year. A series of summer talks to take place in the pavilion was organized jointly by the Architecture Foundation and the Serpentine Gallery to coincide with Architecture Week 2001. The first featured architects Richard Rogers and Will Alsop. Daniel Libeskind was born in Poland in 1946 and was naturalized as a United States citizen in 1956. He completed his graduate studies of art history and architectural theory at Essex University in England in 1972 after having studied architecture at Cooper Union in New York. He served as the head of the architecture department at Cranbrook Academy of Art from 1978 to 1985, while also teaching as a visiting professor all over the world. Libeskind's most recent acclaimed work is his design for the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Bridging the Basin Competition At the award-winning Caruso St. John-designed New Art Gallery in Walsall, near Birmingham in the heart of England's midlands region, the first final of the Nigel Frost Memorial Competition took place. The event was organized by Cambridge-based Architecture Workshop Association (AWA) with the support of the UK's Construction Industry Training Board. AWA was the brainchild of the late architect Nigel Frost. The workshops set out to introduce the world of architecture and engineering to schoolchildren from ages seven to seventeen in an enjoyable alternative to physics and mathematics classes. The multidisciplinary, cross-curriculum workshops enable all those who take part to build spectacular structures with the simplest of materials: thin wooden rods and rubber bands. Interestingly, one of the workshops covers the building of London's Millennium Bridge. Just how representative these structures are to reality can be seen in the result of this exercise. The model bridge wobbles, just like the real thing. The final part of the AWA competition required six schools to build a creative bridge to span the canal basin outside the gallery — in one hour! Events at the British Museum During the UK Architecture Week, the British Museum ran a series of talks and films in the BP Lecture Theatre, which was part of the Foster and Partners' Great Court renovation project. The movies all related to architecture and included The Fountainhead (1949) with Cary Grant, Metropolis (1926), and The Belly of an Architect (1987). In one of the lectures, Hilary Williams of the British Museum gave a refreshing, often humorous, overview of the architecture and function of the Great Court. In a frank admission regarding the design process, Williams said, "This was the first time that the museum had looked at design from a visitor's viewpoint rather than the objects'." She also revealed that the final touch to the Great Court would be a large golden disk sculpture by Anish Kapoor. It would be positioned in front of the reading room on the south side and be a fitting tribute to what Williams described as truly "architecture for the world." Canary Wharf Corporate architecture was the topic of a number of lunchtime presentations in Canary Wharf, the center of London's Docklands reclamation initiative. Architects representing the firms of Kohn Pederson Fox and Skidmore Owings & Merrill gave talks relating to this, the largest corporate development in the UK. Phil Enquist of Chicago-based SOM provided an insight into the planning framework that began in 1985 for the revitalization of London's Docklands. Revealing engineer Arup's strategy for access along the Thames River, from Hampton Court in the west to Greenwich in the east, Enquist explained how Canary Wharf and its surrounding infrastructure fit in the overall concept. Due to the waterside location, the design of the dockland area was based, surprisingly, on Venice, Italy as well as the financial district of New York. With the aid of visuals, Enquist explained the public open space system being applied throughout Canary Wharf, with the aim being a 50-50 split between space and development, although some audience members questioned the ratios. The "community of distinct places" was explained with the water, promenade, street level hierarchy interconnected with squares, and, ultimately, a colonnade providing the connection between west and east. Currently there are just over 40,000 people living and/or working in the area, but expectations are that this will rise to over 100,000 over the next five to ten years. Canary Wharf is becoming a city in its own right — a mini Manhattan. The Blinking Eye Although not initially planned to be the case, the first official raising of the Wilkinson Eyre-designed Gateshead Millennium Bridge in the north of England took place during Architecture Week 2001. The world's first tilting bridge was raised to allow boats to pass underneath it for the first time. This unique bridge is the first opening bridge in the world to rotate. The graceful 940-ton (850-tonne) steel bridge pivots upwards like the lid of a closed eye slowly opening. Other highlights of Architecture Week 2001 included Brighton's derelict Grade I listed West Pier on the south England coast, a visit to the new BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, a walking tour of the HOK-designed Darwin Centre construction site at the Natural History Museum, and the opening of the new Ecology and Art Parks in Mile End, East London. Some exhibitions are still open, such as the fantastic works from the Norman Foster Studio at the British Museum and The Quiet Revolution of Mexican architect Luis Barragan at the Design Museum. So much to see, so little time. Don Barker is a freelance writer and photographer in London, UK, who has lived and worked in Europe, Australia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, and Singapore.
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