Architecture in the news

Boasting two-sink kitchens, London’s Tower Court is tailored for the Haredi Jewish community – but its generous proportions and outside space for religious observance are a treat for all residentsThe intricacies of religious doctrine might not be a typical feature of the English planning system. But, in a corner of north-east London, the specific teachings of one ultra-Orthodox community have led to more generous council housing for everyone.Approaching the handsome brick blocks of Tower Court in Hackney, the first clue that something might be out of the ordinary can be spotted in the balconies. Rather than sticking out in a regular grid, they dance across the facade at staggered intervals, each surrounded by a skeletal metal frame. Some have been walled in with fencing panels, while others are shielded with reed matting or shrouded with fake plastic leaves. It looks like a vertical display of makeshift garden sheds. Continue reading…

The Melbourne-based interior designer reflects on the past 10 years of Flack Studio and reveals the inspiration and stories behind the rooms that launched it to international fameFlack Studio: Interiors is out from 16 September (Rizzoli: A$180, US$75) Continue reading…

The German city is celebrating the renowned art school’s centenary with exhibitions, digital tours and bike and bus routes connecting landmark Bauhaus buildingsThe heat hits me as soon as I open the door, the single panes of glass in the wall-width window drawing the late afternoon sunlight into my room. The red linoleum floor and minimalist interior do little to soften the impact; I wonder how I’m going to sleep. On the opposite side of the corridor, another member of the group I’m travelling with has a much cooler studio, complete with a small balcony that I immediately recognise from archive black and white photographs.Unconsciously echoing the building’s past, we start using this as a common room, perching on the tubular steel chairs, browsing the collection of books on the desk and discussing what it must have been like to live here. At night, my room stays warm and noise travels easily through the walls and stairwells; it’s not the best night’s rest I’ve ever had, but it’s worth it for the experience. Continue reading…

Once considered progressive, then later derided, a new exhibition is exploring the developments’ place as part of a collective experienceCommunist East Germany’s high-rise prefab residential blocks and their political and cultural impact in what was one of the biggest social housing experiments in history is the focus of a new art exhibition, in which the unspoken challenges of today’s housing crisis loom large.Wohnkomplex (living complex) Art and Life in Prefabs explores the legacy of the collective experience of millions of East Germans, as well as serving as a poignant reminder that the “housing question”, whether under dictatorship or democracy, is far from being solved. Continue reading…

Six contenders for the prestigious UK award for excellence in architecture also include two houses, a medical research centre and a college of fashion – but nothing north of the FensRather like contenders for best in show at Crufts, where the perfect chihuahua is obliged to do battle with the perfect great dane, the new British buildings vying for this year’s Stirling prize for excellence in architecture are supremely dissimilar in scale, style and purpose. The shortlist encompasses a medical research centre, almshouse, college of fashion, two houses and a quintessential national monument. Geographically, though, they are conspicuously less disparate, with four schemes in London, one in Hastings and one in Cambridge, which begs the question: is there really no noteworthy new architecture north of the Fens?Historically associated with pastoral benevolence and distressed gentlefolk, the almshouse gets a modern reboot by architects Witherford Watson Mann. Their Appleby Blue development in Bermondsey, London, is a place of care and shelter, but above all, social connection. The human theatre of residents in its voluminous garden room can be appreciated from the street through a glazed walkway projecting out along the main facade like a shop window. “The idea was to build right in the heart of the community, not to hide people away,” says project architect Stephen Witherford. Both in its architecture and operation, Appleby Blue is a consciously extroverted presence and a retort to the notion that older people (especially poorer older people) should be shunted to the margins, with adverse effects on their mental and physical health. Continue reading…

Even the cheap rooms cost £1,400 a night at London’s bling-heavy hangout for high net worth individuals. From mega-basement spa to gaudy rooftop bar, our writer takes a tourRumours have long swirled about what lies beneath the great 1960s fortress of the former US embassy on Grosvenor Square. There have been lurid fables of cold war bunkers, secret service shooting ranges, CIA interrogation chambers and even escape tunnels to Hyde Park. But none of these fictional fantasies quite compare to the underground lair that has now been excavated below the imposing block, in its new incarnation as one of the fanciest hotels in London.Owned by the royal family of Qatar, and operated by an offshore company registered in the British Virgin Islands, belonging to one of Hong Kong’s wealthiest dynasties, this former outpost of US imperialism has become a gilded temple to the new global order. Reborn as the Chancery Rosewood, it is a beacon of luxury designed to attract the cream of the world’s ultra-high net worth individuals, so it is only fitting that it should boast the mega-basement to end all mega-basements. Continue reading…

From designing enormous postwar housing projects to escaping from prison using a rope, Pouillon’s life had high drama. A new documentary charts the extraordinary rise, fall – and rise again – of France’s ‘most wanted’ creativeVariously described as an “architect, painter, novelist, communist and convicted fraudster”, Fernand Pouillon’s life was punctuated by abrupt reversals of fortune that might have sprung from the pages of Dickens or Dumas. Throughout an eventful career, he ricocheted from intoxicating success, to financial scandal, prison, exile and eventual rehabilitation.In 1985, when Pouillon was in his early 70s, he was awarded the Légion d’Honneur by President François Mitterrand. Yet just over 20 years earlier, Pouillon found himself in custody awaiting trial on charges of corruption. As a prolific architect-developer who had designed gargantuan housing schemes in France and Algeria, he was accused of funding irregularities and violating laws contrived to keep the processes of design and construction separate. Continue reading…

The UK’s first dedicated space for Somali heritage has built its collection from 15 years of donations. Culture House’s founders explain the power of giving a permanent home to a community’s heritage and hopesYou could probably walk right past Culture House without noticing it. Tucked away, just off the bustle of London’s Uxbridge Road, the building’s muted colours, simple sign and arched doorway give little away. Step inside, though, and you’ll soon be enticed by what is the UK’s first permanent exhibition and cultural space dedicated to Somali heritage.Officially opened last May, Culture House features a collection of over 150 artefacts, a rotating exhibition, poetry workshops and a digital archive. It has quickly developed a reputation as a hub for the UK’s Somali community, while drawing in curious visitors from outside the diaspora too. Non-profit group the Anti-Tribalism Movement, who lead the project, say the aim is to “celebrate, preserve and connect” Somali culture and communities. Continue reading…

Need something brilliant to read this weekend? Here are six of our favourite pieces from the past seven days Continue reading…

Exhibition explores Bank’s former grandeur and its rebuilding under Sir Herbert Baker that began 100 years agoA century ago the wrecking ball demolished the halls, courtyards, arches and domes of one of London’s best-loved buildings in what the architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner would decry as “the greatest architectural crime” to befall the capital in the 20th century.The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street (as the Bank of England was nicknamed after a satirical 1797 cartoon of William Pitt the Younger, prime minister from 1783 to 1801, wooing an old lady dressed in pound notes) has been the heart of the City since 1734. Continue reading…

From the mock-Tudor fad of the 1920s to drivers refuelling on a roundabout, each era produces its own distinctive petrol stations – as photographer Philip Butler discovered Continue reading…

The season’s standouts include mighty Picassos, mesmerising mushrooms, the visions of Kerry James Marshall, the combat photography of Lee Miller – and a return trip to space• See the rest of our unmissable autumn arts preview picks here Continue reading…

My friend and colleague, Bob Owston, who has died aged 88, was an engineer; he was also employed as a project architect, in particular on works at York University.He was the structural engineer, working with the architect Jack Speight, on the brutalist York Central Hall, built in the mid-1960s and now listed Grade II. Also at York, Bob contributed an elegant Corten steel footbridge, several halls of residence, language and psychology blocks and the Sally Baldwin building. Elsewhere, he was responsible for the pier approach building in Bournemouth, evocative of seaside culture. Continue reading…

First conceived as a ‘spider’s web of sticks’, this vast wooden wonder may end up being a template for the environmentally sound buildings of the futureFringed by a fragmented strip of big box stores, auto repair shops and brick buildings marooned in oceans of asphalt, the state highway of Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard in Fayetteville, Arkansas, is not a place of architectural beauty. And yet, as unlikely as it may seem, this rumbling stretch of road on the edge of this small city is now home to one of the most significant buildings for the future of architecture in North America.Even at speed, it’s hard to miss. Standing opposite a 200-space Walmart parking lot, the Anthony Timberlands Center for Design and Materials Innovation looks like a group of great big barns caught in a highway pile-up. It begins as a low wooden shed at the back, before suddenly buckling up in jagged folds, its roofline jerking in staccato slopes until it greets the highway with a six-storey shop window. Peer through this glass billboard and you will catch a glimpse of dancing robotic arms, whirring drills, and big wooden building components gliding to and fro on a gantry crane, conjuring the future of low-carbon timber construction. Continue reading…

A quarter of a century after our first visit, the Guardian returns to Guédelon to find old-fashioned toil has built a “thoroughly modern” architectural laboratoryIt was the summer of 1999 and, in a disused quarry in a forest in deepest Burgundy, a dozen or so incongruously attired figures were toiling away, hewing limestone blocks, chiselling oaken beams and hammering 6in nails.The rough outline of what they were building was discernible, just: a perimeter wall a substantial 200 metres long and three metres thick; round towers, two large and two small, to mark the four corners; another pair flanking the main gateway. Continue reading…

Glenisla, Angus: Scottish thatchers are few and far between, so I’m lucky to be working on this roundhouse in a glen that’s rich in wildlifeAs I drive north through Angus, birch and rowan begin to replace ash and oak, and by the time I reach the foot of the glen, the purple-streaked tops of the Cairngorms have come into view. Glenisla is the last lowland valley before the mountains begin, and it’s home to a rare sight on either side of the Highland line: a thatched roof.The building is a lodge house on the Knockshannoch estate, and is believed to be the only remaining thatched roundhouse in Scotland. I’ve driven three hours north from the Scottish Borders to repair a hole in its roof (Scottish thatchers are few and far between, so travelling long distances is not unusual here). Continue reading…

Kiruna Kyrka’s slow journey is part of effort to stop town being swallowed by Europe’s biggest underground mineAfter eight years of planning, a cost of more than 500m kronor (£39m) and an early morning blessing, a church in northern Sweden began a slow-motion 5km journey on Tuesday to make way for the expansion of Europe’s biggest underground mine.The 672-tonne Kiruna Kyrka, a Swedish Lutheran church inaugurated in 1912, is to be slowly rolled to its new home over two days, at a pace of half-a-kilometre an hour. Continue reading…

Our panel responds: the more we know about this technology, the more it is the source of hope and worry. We have views that must be heard• The panel was compiled by Sumaiya Motara and Saranka Maheswaran, interns on the Guardian’s positive action scheme Continue reading…

Tiébélé’s wavy-walled houses covered in geometric lines showing signs of disintegration amid erratic weatherA world heritage site that was once a famous tourist destination is suffering from signs of disintegration, as climate change affects weather patterns.The wavy-walled houses covered with singular geometric lines of the Royal Court of Tiébélé in Burkina Faso, established in the 16th century, are recognisable all over the world. The paintings represent the thoughts, culture, and religion of the Kassena people, literally written on the walls. Continue reading…

Ongar, Essex: The ‘oldest wooden church in the world’ is a mosaic of styles and stories, having seen plagues, raids and the Reformation – and it’s still in use todayA sign in the layby boldly declares: “The world’s oldest wooden church, open today.” Just beyond, beneath an arching yew, is St Andrew’s Church in Greensted, its architecture a historical mosaic, a seemingly mismatched patchwork that forms a striking whole.People have been worshipping here for at least 1,300 years. In the 1960s, archaeologists uncovered the impression of two wooden buildings, potentially built in the late sixth or early seventh century, when Christianity was taking root in the region. But it is the palisade nave that has earned the church its remarkable claim. A copse of 51 split oaks forms the central body of the church, constructed around 1060 during the reign of Edward the Confessor, and at one time adorned with nothing but a thatched roof. Continue reading…