Architecture in the news

It is architect David Adjaye’s first major project since the allegations that rocked his firm – a bold museum for Princeton University with exhibits that sneak up on its students. But do the insides match the outsides?A cluster of serrated concrete bunkers has landed in the heart of Princeton University’s leafy campus in New Jersey, sending tremors through this twee Oxbridge fantasyland of gothic turrets and twiddly spires. The new addition’s brute, blank facade gives little away from the outside. Wrapped in rows of vertical grey ribs, contrasting with the arched windows of the surrounding stately stone halls, it has the look of a secure storage facility, keeping a beady eye out through a single cyclopean window.The vault-like quality is fitting. This bulky new bastion is a repository for the university’s astonishing collection of art and antiquities – a 117,000-strong haul spanning everything from Etruscan urns and medieval staircases to expressionist paintings and contemporary sculpture. Previously housed in a hodgepodge of extensions and additions accrued over decades, the collection can now shine in its own purpose-built castle. Continue reading…

A couple’s dream home on Scotland’s rocky west coast is an audacious, Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired feat of architectureBuilding a bold new contemporary home directly on the British coastline is a tall order. Aside from the logistics of designing a house that functions successfully in such an unforgiving setting, planning permission is likely to make it a nonstarter. But on the shore of Loch Long on the Rosneath peninsula, 40 miles north-west of Glasgow, John MacKinnon and his wife Laura found a way to make it work for their house, Rock Cove. While the area is wild and ruggedly beautiful, its history has long been intertwined with the military and was once a brownfield site, home to disused Ministry of Defence huts and garages, overgrown and strewn with rubble.Back in 2008, MacKinnon had bought a property on the same site, a 1940s cottage that had been repurposed as a navy signalling station. MacKinnon has a deep-seated passion for design, and worked closely with architect Stuart Cameron of Cameron Webster to completely reimagine this humble property as a modernist beach house, Cape Cove. He then began contemplating what could be done with the scruffy space alongside his new home. Continue reading…

From a multi award-winning treehouse, to a sleek glass-clad home built by architectural pioneers of new Brutalism Continue reading…

John Murray on how one London borough championed female and ethnic minority staff in management positions 30 years ago Up to the 1990s, local authorities and public sector design services provided positive opportunities for women and ethnic minorities to flourish in departments of architecture (‘Stark displays of sexism’ driving women out of architecture, report finds, 20 October).For example, in Haringey’s building design service, which developed ideas from the New Architecture Movement that aimed to involve tenants and users in the design of their buildings and to democratise public architecture, 20% of the senior management team were women and 20% ethnic minorities – this was 30 years ago. Continue reading…

He has already turned the Oval Office into a wrestler’s changing room. Now the president is building a place so gilded Nero would feel at home. Why did he pick an architect whose speciality is Catholic churches?As if truffling thuggishly in pursuit of the Nobel peace prize wasn’t enough, the spectacle of bulldozers ripping into the White House is yet more evidence of Donald Trump’s unstinting quest for epic self-aggrandisement. Having decreed the East Wing not fit for purpose – namely, his purposes of swank and show – he plans to replace it with a faux classical bulletproof ballroom, capable of seating up to 650 partygoers.Renderings show a vast, glacially white aircraft hangar of a structure embellished with an ornate coffered ceiling, gilded Corinthian columns and drooping gold chandeliers. Nero, who conceived the original domus aurea, would feel right at home. Costing $250m (£187.5m), a sum to be extracted from sycophantic donors, Trump’s ballroom is one of the most grandiose White House projects to be implemented in more than a century, as he strives to bend the building – and US architecture more generally – to his will. Continue reading…

Economic development strategist who helped make Glasgow a cultural centre of international standing in the 1980s and 90sWhen Stuart Gulliver arrived in Glasgow in 1978 to work as an economic development strategist, the city was desperately in need of a plan. Its population had crashed by almost 25% in the previous 20 years. Its swagger as the empire’s second city, with a Manhattan-style grid and a wealth of grandiloquent but by then decaying architecture, had evaporated. Its factories, shipyards and steelworks were closing.The people of Glasgow were getting steadily poorer and sicker. And as one wit suggested at the time, its only tourists were people who had got lost trying to go somewhere else. Continue reading…

Two in five say their roof is at risk and one in three are using reserves for basics, National Churches Trust survey findsHundreds of Britain’s churches may be forced to close in the next five years as the cost of maintaining heritage buildings becomes unmanageable, a conference at the V&A in London has heard.Many of the UK’s 20,000-plus listed places of worship contain important heritage treasures, such as stained glass windows, and monuments of historic significance. They are also hubs for community groups and social action projects. Continue reading…

Pilates and the male psyche | Targeted for tax | Hot designs | Carving up the USAs the (frequently) sole male in pilates classes, I wonder if the reason “pilates and the male psyche don’t seem to connect” (Letters, 19 October) is that the language is directed towards women and their anatomy. On more than one occasion, when I have clearly been confused as to what bit of myself I am meant to be concentrating on, female instructors have whispered “crown jewels” in my ear.Tom StubbsSurbiton, Surrey• After my sigh of relief that perhaps sanity had finally prevailed (Rachel Reeves says those with broadest shoulders should pay fair share of tax, 16 October), normal service resumed with the suggestion that the chancellor is targeting a scheme providing cars for disabled people (Chancellor says she ‘can’t leave welfare untouched’ this parliament as budget looms, 17 October).Sandra NorburnDoncaster Continue reading…

A new book by interior designer and heritage consultant Kristine Slawinski and graphic designer Phil Campbell showcases the fabulous Victorian, art moderne and mid-century styled interiors of Melbourne’s city centre buildings, drawn from archival and present-day images• Melbourne Heritage Interiors by Kristine Slawinski and Phil Campbell is out now (A$99)• A rare glimpse inside Melbourne’s most captivating buildings Continue reading…

The RIBA and Fawcett Society survey finds many are afraid to report bullying, sexual harassment and unequal payTwo decades after a seminal report on sexism in architecture, women are still abandoning the profession because of “toxic workplace cultures”, sexual harassment, long hours and unequal pay, according to a report from the Royal Institute of British Architects (the RIBA).Female architects still faced intractable barriers, including “long hours being glorified, an imbalance of power between employers and employees, lack of clear policies and proactive action, and stark displays of sexism within practices”, according to the RIBA Build It Together report, produced with the equality charity the Fawcett Society.Half of all female respondents had experienced bullying at workA third had been sexually harassedA majority felt their architecture career progression had been stymied by having children Continue reading…

With its shimmering ginkgo trees, tinkling pools and a rooftop garden, the Appleby Blue Almshouse housing complex for older people is a worthy winner of RIBA’s prestigious Stirling prizeDescribed as “a provision of pure delight”, Appleby Blue Almshouse, a social housing complex for older people has been named this year’s winner of the RIBA Stirling prize. With a vibe that has more in common with an Alpine spa hotel than the poky rooms and grim corridors usually associated with housing for elderly people, the building – by architects Witherford Watson Mann – reinvents the almshouse for the modern era as a place of care, shelter and social connection.As a building type, the origins of almshouses extend back centuries, giving a semblance of dignity to the poor, the old, the sick and the marginalised. Sequestered from the outside world, with cellular dwellings arrayed around courtyards, they evoke a sense of pastoral benevolence. Continue reading…

A new exhibition in Liverpool tells the story of the grassy arenas, from churning tribal terraces to hyper-modern, wedding-cake-like structures with retractable pitches. And let’s hear it for the world’s first all-timber stadium!Bill Shankly, a man so beloved by Liverpool that there is now a hotel in the city named after him, once famously observed: “Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.”Inevitably, Shankly pops up in Home Ground, a punchy new exhibition on the architecture and social culture of football stadiums. The legendary manager is pictured savouring the acclaim of an adoring crowd, part of a tableau on the farewell to the Kop prior to its metamorphosis from churning tribal terrace into a more sedate, all-seater stand. Continue reading…

Strict planning rules and soaring refit costs are deterring landlords and developers, amid calls for government intervention to alleviate housing crunchFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastTwo years ago, state and local governments pushed to fast-track conversions of near-empty offices into much-needed apartments to alleviate a housing crunch.The promised panacea never eventuated. Continue reading…

The exterior may be a bit Apple store. But inside – upending the very notion of galleries – the new Fondation Cartier can reconfigure its spaces with thrillingly movable platforms. And as for the lecture theatre, it’s blood redCome what may, Jean Nouvel will always have Paris. The City of Lights has been the stage and stomping ground of French architecture’s vieux terrible since the early 1980s. Yet the building that first made his name – the Institut du Monde Arabe, a glittering, delicate, metallic creation inset with mechanical lenses to regulate light – is a lifetime away from the bemusement that met his last Parisian project, completed a decade ago.That was the ill-starred Philharmonie, a gargantuan trophy concert hall, described in the Guardian as resembling “a pile of broken paving stones” and “a greatest hits mashup of dictators’ icons”. Nouvel may well concur, since he boycotted the building’s inauguration, dismayed by budget cuts and design tweaks (“value engineering” as it is known in the trade), describing his project as “sabotaged” and the half-finished concert hall as “counterfeit”. Continue reading…

Some visitors get close to their chosen items through the ‘order an object’ service as others describe being affected by the displaysThe V&A has launched a new exhibition space, the V&A East Storehouse in Hackney, east London, which houses more than 250,000 objects and offers immersive experiences alongside more than 100 small, curated displays. As well as browsing the exhibits that are on show, visitors have the option to choose up to five via the “order an object” service and have them delivered to a study room for a private viewing. (That’s if they’re movable – if not, you go to them.)We asked visitors for their highlights – here are some of them. Continue reading…

Over a decade, Ian James captured an array of pyramid structures across 20 US states, now documented in a new bookOn a summer afternoon in 2017, Los Angeles-based artist Ian James found himself at the Pain Reliever Bar & Grill, the only functioning establishment in Nekoma, North Dakota.Lingering until midnight, while trying not to look too much like a Californian in a town of less than 30 residents, James struck up a conversation with a local couple who explained how to gain access to the Stanley R Mickelsen Safeguard Complex. The former anti-ballistic missile military facility, constructed during the cold war and only operational for six months before being decommissioned, was his destination: specifically, its brutalist concrete radar tower resembling an Egyptian pyramid without an apex. Continue reading…

Eyesores and scandalously unsafe? Or utopian housing for the working classes? Here are the stories and scandals behind some of the UK’s most revolutionary homes‘There is nothing, it seems to me, more appalling, more deadening in the urban landscape than a uniform mass of low buildings covering acres and acres … High dwellings – I think, really very high dwellings – are an enormous enhancement of the scene.” So said Evelyn Sharp, civil servant and powerhouse within the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, in 1955.Seventy years later, many would disagree. High-rise blocks are regularly denounced as ugly concrete monoliths: repetitive, plain, inhuman, boring … Continue reading…

Influential postmodern British architect best known for the MI6 building on the ThamesTerry Farrell, who has died aged 87, was arguably the most influential and prolific of the architects associated with the British postmodern movement.At the start of his private practice in 1965 he worked in partnership with Nicholas Grimshaw, and a few years later he seemed destined to join Richard Rogers and Norman Foster as a “high-tech” pioneer, the first movement in British architecture to achieve worldwide recognition since the arts and crafts designers of the late 19th century. Continue reading…

From the ziggurats of the MI6 HQ to TV-am’s eggcups and a Hong Kong tower that featured on a banknote, Farrell strived to make uplifting architecture• ‘Nonconformist’ architect of MI6 building dies – news• Spies, eggcups and penthouses: Farrell’s best buildings – galleryTerry Farrell made his mark on London. All his buildings had a certain postmodernist swagger, but one of his most conspicuous (ironically, in view of its function) was the headquarters of the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service, better known as MI6, on the site of the former Vauxhall pleasure gardens.Completed in 1994, MI6 showed Farrell, who has died aged 87, in his postmodern pomp, energetically juggling historicist motifs to conjure a flamboyant, flesh-coloured fortress, replete with ziggurats and crenellations, dominating its Thames-side locale. Deyan Sudjic described MI6 as “an epitaph for the architecture of the 80s”, and its styling that which “could be interpreted equally plausibly as a Mayan temple or a piece of clanking art-deco machinery”. Others were less complimentary: “Ceaușescu Towers”, pronounced one critic. Continue reading…

Sir Terry Farrell, the UK’s leading architect-planner and postmodernist, has died aged 87• ‘Nonconformist’ architect of MI6 building dies – news Continue reading…