The architecture and design blog

Photos: Candice Lake.

On a decrepit industrial site next to a Victorian railway viaduct in London, Undercurrent Architects imagined something truly extraordinary. Built in and around a railway viaduct they have created an uplifting live-work space that is manifest in the form of a fluid industrial secretion. An ooze of grease from a giant industrial machine perhaps.

The building seems as a gut response to the intense Victorian industrial heritage of the site. The dense overcrowding of those times appears to be a cue to literally squeeze habitable space from the site, almost accepting the resulting form as a consequence of the process. If that is the suggestion of course, it is an illusion. The building is pure artifice. Read more

Photos: Tim Lucas, Price + Myers.

Southend, in the UK, is a seaside resort that thrived by providing inexpensive holidays to London’s industrial workers. When those workers started going to Spain for their holidays in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Southend, and countless resorts like it, declined steeply.

More recently however, there has been a reinvention and consequent renaissance of the English seaside resort. The drive has generally been to take the resorts more upmarket and in particular to introduce more sophisticated cultural activities such as art galleries and art related venues to revitalize the town and to attract new visitors.

It is in this context that we introduce this cultural Centre designed by White Arkitekter and Sprunt, located on the end of Southend Pier, the worlds longest and still the town’s claim to fame! The building is now open to the public. Read more

Photo: Sergio Pirrone.

On the 20^th August we featured the trailer for Zaha’s Biennale exhibition that looks at her influences and inspiration past and present – the basic theme of this year’s show that is directed by David Chipperfield.

Those were the CAD renderings, today we get the first glimpse of some of the actual objects in Zaha’s display. Read more

Photos: Magma Architecture.

It is pleasing to see that one of the less well known practices, Magma Architecture, that designed one of the less well known buildings for the 2012 Olympics, has been shortlisted for the Emirates Glass Leaf Awards 2012 in the Best Sustainable Development category.

The three mobile buildings were designed for the 10, 25 and 50m Olympic shooting events. There is a lovely attention to detail and because they are demountable can be reused time and again at different venues. Read more

Photos: Courtesy RIBA.

With bankers and banks in the firing line, it seems brave to enter New Court, which is a headquarters for a corporate bank, for the Stirling Prize. It is also one of many City of London head quarter buildings which tend to be corporate, lavish, expensive, occasionally well designed and invariably macho in the architectural sense. So what is the fuss about this HQ?

The first design point to note is that the new building reinstates the view between St Swithin’s and St Stephen Walbrook churches, the latter designed by Christopher Wren. London planning authorities are zealous about the views of the City’s old churches particularly St Paul’s Cathedral also by Wren. Read more