Blade Runner’s Retro Futures

by Dr. H J McCracken

We are now only two years from the dateline of the original Blade Runner. Ray Bradbury’s melancholic future of Martian settlement and abandonment, The Martian Chronicles, has since long passed, and along with it of course, 1984.

The middle-class home

Compared to the many stories recorded about the British aristocracy or the Dickensian working class in London, there is still very little known about the capital’s middle classes and their domestic lives.

Tianjin in perspective

by Austin Williams | 19 August 2015 “Disasters on the scale of (this) tragic explosion … tend to provoke a brief wave of statements that such things must never happen again. With the passage of time these sentiments are diluted into bland reports about human error and everything being well under control… (but), there is a real chance that the death toll could trigger meaningful changes in a neglected aspect of...

Playing Rough

Review by Matt Bloomfield | 01 August 2015 This summer in London has seen the opening of two exhibitions, both set against a backdrop of brutalism and with a pronounced vein of playfulness. The RIBA Gallery is currently occupied by The Brutalist Playground, an interactive installation created by architecture and design collective du jour- Assemble, in collaboration with artist Simon Terrill. Meanwhile, the Hayward Gallery on the...

A Tale of Two Cities

by Rozie Saunders | 10 July 2015 Are soaring property prices that push young Londoners out of their city, simply a price for London’s global success? Is London becoming a millionaires’ playground rather than a bustling model of urban living? We report on the city’s perceived identity crisis. London is allegedly losing its sense of self. The consensus seems to be that ordinary people are being priced out of the housing...

The dangers of ‘resilience’

Maja Schwoerer | 22 June 2015 Maja Schwoerer reports on the Future Cities Salon debate at the Building Centre in London. The recent debate, Crisis is the New Normal: what is a Resilient City?, brought together an interesting panel of architects, journalists and sustainability experts. ‘Resilience’ is a buzzword sweeping the entire industry and seemingly provides solutions for everything – be it civil war in Damascus, floods in the...

The Right Time for the Night Time

Alan D Miller | 26 May 2016 The Night Time industries are vital to Britain’s future both culturally and economically. Now that the dust has settled after the General Elections, it is worth reminding everyone that said they are “pro business” and particularly intere ted in the employment of young people as well as small businesses  that there is an enormous success story in our capitaland across Britain that is...

White City Black City

Rozie Saunders | 20 May 2015 Sharon Rotbard’s “White City Black City: Architecture and War in Tel Aviv and Jaffa”  is much more than just an architectural history of Tel Aviv and Jaffa. The author, an Israeli architect and writer born in Tel Aviv, explores its development, and its sister city Jaffa through the lens of someone who has lived there continuously for decades. A critical examination of the accepted history of...

Film Review ‘The Big City’

Martin Earnshaw | 25 January 2015 The Big City (1963), directed by Satyajit Ray, is essentially a story of modernity. The superb opening scene traces the passage of a tram cable as it winds its way through Calcutta, a city which in the 1950s and 60s could be considered as  India’s foremost modern city. Although this old Imperial Capital was soon to be eclipsed by Mumbai, at that moment, to be at the forefront of change was to be in...

Review: ‘Constructing Worlds’

Felicity Barbur | 02 January 2015 Presenting Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age at the Barbican in London always seemed likely to prove a good choice of venue. However, it wasn’t until visiting the carefully curated spaces of each photographer that I appreciated just how appropriate the Chamberlin, Powell and Bon designed complex would prove to be. After all, over the years the Barbican itself has been...