Film Review: Robin Hood Gardens
Rosalind Alexander | 30 September 2014 “The Smithsons on Housing” Allow me to introduce you to B S Johnson’s 1970 documentary, “The Smithsons on Housing”, which might be better titled “The Smithsons on the Tragedy that is London.” Everything they discuss is from the perspective of their project at Robin Hood Garden in Poplar, east London, which was in mid-construction when they were interviewed. It is also somewhat difficult to get...
Film Review: ‘City Visions’ #1
Magdalena Melon | 29 September 2014 ‘Cathedrals of Culture’ If buildings could talk, what would they say about us? Under the direction of Wim Wenders, Cathedrals of Culture attempts to throw light on this question by offering six renowned filmmakers a chance to select a building that means something special to them, and allowing them to pose as the narrators who communicate the soul of their buildings. This could have proved...
Film review: “Rebel Architecture” #2
Magdalena Melon | 4 September 2014 “Greening the city” “If the current way of thinking does not change, sooner or later citizens will actually live in concrete jungles. For a modern architect, the most important mission is to bring back green spaces to the earth.” “Urbanisation is threatening our green spaces in Ho Chi Minh City” – a quote from Vo Trong Nghia, the Vietnamese architectural subject of this short film –...
Film review: “Rebel Architecture”
Pedro Calmon | 29 August 2014 “The Pedreiro and the Master Planner” “The favela is unplanned, it arises spontaneously, with no help or design from government”, Luis Carlos Toledo, Master Planner. Arbitrariness, especially in urban settlements, is a rare feature. From Berlin’s Wall to the plazas of Spanish cities, the question “why is something where it is” – seems to be fundamental to any analysis of a determined...
Book Review: The Writing on the Wall
by Martin Earnshaw | 7 June 2014 If you’ve ever wondered how much of your life you have wasted on Social Media, Facebook will tell you with its new app. Despite the widespread assertion that time spent on the internet is time wasted, enthusiasts of new technology stress its benefits. What both sides don’t realise, according to Tom Standage’s recent book, is that these debates have raged for longer than most people think. According to...
The Anti-Human Eco-City
By Paul Thomas | 20 April 2014 Before attending this lecture on The Anti-Human Eco-City at Leeds Met, I’d heard of them but was unsure what they were. Apparently, I was not alone. According to the speaker, Austin Williams, Associate Professor of Architecture at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China, there is no agreed definition of what an eco-city is; there are very few that have been built; and the most famous one,...
Commodity Creatures
By Charlie Winstanley | 18 April 2014 ‘Tools for Unknown Futures’ was the theme for the latest FutureEverything conference in Manchester Town Hall. The famous Gothic design of the town hall ensured the event took place in a setting of traditional splendour, spliced apart by the smooth white edges of the professional FE façade jutting pristinely across the arched columns and intricate masonry. The juxtaposition provided an interesting...
Critical Subjects
Higher education is in crisis. This summer sees the launch of Critical Subjects, a new architectural Summer School placing the pursuit of knowledge and critical thinking at the core of education. These are troubled times for higher education. In recent years the idea of pursuing knowledge for its own sake has found little support. Instead of creating an atmosphere supportive of open enquiry and free thinking, universities have...
Ordos’ Other Ghost Town
Ordos in Inner Mongolia is synonymous with the phrase ‘Ghost Town’; a term describing cities apparently built on a whim, with no-one to occupy them. With China having already started to fulfil its pledge to build 400 new cities in 20 years, innumerable articles have emerged in the Western press to laugh, pity or gloat at the emergence of such tragi-comical examples of urban desolation. Forbes magazine is typical of many...
The Practical Possibilist
Population 10 Billion: The Coming Demographic Crisis and How to Survive It by Danny Dorling; Constable, 2013. 448pp Reviewed by Martin Earnshaw | 14 October 2013 The recent news that the UK is experiencing a mini baby boom was greeted with predictable panic about how Britain’s services would cope. From worries about an ageing population to the familiar refrain (1) about depleted resources, population has long been a lightning rod for...
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