Masterplanning the Future
By Austin Williams | 6 December 2012 The great American urbanist Daniel Burnham, the man who drafted the first comprehensive city plan a century ago, summed up the necessary ambition involved in the art of city-making: “Make no little plans,” he said. “They have no magic to stir men’s blood.” For a Western architect like myself arriving in China, four things are immediately apparent: one is the breakneck ‘speed’ of the...
The world, one sketch at a time
‘The Art of Urban Sketching: Drawing on Location Around the World’ by Gabriel Campanario; Quarry Books, 2012. 320pp Reviewed by Anna Gibb | 29 November 2012 A renaissance in sketching is occurring. While advances in technology continue and we now have smartphones that allow us to document our surroundings in an instant, for many people there remains something both seductive and unique about a hand drawing. The Art of Urban...
A bold pro-growth strategy could set the UK’s housing market free
By Michael Owens | 23 November 2012 By 2025, China will have 221 cities with over 1m inhabitants, adding more than 350m to its urban population. In response, 40 billion square metres of new floorspace will be built. In contrast, here in London, there is a dynamic underground housing market for beds in sheds in Thornton Heath, Southall, and Stratford. Despite pressing needs, house building at the levels achieved in previous eras now...
The Great Stagnation
Instead of focussing merely on the recent period of financial turmoil, The Great Stagnation encourages a longer term view.
Venice: Myth and Reality
The ambition of dominating the seas was celebrated through the formulation of rituals, ceremonies and myths.
Britain after the riots
This book presents arguments that almost completely undermine the independence of children as well as adults.
I run therefore I am!
‘It is the presence of competition itself that acts as a permanent barrier between the two types of runner’
Architectural Olympiad
‘The Stadium’ by Tim Abrahams; Machine Books, 2012. 38pp Reviewed by Josh Broomer | 10 October 2012 ‘These 17 days may have changed this country’. So pronounced the Guardian the morning after Stephen Daldry’s closing ceremony concluded a vibrant festival of sport. The Olympic Stadium in east London provided a fitting setting for a series of memorable track and field achievements from Usain Bolt’s second triple to David...
Spare us from Community Engagement
By Dave Clements | 17 September 2012 What is the meaning of community today, and how it can be meaningfully engaged with? While there is no end of projects tasked with engaging communities, whether this is a meaningful activity or not is a moot point. Indeed, if we stopped trying to engage communities they might actually have a chance to breathe. To my mind, although there may be some well intentioned projects out there, all things...
Keeping it Real in the ‘Fictitious Capital’
By Andrew Calcutt | 9 October 2012 Foolish to judge a whole book on this basis alone; but if the design on the front doesn’t give you the gist of what’s between the covers, its editors should be shot. The front cover of a new book London After Recession depicts the eponymous city as a ‘fictitious capital’, existing in a think-bubble dreamed up by a bowler-hatted gent of possibly Asian extraction. Of course the subtitle ‘a fictitious...
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