Design Like You Give A Damn
‘Design Like You Give A Damn: Architectural Responses To Humanitarian Crises’ by Architecture for Humanity (Eds), Thames & Hudson, 2006. 336pp Reviewed by Austin Williams | 9 September 2006 Cameron Sinclair’s long-awaited book begins with a personal journey of social and ethical awareness, which has taken him from a lowly ‘CAD monkey’, as he describes himself, to a fully-fledged professional humanitarian. He now heads...
Future Systems
‘Future Systems’ by Deyan Sudjic; Phaidon Press, 2006. 238pp Reviewed by Austin Williams | 9 July 2006 At an Architecture Week event a few years ago, Amanda Levete, discussing Future Systems’ place in the modern architectural pantheon, announced that there were two types of people: ‘there are those who love our work and there are those who are stuck in the past.’ Ironically, this piece of vanity publishing encourages the...
New York’s Beaux-Arts masterpiece
Elisabetta Gasparoni | 12 June 2006 The New York Public Library – majestic columns and arches, grand marble staircases, high, elaborately decorated ceilings – stands magnificent and inviting at the intersection of 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue. Begun in 1899 and completed in 1911 it is a continuing monument to knowledge and research. The Beaux-Arts style employed by architects John Merven Carrere and Thomas Hastings...
Ken’s planning for London?
Austin Williams | 27 February 2006 The Greater London Authority Act of 1999 that paved the way for Ken Livingstone’s reincarnation as the mayor of London was the longest piece of legislation passed by parliament since the Government of India Act in 1935. At that time, in the guise of enhancing local democratic autonomy, the imperial Governor General retained total authority over administration, legislation and finances of his fiefdom....
ESSAY: New Orleans and the New Urban vision
Austin Williams | 05 February 2006 In a recent article in the Washington Post, architect and professor of architecture, Roger K Lewis bemoans the proposed rebuilding New Orleans. ‘Why, ‘ he asks, ‘do we stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that there are places on the earth’s surface – wetlands and floodplains, seismically active regions, arid deserts, steep hillsides and cliffs – where erecting cities...
Cities
‘Cities’ by John Reader; William Heinemann, 2004. 358pp Reviewed by Austin Williams | 13 January 2006 I thoroughly enjoyed this book although at times I was quite confused by the author’s critique. Funnily enough, this, for me, made it an even more enjoyable exercise, absorbing the engaging facts and entertaining stories while trying to work out what the author really thought about it all. This is an intellectual...
Taking a Risk
Austin Williams | 8 September 2005 On the very day that the Architects’ Journal was holding its conference on changes in Health and Safety legislation, focussing on how to manage risk, so the House of Lords was hosting a conference focussing on worries that risk culture had gone too far. So at the same time that I was getting a short shrift from Stephen Wright of the Health and Safety Executive for questioning what I called the...
Sustainability and the moral right
Austin Williams | 12 May 2005 ‘The problem is that people like you think that they can deny the reality of events: like David Irving, you are denying the problem.’ Now I’m used to being insulted, but it still amazes me how many people that I have never met before, feel as if they have the right to insult me simply because they are unable to come to terms with the fact that I have a contrary position to them. However,...
ESSAY: False Urban Memory Syndrome
Austin Williams | 13 May 2004 The urban memory debate is one in which aspects of the city (town, or village) – hidden quarters, alleys or buried artefacts – are revived into the modern setting to provide an added dimension to people’s appreciation of the built environment. Not only that but abstractions such as memories, historical events or folklore from a previous generation are captured, reinterpreted and given a...
The Anxious City
‘The Anxious City: British Urbanism in the late 20th Century’ by Richard J Williams; Routledge, 2004. 281pp Reviewed by Austin Williams | 28 April 2005 This is a very well researched, incredibly detailed and thoroughly insightful critique of the apprehensive period in which we live represented in a critique of a number of British cities. Through a series of case studies of cities across the UK, Richard J Williams, lecturer...
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