Grenfell Tower: A Tragedy
“From blaming the deaths from the Grenfell Tower fire on the London Fire Brigade it’s only a small step to blaming the residents for not leaving the burning building quickly enough”, says Simon Elmer of Architects for Social Housing
Milton’s Paradise Regained
If we are to build a new city, then Milton Keynes represents the experiential cornerstone. It symbolises the kind of bold, creative masterplanning that we desperately need but haven’t seen the like of since those crazy days of the 1960s.
Book Bites: Peter Magyar’s Pen Zen Diaries
At its simplest, this book will teach you to draw and to learn from the process; with simple line studies and ink renderings. “Architects,” he says, “should aspire to reflect and invent the best of the present, and weigh its value in the future”.
The World Cities Culture Report
The report recognises that revitalising and capitalising on a city’s cultural life plays out differently in vastly contrasting contexts.
A Chinese Utopia?
Review by Pierre Shaw [ Oct 2016] Shenzhen is the city of miraculous conception, born from nothing and yet emerging now as one of the planet’s most ferociously rapid urban developing city. From humble border town beginnings just 35 years ago, Shenzhen has thrown itself onto the world stage projecting its population from 300,000 to 12 – 15 million (no-one seems to know the exact figures). It is yet another step in China’s march...
Church on the Beach
This is church as beach hut: a Crusoe-esque retreat for Beijing’s bourgeoisie to sample safely the long-forbidden religious experience.
Wang Shu. Who?
Wang used his reclusive decade to reinvent himself as ‘a scholar, a craftsman, and an architect, in that order’. He emerged as a self-professed member of the literati.
Ai Weiwei at the Royal Academy
In October of 2010, Ai Weiwei filled the turbine hall at the Tate Modern with 100 million handmade porcelain sunflower seeds.
Playing Rough
The installations all seem to be a bit of fun, but there does seem to be a sinister undertone.
A Tale of Two Cities
Are soaring property prices that push young Londoners out of their city, simply a price for London’s global success?
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