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...
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,...
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 uncivil civility of Richard Rogers
By Richard J Williams | 31 July 2013 The idea of ‘civility’ crops up a lot at Richard Rogers’s exhibition. It’s there right from the start in a room decked out in orange vinyl, with a series of panels laying out Rogers’s ‘ethos’. In practice, it’s most clearly represented in Rogers’s non-architectural work, such as his chairmanship of the New Labour government’s Urban Task Force (1999), his work as London’s architecture ‘tsar’ for...
Dear Chris…
This is a series of letters between Chris Twinn, Arup Fellow & Senior Sustainability Consultant in Shanghai; and Austin Williams of FCP, after the publication of Williams’ article in China Daily (here) Dear Austin Having read your article in the China Daily criticising sustainability and sustainability consultants, I would like to say that I agree there are there are too many Western consultants peddling low level...
India, China: Talk of the town
By Austin Williams | Feb 19, 2013 As an architect living in Suzhou, just outside Shanghai, I have become blasé about the skyline being transformed before my very eyes. The classic view of Shanghai’s towering waterfront may not represent great architecture, but it’s impressive all the same… and constantly improving. In most cities across China it is the same story: high-speed construction activity, modernisation, transformation and...
Ghost Towns
By Alastair Donald | 13 January 2013 Last year a historic landmark was reached, but with little fanfare. The fact that the people of China are now predominantly urban, was largely ignored by the Western media. By contrast, considerable attention focused on China’s new ‘ghost towns’ or kong cheng − cities such as Ordos in the Gobi desert and Zhengzhou New District in Henan Province which are still being built but are largely...
Military Urbanism?
‘Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism’ by Stephen Graham; Verso, 2011. 402pp Reviewed by Austin Williams | 18 December 2012 Urban transformation has often been considered to be a virtue, but some view it differently; as a source of instability and conflict. The United Nations calls cities “dynamic centres of creativity, commerce and culture” but adds that they are “better known for their chaos and grime”....
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...
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