This week, OMA has unveiled their latest project in London, Holland Green. Working alongside Allies & Morrison, the firm has created three new luxury residential buildings on a site of significant cultural importance: the former home of the Commonwealth Institute, designed by Sir Robert Matthew, one of the founding partners of RMJM. As a result, OMA and Allies & Morrison’s Holland Green project involved much more than just adding fuel to the fire of London’s booming luxury residential market—it also involved an extensive conversion to the original 1962 Commonwealth Institute exhibition hall, funded through the scheme’s profitable residential offering, to prepare the heritage building for its new tenants the Design Museum.
ArchDaily spoke with Reinier de Graaf, the partner in charge of the project at OMA, to discuss the development’s social aspirations, the challenges of the London context, and the story behind the project.
Heathrow Airport is offering a first glimpse at commissioned expansion proposals by Zaha Hadid Architects, Grimshaw, HOK, and Benoy, that will shape the future of the global hub in London. The project brief called for "bold ideas to create a world-class sustainable airport that [will] deliver innovations in passenger service, integrate local communities, and showcase the best of British design." Challenging the architects to push the boundaries of what is the current airport typology, the proposals are meant to drive a step change in global airport design.
In Granary Square, located in London’s King’s Cross, there is a fragment of the poem Brill by Aidan Dunn set into the ground, which reads: “King’s Cross, dense with angels and histories. There are cities beneath your pavements, cities behind your skies.” Anchored by the converted granary building and a rejuvenated stretch of canal, Argent’s ongoing King’s Cross development is an appropriate setting for Building on the Built, an exhibition which presents the work of London-based practice Jonathan Tuckey Design.
Crossrail Limited has released new renderings of stations set to open on the Elizabeth Line in London. Notable features of the new stations include step-free access from train to street, and seamless integration into the existing Transport for London (TfL) network. Seating, signage and full-height platform screen doors emulate precedents within the system to promote ease and familiarity. The designs strive for simplicity and clarity with reduced visual clutter and clear sight lines along platforms. Additionally, there will be permanent artworks installed and fully-integrated in many of the central London stations. The stations depicted – Paddington, architect Weston Williamson, Bond Street, architect John McAslan + Partners, Tottenham Court Road, architect Hawkins\Brown, Farringdon, architect Aedas, Liverpool Street, architect Wilkinson Eyre, Whitechapel, architect BDP, and Woolwich, architect Weston Williamson – are scheduled to begin service in December of 2018.
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The 2016 Venice Biennale will see the inaugural collaboration between La Biennale and London's Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) with an exhibition located in the Sale d’Armi (Arsenale) entitled A World of Fragile Parts. The show aims to explore the threats facing the preservation of global heritage sites and how the production of copies can aid in the preservation of cultural artefacts.
From a shortlist of 68 buildings, 36 London projects have been awarded the 2016 RIBA London Awards for architectural excellence, the city's most prestigious design honor. The winners include a home for ravens, a Japanese-inspired London terrace home and a historical restoration. All of these designs will be further considered for the RIBA National Awards, to be announced in July. The winners of the national award will then create a shortlist for the RIBA Stirling Prize – the highest award for architecture in the UK.
The Parliament of the United Kingdom has announced a series of renovations that will take place on Elizabeth Tower and Big Ben in London, starting in early 2017. During the renovation period, the tower and clock will be partially covered with scaffolding, which will be removed as the work progresses. Moreover, the clock mechanism will be stopped for several months, during which there will be no chiming or striking of the iconic bells.
It's no secret that architects are often fascinated by maps, and in the age of Google - where access to accurate maps of almost anywhere in the world has become universal - maps have become one of the most powerful ways to understand our cities. Interestingly, Google has in a way enabled a new way to interrogate maps from the past, as historic maps can be more easily overlaid with the Google interface to make comparisons to the present day. That's just what the website Locating London's Past has done, creating a tool to compare three maps: the current version of Google Maps, the first Ordnance Survey map from 1863-80, and John Rocque's 1746 Survey of London, allowing web users to see the growth of the UK capital over the past 270 years.
Dublin-based Grafton Architects, who last year were awarded the Jane Drew Prize, have seen off competition from the likes of Herzog & de Meuron and David Chipperfield Architects to win the contest to design the London School of Economics’ (LSE) £100 million ($144 million) Paul Marshall Building. The new center will house the academic departments of Accounting, Finance and Management and research centres, including the Marshall Institute, with teaching facilities as well as new multipurpose sports and arts facilities. Grafton Architects are reportedly "absolutely delighted to be given this opportunity to build in this unique location in Lincoln's Inn Fields, across from the wonderful Sir John Soane’s Museum, for a visionary client such as LSE."
The following article was first published by Volume Magazine in their 47th issue, The System*. You can read the Editorial of this issue, How Much Does Your System Weigh?, here.
Neoliberal post-fordism poses a dramatic challenge to urbanism as we have come to know it since the early 20th century. The public planning process has become more and more an embarrassment and obstacle to urban and economic flourishing. It’s a relic of a bygone era. The high point of urban planning was the post-war era of socialist planning and re-construction of the built environment. With respect to this period we can speak about physical or perhaps ‘positive planning’, in the sense of governments formulating concrete plans and designs about what to build. This era has long gone as society evolved beyond the simple fordist society of mechanical mass production to our current post-fordist networked society. When a few basic standards were functionally separate, optimized and endlessly repeated, central planning could still cope with the pace of societal progress. The world we live in today is far too multi-faceted, complex and dynamic to be entrusted to a central planning agency. The old model broke apart as it could not handle the level of complexity we live with and our cities should accommodate. The decentralized information processing mechanism of the market was indeed capable of managing such levels of complexity and, for this reason, has effectively taken over all positive decision-making processes.
Studio Esinam, in collaboration with London-based photographer Rory Gardiner, has released Utopia, a photo series that captures and pays tribute to London’s Brutalist architecture. The series aims to “highlight the subtle beauties hidden beneath the hard surface of some of London’s brutalist buildings.”
Photographed during the early spring of 2016, the project captures some of the city’s best examples of Brutalism: the Barbican Estate, Royal National Theatre, Hayward Gallery, Trellick Tower, and the Robin Hood Gardens.
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