Irish architect Shane de Blacam has been awarded the 2023 Royal Academy Architecture Award in recognition of his commitment to creating communal spaces and the craftsmanship and detail of his projects. In 1976, De Blacam co-founded the architectural firm de Blacam and Meagher alongside John Meagher, establishing a collective practice focused on the careful integration of local materials and the creation of comfortable spaces for people. Each year, London’s Royal Academy awards individuals or collective practices whose body of work has made a meaningful and positive impact on society.
The Grimshaw Foundation is a charitable organization aiming to bring access to creative learning tools to a diverse range of young people. The organization was established by Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, in partnership with the partners of international architecture practice Grimshaw. The central purpose is to bring together a globally linked educational community of artists, architects, and designers to support and empower young people. It hopes to reach them at the stage of navigating their career options and help them discover the varied options and opportunities that the creative industry can offer. The Foundation officially launched on 6 July 2022 at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.
French architect Renée Gailhoustet has been awarded the 2022 Royal Academy Architecture Award for her pioneering work designing public housing and neighborhoods in and around Paris. The award is given annually by London's Royal Academy to individuals or practices whose idea or body of work has positively contributed to the public.
The London Festival of Architecture (LFA), the world’s largest annual architecture festival is returning for its 13th edition this summer, transforming the city's neighborhoods into a public display of installations, exhibitions, talks, and special events. Following two years of digitalized editions, this year's LFA falls under the theme of ‘act’, and will see a return of physical events alongside digital realms across the capital.
With an on-going digital and physical evolution, the 5th Istanbul Design Biennialtook a new approach. “Rather than focusing on the presentation of final results in a compressed period of time and space”, the global circumstances created the opportunity to present new projects on a longer period of time and in expanded spaces, offering not an exhibition but “a digital and research program with a series of permanent interventions in the city.”
As the forces shaping our built environment have shifted, engaging technology, networks, and complex systems, architects need to envision more than the physical space but produce narratives on how to best operate within this new societal landscape. In this context, speculative architecture seems to have never been more critical; therefore this article takes a closer look at the mediums that currently question the existing conditions of the built environment and explore new architectural possibilities.
The Royal Academy has revealed the shortlist for their annual prize recognizing young talent in architecture, the Dorfman Award. The award is given to those "...reimagining the future of architecture and whose work demonstrates a high degree of sensitivity to local and global context." The 2019 shortlist comprises four emerging architects practicing across the globe.
Liz Diller and Ricardo Scofidio; image via the Architects' Journal
Diller Scofidio + Renfro has been announced the winner of the 2019 Royal Academy Architecture Prize, an award given annually by the British arts body to recognize firms or individuals who have been "instrumental in shaping the discussion, collection, or production of architecture in the broadest sense."
London’s Royal Academy of Arts has announced plans for a new permanent architecture-specific gallery and the creation of two new international architecture awards as part of the RA’s mission to “garner a wider appreciation and understanding of architecture, bringing to the fore its vital relationship to culture and society.”
The new architecture space, along with a cafe, will be housed within the Dorfman Senate Rooms in Burlington Gardens, allowing the academy to show architectural exhibition year-round. The architecture rooms join wider renovation plans led by David Chipperfield Architects that will also include a new naturally-lit theater.
For its fall season of architecture events, the Royal Academy’s working theme is “Architecture and Freedom: a changing connection,” in a program conceived and organized by Architecture Programme Curator, Owen Hopkins. One of these events was a recent lecture by Patrik Schumacher, Director of Zaha Hadid Architects, and ardent promoter of Parametricism. In his lecture, what starts out with a brief exercise in damage control over the barrage of criticism recently endured by the firm, emerges as an impassioned discussion of architectural politics, design philosophies, and social imperatives.
WELL-line by Chetwoods. Image Courtesy of London Royal Academy of Arts
The Royal Academy of Arts in London has announced the four shortlisted proposals in their Urban Jigsaw competition, which aims to generate ideas for the renewal of Brownfield sites in London. After appraisal of many high-quality entries, four finalists have been selected to move onto the next stage of the project. See the finalist proposals after the break.
The Royal Academy of Arts in London have launched a new international ideas competition which aims "to refocus attention to the huge potential of the brownfield sites that still exist across London." 'Brownfield' sites, or those earmarked for potential building development that have had previous development on them, are plentiful in the UK capital. This competition seeks "speculative ideas [which] make the most of these missing pieces in London’s urban jigsaw."
In an article for the RA Magazine, Kieran Long (Senior Curator of Contemporary Architecture, Design and Digital at the V&A) and Stella Duffy (co-director of Fun Palaces, a national campaign for greater access for all to the arts), ask: are we're building too many museums? On the one hand, Duffy argues that "we should focus all of our efforts on opening up existing museums to a much wider public" while on the other, Long suggests that "new museums can bring positive change to the places in which they are built." Ultimately, Long argues that "museums have a sense of authenticity and institutional mission that is rare in public life" yet, for Duffy, this doesn't mean we need more; rather, "we need to utilise what we already have."
David Chipperfield Architects have revealed plans to connect the two Grade II*-listed London bases of London's Royal Academy of Arts - the 17th century Burlington House and the 19th century 6 Burlington Gardens - as part of a £50million ($80million) masterplan of "subtle interventions." According to the Architects' Journal, the two structures will be linked by a concrete bridge which will span fifteen metres across a service area and courtyard, and will see the creation of a number of new exhibition spaces, a lecture theatre, and a new space for the Royal Academy's world-renowned schools of art and architecture. A series of roof extensions and terraces will allow for new views over central London.
"I’m particularly pleased to welcome Farshid because the Royal Academy architects currently comprise a more distinguished group than at any time in its long history," commented Christopher Le Brun, president of the Royal Academy.
As part of the 2014 London Festival of Architecture, teams of architects from the four of the most recent Stirling Prize winning British practices were challenged with creating the most imaginative piece of a city - out of LEGO. Each team began with a carefully laid out square on the floor of the largest gallery of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, at which point they were given just one hour and 45 minutes to create an urban masterpiece out of blocks. Each group of architects worked alongside students from the Royal Academy’s attRAct programme, which offers A-level art students the chance to engage with art and architecture. An esteemed panel of judges ultimately selected the team from Zaha Hadid Architects as victorious, who "considered London on a huge scale and used curving buildings of different typologies which echoed the shape of the Thames."
Read more about the brief and the other participating entries after the break.
In an article for London's Royal Academy of Arts Magazine entitled Plane Sailing, Zaha Hadid discusses the influence of Russian Suprematist painter Kazimir Malevich on her own design work. In Hadid's early work, such as The Peak Blue Slabs (1982/83), the visual connections to Malevich's strict, regular shapes and lines are evident.
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.jpg?1654020013 "Aubervilliers by Renée Gailhoustet . Image © Marc Pataut")
.jpg?1654020163 "Le Liegat Ivry sur Seine by Renée Gailhoustet. Image © Valerie Sadoun")
.jpg?1654020006 "Aubervilliers by Renée Gailhoustet . Image © Marc Pataut")
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.jpg?1605822515 "Surface Ex-Tension by Jonathan Craig, Luis Arjona, Marco Nieto & Philip Elmore. Image Courtesy of Arch Out Loud. Image Courtesy of Arch Out Loud")
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