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BUILDINGSST
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BLUEPRINT
EDITORIAL
If the past decade saw the final demise of the role of the city
architect – with John Thorp’s retirement from that role in
Leeds – it’s now clear that cities with astute civic leadership
can still prosper. Thorp is a capable and well meaning
architect, but even he couldn’t prevent the building of some
of the most questionable, speculative residential buildings of
the era. In fact, the role of the city architect and, more
importantly, its department had already been eroded since
the heydays immediately post-war and in the 1960s. What
we’ve seen over the past 10-14 years, particularly in
communities outside London, is the architecture resulting
from national government and some local administrations
following the same political persuasion.
Nottingham, for example, which came under Conservative
control last year after 18 years of Labour control saw the
construction of the Nottingham Contemporary by Caruso St
John (see page 42), the new Market Square by Gustafson
Porter (see page 60) and the New Art Exchange by Hawkins
Brown. Manchester City Council (consistently Labour) had a
council that chimed with New Labour’s belief in market
forces. The result was regeneration projects of varying
quality: at least one civic facility of true excellence (see page
48) and moments of spectacular commercial bombast, best
typified by the work Ian Simpson.
13
LUKE HAYES
To compile this list of the best British buildings since
2000, the Blueprint team travelled across the UK to revisit
projects that ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous. It
wasn’t always easy to distinguish between the two. The
projects we saw, and the final 10 we chose are, of course,
exceptions. But they are, more significantly, also the result
of New Labour’s policy of exceptionalism that extended far
beyond architecture: singular outstanding examples were
intended to encourage more widespread quality. As a political
ideology it was empty, but it has had an extraordinary effect
on British cities and the architecture profession.
It has now become an orthodoxy that the last decade was,
at best, a wasted opportunity, and, far worse, a time of
architectural and urbanistic blights on UK cities. At a time
when state support will be greatly curtailed and architects
will have to find self-confidence and support from other
sources, it is important to assess the best work produced in
the past decade. These projects tell a broader story of this
peculiar time in British architectural history. We look
forward to hearing your opinions on the selection: the list
will be available to view, comment on, and contribute to on
the Blueprint website.
Peter Kelly, editor
BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011
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78
JEANETTE BARNES
16 OPENING SHOT
Daniel Clements presents his
image of a new infrastructure
project in South Africa by Arup
21 VIEW
Edward Cullinan Architects at Kew
and the BFI; A new home for the
RSC; The Guangdong Museum,
China; Miguel Arruda’s Inhabitable
Sculpture; Nangang 2050 in
Taipei; Citius by Tim Abrahams;
Erik Spiekermann’s Achtung;
Sour Grapes, and Nailhouse by
Christopher Rainbow
70 25
34 THE BEST BRITISH BUILDINGS
OF THE 21st CENTURY
The new millennium bought
about a decade of creativity
fuelled by a strong economy and
confidence in the architecture
industry. As Britain moves into
a period of austerity, Blueprint
has revisited buildings across
the country to assess the
architectural legacy from the
time of plenty to bring you the
10 examples of British
architecture at its best and
examine its ability to inspire
CONTENTS
65 PRODUCE
For the forthcoming Imperial
War Museum exhibition titled
Once Upon A Wartime,
Pippa Nissen Studio has
designed a thought-provoking
exhibition that will appeal to
adults and children alike.
Owen Pritchard reports
70 PRODUCE
Gian Luca Amadei reports on
the highlights from Orgatec and
the Steelcase conference held in
Cologne, Germany
15
65
75 REVIEW
Exhibitions: Nordic Models
and Common Grounds in
New York; The Crate Series at
Spring Projects in London;
Drawing Fashion at the
Design Museum, London
Book: Just My Type by
Simon Garfield
90 MAN AND MACHINE
PostlerFerguson designs tools to
be used by humans and robots
when they’re forced to share a
kitchen in the future
BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011
16

BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011

 17

OPENING SHOT
DANIEL CLEMENTS
Polokwane was one of the host cities for the 2010 Football World Cup in
South Africa. As part of a strategy for urban improvement, Arup Interchange
Design was commissioned by the city to create new street furniture,
lighting, public art and infrastructure. These now remain as a legacy of the
event. Part of this was a 292m bridge over a railway that links the Ladine
and Hospital park areas of the city. The bridge, designed by Caroline Sohie
and Leszek Dobrovolsky of AID features bespoke street lights, and a steel
sculpture-come-shelter that was an integral part of the improvement to the
urban environment. In addition to photographing these projects by Arup,
Clements has been traveling throughout Africa for a project entitled
Structural Divinity, which will form a forthcoming exhibition and book.

BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011

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Ω VIEW 21
Two new archive buildings
- one for the BFI’s movies,
one for plants at Kew
Gardens - get to the heart of
Edward Cullinan Architects,
writes Owen Pritchard
Despite its Film Centre on the South
Bank being a victim of cuts, the
British Film Institute is still building
a major archive in the Warwickshire
countryside. The site – made up from
decommissioned MOD buildings – is
no stranger to security, given that it
once stored nuclear weapons. Edward
Cullinan Architects won the job in
July 2009 and work recently started
to build the £8.4m new building that
will ensure the preservation of films
for years to come.
In many ways it is the perfect
project for ECA which is a quiet
stalwart of the British architecture
scene. The company, established by
Cullinan in 1965, operates as a
cooperative and has a history of ‘In some ways it is an expression landscape. The volatile and precious are articulated in brick – a reference
undertaking projects that adhere to of the heroic archive,’ says ECA film will be kept in dry atmospheric to the original herbarium – while
Right: The BFI film an ethical ethos. Cullinan was architect Carol Costello. ‘It’s like a conditions at -5 degrees Celsius. The glazing and timber denote public
archive in awarded the RIBA gold medal in 2008 tomb. We say in the office that there acetate film is extremely flammable, spaces. There is also an abundance of
Warwickshire and the moderately sized company is something Egyptian about it.’ The as scenes from Cinema Paradiso and workspaces with views on the Thames.
combines elegance still shares projects across the studio BFI building will be constructed in Inglourious Basterds illustrate to As Carol Costello points out: ‘The
with utilitarian
and the architects dine together on a pre-cast concrete sandwich panels, dramatic effect. As a consequence the difference here is that the BFI archive
purpose without
disrupting a
Friday afternoon. heavily insulated to ensure thermal building will be laid out in cells, is a store, whereas Kew is a working
backdrop of Like the herbarium at Kew mass is retained. This method of ensuring that in the unlikely event of herbarium. The artefacts need to be
MOD buildings Gardens, which ECA just completed, construction was chosen because the fire, damage will be limited. It has a extracted and used – so the building
the quasi-academic BFI project is the chemical reaction of setting concrete completion date of late 2011. was planned accordingly’. The break-
Below: Seeds of perfect brief for a company that is exothermic and would compromise The herbarium at Kew Gardens is out spaces are supplied for archivists
change: the new combines tradition, modernity and air temperature in the archive. the larger of the practice’s two recent to work in daylight without having to
herbarium at Kew
astute technical knowledge to create For what is essentially a bunker, projects and more conventionally subject specimens to changes in
will manage the
collection’s practical architecture. Gone are the ECA has softened the building, giving Cullinanesque. Situated off the main humidity and temperature.
expansion for the wavy roofs, replaced by a careful it a green roof and modest canopy gardens site, the new building sits The airy public spaces feel like an
next 40 years mastery of services and planning. that helps integrate it into the between the existing historic archive academic institution – possibly like a
buildings. This expansion enables the Cambridge college. Unsurprising, this
institution to remain on the site that is where Cullinan was educated and
has been its home for the last 140 the site of some of his most
years. The herbarium is responsible important works: from the St John’s
not only for naming new species and College library extension completed in
classifying them, but also contributes 1993 to the new library at Fitzwilliam
to the Breathing Planet programme College finished last year.
that tries to restore degraded habitats. The archives, though, hint at
Housing seven million specimens another of Cullinan’s influences –
that must be protected from damp Denys Lasdun, for whom Cullinan
and pests, the building is expected to worked early in his career. However,
be able to handle the expansion of though the BFI may appear to be an
the collection for the next 40-50 aesthetic departure from Cullinan’s
years, even though 37,000 different palette of wood and stone, it isn’t.
specimens arrive every year. Most The concrete is left undressed rather
areas in the building, including the than camouflaged like Kew. Instead of
upper floor that houses Kew’s being a reawakening of Cullinan’s
publishing department, can be turned apprenticeship under Lasdun, the
into space to house the collection. concrete is contextual – a watchword
Using a tight palette of materials, for much of Cullinan’s work – and
TIM SOAR

the herbarium externally and politely neatly sets the building among the
expresses its function. Archive spaces existing MOD bunkers.

BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011

22
Redeveloping a beloved national
treasure like the Royal Shakespeare
Theatre was always going to court
controversy. But some of the changes
will keep the Bard contemporary,

as Gian Luca Amadei reports
The first phase of the Royal
Shakespeare Theatre’s reopening in
Stratford-upon-Avon took place in
late November, following an intense
£112.8m redevelopment. It serves as
a prime opportunity to test the more
public areas of the playhouse, from
the new rooftop restaurant to the new
way-finding signage around the
building, which has been designed by
Bennetts Associates.
However, the headline act has
always been the main auditorium,
which won’t open until 2011. This
will be a major departure from the
original, somewhat more grand one
designed by British architect
Elisabeth Scott in 1932.
Scott’s design for the auditorium
was a huge space with a proscenium
arch that was dreaded and
frequently hated with a passion by
most of the actors who performed
with the RSC.
The old auditorium was especially
criticised for not taking into account
key ingredients of a Shakespeare play:
audience participation and the need
for intimacy in some scenes.
To rectify this required a huge
effort by the auditorium designers.
‘Our journey on the project began in
2004 when we began work on the
Courtyard Theatre – the RSC’s
temporary theatre,’ explains Gavin
Green design director for
Charcoalblue, theatre consultants on
the project. ‘By spring 2005 we had
developed six complete auditoria
modelled in white card at a 1:25
scale and extensive computer
modelling to test audience sightlines,
generating views that you might see
from each seat.’
The audience experience will also
be enhanced by the style of the seat,
which has been specially developed
in collaboration with Italian furniture
manufacturer Poltrona Frau. ‘The
seats in the old proscenium arch
theatre, where the variety of
relationships the audience could
have with the stage were limited
meant that, consequently, the
number of seat types was limited,’
explains Peter Wilson, RSC project
director. ‘Variations, such as the
seats’ back angle, are generated by
the geometry of the room. The seat
width or the provision of armrests are
determined by the total number of
seats we are required to offer in a
room where no-one in the audience is
PETER COOK
Above: the thrust more than 15 m from the centre of the
stage that will thrust stage.’
completely The new auditorium has a thrust
revolutionise the
stage, which extends into the
way plays are
enjoyed at the audience, making the interaction
Royal Shakespeare between actors and audience more
Theatre intimate. For this reason the seating
arrangement is also more compacted.
The stage is now like such other
existing Shakespeare theatres as the
Swan (just next door to the RSC) and
the Globe in London, which project
out into the centre of the auditorium
– challenging the audience to engage
with the drama. After the completion
of phase one, work is well under way
to put the finishing touches to the
new auditorium, which will be ready
for unveiling in April 2011 along with
one of the most eagerly awaited
seasons in RSC history.

This is the Guangdong Museum in Guangzhou,

China. A monumental take on the Chinese
lacquered box, it boasts a gross floor area
of 67,000 sq ms and stands opposite
Zaha Hadid’s Guangzhou Opera House.
Together the projects form the major
cultural showcase for the local
government as the the upcoming Asia Games
are celebrated in Guangzhou.

BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011

 50years

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young.

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International Furnishing Accessories Exhibition
SaloneSatellite
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In part an art installation, but mostly a
concept of how human beings should
live, Miguel Arruda’s Inhabitable
Structure is a star at Lisbon’s Architecture
Triennale, says Herbert Wright
Above: Pipe Inhabitable Structure, a walk-in
dreams: sculptor architectural installation on show in
Miguel Arruda re- Lisbon’s Architecture Triennale, is a
imagines the house
radical rethink of the form of the
of tomorrow with a
strict avoidance of
future house. But its origins come
the rectilinear from May 1968, when designer Miguel
Arruda, freshly graduated from
Lisbon’s School of Fine Arts, held his
first sculptural exhibition. His curved
volumes, echoing Henry Moore,
included one form that was the same
shape as the current structure.
Much has happened in the
intervening years – Arruda was a
soldier in Portugal’s last colonial war,
returning to the newly democratic
country to become a furniture
designer and then an architect. His
interest is in, he says, ‘the definition
of interior space’ and it has led Arruda
to a very different place from the
paths illuminated by Alvaro Siza, the
Pritzker-winning Modernist who has
intoxicated Portuguese architecture
for decades. Arruda says ‘the
domination of Siza is not good… it is
unnecessary to have more Siza.’
Arruda thinks that Portuguese
architects don’t go and see what is
happening in other countries.
Architects he sees as important
include Toyo Ito, Peter Zumthor, and,
perhaps surprisingly, Ian Simpson.
Arruda has a distinguished
portfolio of projects in which straight
lines, white surfaces and a sense of
play with mass and space may
suggest the influence of Siza, yet he
says flatly that ‘I cannot see it that
way.’ But Arruda is not out to bury
Siza. ‘He’s very important. There’s
always a big lesson from Siza – for
me, that is the way he handles
natural light.’ That lesson is amply
illustrated by the Bom Sucesso
Cultural Centre at a convent site in
Vila Franca de Xira, completed last
year. Above ground, concrete
rectangular enclosures on a hill flood
‘zenithal’ light into an ‘introspective
space’, actually a complex of
underground volumes, in one of which
a tree grows. With its concealed
spatiality, tunnel entrance and
natural light, this project is a bridge
to the Inhabitable Sculpture.
‘This Inhabitable Sculpture raises
the question of the Sphere and the
Cube in architecture,’ says Arruda.
This year, Lisbon’s current
Architecture Triennale, under the
banner ‘Let’s Talk About Houses’,
offered him the opportunity to build
the dream of an organic space for
living that goes back to his days as a
young sculptor. The Inhabitable
Sculpture is just outside the main
Triennale exhibition at the Belem
Cultural Centre (and which
coincidentally features the Smithsons’
very different vision of the House of
the Future). It is not an evolution of
Arruda’s work, but a revolution –
rejecting the rectilinear and
furthering the ‘destruction of the
paradigm of the box’.
Inhabitable Structure is
essentially three conjoined spheres
with two openings widening out from
the structure, one reaching eight
metres to the sky and the other an
entrance, making the structure 12m
long. A shell of MDF covers a steel
frame, on which cork is mounted on
interior and exterior surfaces. ‘At this
25
moment, it’s not a house,’ explains
Arruda, ‘it’s the experience of inner
space.’ Yes, he likens it to ‘the
mother’s belly’ and continues that ‘if
you have a house with form, texture
and materials (evoking) the human
body, it’s good for our equilibrium.’
The current structure is hollow,
but as a house, its three spheres
would define a bedroom, living
room/kitchen and bathroom, and a
window would be cut through. A new
golf resort development is
considering building eight of these
houses, and the national utility
Electricidade de Portugal is working
with Arruda on the possibility of its
upper aperture housing 10 sq m of
solar panel so that the house could be
grid-independent. Furthermore, the
form, already scaled from the original
hand-sized sculpture to a prototype
house shell, could be further scaled
up. Arruda envisions a music venue
with three auditoria and a huge
terrace on top of it.
As the Triennale draws to a close
in January, Inhabitable Structure will
be dismantled, but only as far as its
steel. Plants will be grown so that
after two years, it will become a
living, walk-through sculpture, with
cork seating. It won’t be inhabitable,
but it will act as a provocation to a
country where the rectilinear rules.
BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011
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Once upon a time, ‘Made in Taiwan’ was
shorthand for something cheap – and
possibly nasty. But not any more.
Nangang 2050 is a project that re-casts
Taipei as an international creative hub.
Alex Warnock-Smith reports
Top: The bottle-cap The label Made in Taiwan no longer
factory attracted means what it used to. Last month in
the interest of the an article in the country’s main English
international team
language newspaper, The Taipei Times,
as a potential
mixed-use site
a member of the Consumer Protection
Commission in Taiwan complained
Below: A model of that substandard goods made in
the re-imagined mainland China were being passed off
bottle-cap factory as having been made in the small
shows its independent island nation. Taiwan,
transformation
once a world centre for the production
into place of live-
work units and of cheap electronic equipment, has
undergone several economic
exhibition space
transformations in the past few
decades, from a manufacturing base in
the 1980s, to a high-tech centre at the
turn of the century – huge, paradigm
shifts that have been enabled, in part,
by government investment.
Manufacturing now amounts to only
16 per cent of Taiwan’s economy, as its
production plants are migrating to
cheaper locations on the mainland.
Like many other contemporary
Asian cities, Taipei – Taiwan’s capital –
is technologically advanced. But one
of the city’s most pressing issues is
what to do with their manufacturing
residue and post-industrial sheds. The
city government has just initiated a
project called Nangang 2050 – a three-
year series of workshops where teams
of academics and designers have been
invited to imagine the future of Taipei
as a creative industries hub. The
international team took a redundant
bottle-cap factory in the centre of
Taipei – a city of seven million – and
looked at turning it into an innovation
quarter for creative production.
Learning from previous examples
of co-opted industrial structures in
Taipei, for example the Huashan
Creative Park that was established in a
former wine factory, the teams looked
at how to turn the site into a mixed-
use area – converting many existing
buildings into small-scale live-work
units, exhibition spaces and graduate
housing. The group was not urban-
planning in the conventional sense,
and the teams developed integrated
architectural, urban and public realm
designs to connect the site to
surrounding research and design
industries, commercial centres and
transport nodes.
The Architectural Association
housing and urbanism programme was
partnered with the National Chiao Tung
University Graduate Institute of
Architecture (NCTU GIA) – one of a
number of partnerships that include
Tokyo University, Taipei University of
‘ACADEMICS AND
DESIGNERS AROUND
THE TABLE WITH
POLICY MAKERS,
POLITICIANS AND
DEVELOPERS IN THE
UK? IF ONLY’
Technology, UC Berkeley and TU Delft.
The workshops promoted exchange on
many levels, and the teams
collaborated with business leaders,
heads of industry, science-park
developers, software companies,
politicians and mayors, to develop
urban ecologies for creative industries,
restructuring the city and forming new
economic and cultural veins.
Economic growth in Taipei has
also become a political show. Making
statements about the future of Taipei
as a global capital and commissioning
grand projects by international names
has been one of the major tools for
political advancement in the city.
27
ALL IMAGES: MARTIN RUETSCHI
However, it has been realised that
iconic buildings by celebrity architects
– such as OMA’s Performing Arts Centre
and Reiser + Umemoto’s Pop Music
Centre – might not bring about the
kind of holistic urban regeneration,
cultural and economic growth that the
city government is looking for. The
workshops were motivated by an
approach to the city in its capacity as
a tool for continuous economic and
industrial transformation.
In Taiwan, urbanism as a
discipline performs well as an
instrument of political discourse. There
is much to-ing and fro-ing of leading
figures between politics and academia,
with professors jumping between
university departments and public
offices depending on who is in
political power. Perhaps this exchange
between urbanism and politics is not
such a bad thing. Discussing the city
in political circles, and politics in
academia, puts the design disciplines
in a powerful strategic position – a
position reinforced by the considerable
funding the government invested in
the workshops.
Whether anything will come of the
visions produced is hard to tell.
At a ceremony last October, the
deputy mayor, Lin Chien-yuan, said ‘I
don’t care so much about the results,
but more about the process’ and
enthused about ‘interacting with an
international community’ and putting
Taiwan in a ‘global context‘. This, the
workshop certainly did achieve. More
than this, Nangang 2050 opened
borders between different sectors
around shared discussions of the city,
offering a new model in which
academic expertise is applied to real-
life situations.
As Vincent Nadin from TU Delft
deftly concluded, ‘This wouldn’t
happen in the UK. Academics,
researchers, designers around the table
with policy makers, politicians, local
government and developers – if only!’
BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011

CITIUSΩ
A plan, recently mooted by a member
of the International Olympic
Committee to ban fireworks from the
Opening Ceremony of the Games,
prompted IOC President Jacques Rogge
into prolonged reminiscence. It was a
salutary tale from recent Olympic
history. At the opening ceremony of
the 1988 Seoul Games, the Olympic
flame was lit at the start of the Games
by three athletes who rose on a
hydraulic platform to an elevated
cauldron sitting high above the
stadium. Doves, which had just been
released, were still wheeling in the sky.
Some had settled on the cauldron –
towards which the athletes were
rising with torches held aloft.
Rogge recalled what happened
next – a sight seen by one billion
people who were watching the event
on television. ‘The doves went in the
cauldron and tens of doves were
burned alive and there was a lot of
emotion from the World Wildlife Fund
and animal protection and the IOC
decided no doves would be released
any more,’ he said. Watching the
footage again, one can’t help but feel
sorry for the IOC. Most of the birds fly
away at the first sign of the torches,
but a conspicuous few fail to flee and
are clearly cooked. It’s like watching a
strangely ostentatious and particularly
cruel barbecue.
The releasing of doves had been
an official part of the Games since the
Antwerp Games in 1920 as a
commemoration for those who had
died in the First World War.
Subsequently the gesture came to
signify – in the IOC’s parlance – peace
between nations and became
intertwined with the tradition in the
ancient Games of a truce existing
between the warring cities of Greece
for the duration of the competition. In
1920, though, the Germans, along with
their allies, were not allowed to attend
the Games after pressure from the
French. Peace among nations indeed.
Typically for Olympic pageantry, this
Citius, Altius, Fortius - faster, higher, stronger - is the
Olympics motto. In the run-up to 2012, Tim Abrahams
looks at the design and meaning of this sporting
extravaganza. This month: the opening ceremony
gesture, so quickly adopted and more
often than not belying a more complex
political reality, is hard for us to let go.
After the decision was made to
stop the simultaneous release of doves
with the lighting of cauldrons, the
image of the dove persisted for a good
while longer. Live doves were released
at the 1992 opening ceremony in
Barcelona, but this was done several
hours before the flame was lit. Later
opening ceremonies show that it took
the Olympic movement a while to kick
their dove habit. Balloon doves were
released in 1994 at the Lillehammer
Winter Games and more happily
flammable paper doves were used at
the Atlanta Ceremonies in 1996.
We are entering a period when the
pageantry of the Games, which
predominantly developed in an ad hoc
fashion between the Wars, is becoming
increasingly virtual. When the Sri
Lankan National Olympic Committee
president Hemasiri Fernando says the
use of fireworks during the ceremonies
has a potential polluting effect, one
can’t help remember the stunning
fireworks display during the Beijing
Games opening ceremony.
China’s Beijing Times revealed
days later that the sequence had been
created by an animator. Around three
billion people watched the animation
believing that a series of giant
footprints created by fireworks had
proceeded through the night sky from
Tiananmen Square to the Bird’s Nest
stadium and had been filmed from
above by a helicopter. They hadn’t.
The reason to get rid of fireworks
is ostensibly their perceived threat to
the environment. ‘We all have the
responsibility to protect this earth and
the fireworks have a tremendous effect
on the environment,’ said Fernando.
However, the environmental threat of
fireworks is largely unproven. It seems
more about controlling the kind of
complexity that sees doves fried in
ceremonial flames. As a consequence
of the steady inflation of expectation
29
when it comes to ceremonies – and the
need to control the chaos – the 21st
century has seen the rise of the
professional ceremony producer.
Hamish Hamilton, one of the four
individuals charged with organising
the London 2012 ceremonies made his
name directing events such as the MTV
Awards and the BRITs. This year he
directed the half-time show for the
Super Bowl and the Oscars. They are
ostensibly live events but, more
emphatically, they are television
events; augmented by film or TV
footage. Beijing was the first time that
the IOC employed its own broadcaster
to provide full coverage of the sports
and ceremonies to channels around the
world. London will be the second. No
pigeons will be hurt but then the
fireworks may have to be faked. It
seems strange that, while the sport
being celebrated is so unpredictable,
the ceremonies are controlled to the
point where parts of them no longer
exist in any material way.
THE ENVIRONMENTAL
THREAT OF
FIREWORKS IS
UNPROVEN. IT’S MORE
ABOUT CONTROLLING
THE COMPLEXITY THAT
SEES DOVES FRIED
BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011
30
ACHTUNG!
Although there are plenty of schools of thought
about what consitutes ‘good’ architecture, almost
everyone can agree on the blatant examples of
what’s bad. So isn’t it time to do something?
Architects subscribe to many
different philosophies. We have the
Modernists, the Post-Modernists, the
Classicists, the Prince-Charles-
Traditionalists, the Stone-is-good
proponents, the Glass-is-better-
because-transparent progressives,
the Wood-is-sustainable faction, the
Steel-rules men and many other
followers of one school or another.
Here in Berlin we also have the
Schinkel-rules disciples and in Florida
the Spanish-colonialists. Most of the
architecture I see around these days,
however, seems to have been caused
by those architects who follow the
maxim ‘width-by-length-by-currency’
– be it dollars, pounds or euros.
Long before we had computers,
architects had practised copy-and-
paste; as anybody will understand
who has ever travelled across the
midwestern USA. After 20 miles you
will have seen the same shopping
mall a few times, perhaps with
slightly different embellishments –
here the stucco walls have a red
stripe, there a green ziggurat pattern.
If I designed architectural software,
I’d build in a filter to take care of
those variations and give it a fancy
name like ‘locality-sensitive-stylizer’.
MELVIN GALAPON
Or ‘architecture-styleez’. Come to
think of it, that software probably
exists already. The whole country is
covered in suburbs and towns that
look like they have been dropped into
position by some giant hand that
picked them from a box full of finite
style elements.
Small towns in Germany and
Britain (and elsewhere across Europe,
Erik Spiekermann
set up MetaDesign for that matter) also suffer from the
and FontShop, and copy-and-paste syndrome, but in
worked in London most cases it is the retail companies
from 1973 to 1981. that perpetrate the crime. Wake me
A teacher, author up in any pedestrianised street in the
and designer, he
middle of Europe and I’ll be able to
he is a partner at
tell the country from the language on
EdenSpiekermann,
which has offices the signs, but not the town, state,
in Berlin and region or country. Secondary
Amsterdam architecture – signs, bollards, paving,
BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011
kiosks, lights – dominate what little
character those streets have.
Buildings seem to exist only to hold
up neon signs and provide space for
cash registers and shelving.
There are indications of hope in
some places, however. Towns in Italy
have often banned advertising that
sticks out from the facade, only
allowing whatever can be written
onto walls and windows. In Spain,
some tourist destinations have
planning codes banning plastic
outdoor furniture (usually made in
China), specifying instead those cool
aluminium chairs and tables that are
actually manufactured locally. In
Germany, some towns have followed
the royal British example (although
we sent our last Kaiser packing in
1918), installing street lights that
look like 19th-century gas lamps,
sticking fake plastic window
partitions onto modern double-pane
glass and plastering streets with
cobble stones to the delight of local
cobblers: high heels won’t survive
them more than a few steps.
The state of architecture as
normal tax-payers see it in their daily
lives is a sorry one. In order to
experience what good architects can
achieve once they find an
enlightened client with that rare
combination of taste and money, you
have to travel. There are plenty of
good new buildings, but they are not
as ubiquitous as bad taste and
convenient, conflict-avoiding,
standard stuff. At least public
building in Germany has benefited
from a sophisticated process through
which competitions are run, pairing
renowned architects as jurors with
their colleagues (and competitors) as
contestants. There are now rules
giving younger, unknown firms an
advantage over the established ones.
Museums, schools, kindergartens,
even train stations and power plants
have been built that show what
architects can achieve under the right
circumstances. New materials
combine aesthetics and ecological
concerns, users are consulted before
they move in and the relationships of
the new buildings with their
neighbourhoods are considered.
It takes more than good
intentions, great ideas, lots of
knowledge and masses of experience
to achieve anything beyond the
ordinary. It takes clients who know
that we (and I include us designers
here) can do certain things better
than them: that’s why they hired us
in the first place. The state of
architecture and design, therefore,
perfectly reflects the state of our
public and private cultures.
This does not absolve architects
and designers, though. We will never
change anything by complaining.
But we have to be prepared to sit on
those juries, read the small print,
protest bad briefs and make our
voices heard in whatever medium
we can.
TO EXPERIENCE WHAT
GOOD ARCHITECTS
CAN ACHIEVE ONCE
THEY FIND A CLIENT
WITH TASTE AND
MONEY, YOU HAVE
TO TRAVEL
2%896%00=
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32 SOUR
GRAPES ON THE ROAD AGAIN
The Blueprint team’s ambitious trip
around the UK to see the Best British
Buildings of the 21st Century (see
feature page 34) involved nearly
1800km of driving (the buildings
within London were reached on public
transport), using approximately 1017
litres of petrol. Ironically, a good
chunk of this considerable carbon
footprint was expended on our visit to
the Eden Project in Cornwall. Its eco-
entrepreneur co-founder Tim Smit
would surely disapprove. The trip also
took in a fair few buildings that didn’t
make it to the final list, including
Nigel Coates’ National Centre for
Popular Music in Sheffield, which has
now been put to much better use as a
students’ union. There was also a
drive-by visit to the Jubilee Campus at
Nottingham University by Make
Architects. Our editorial team’s
physical reaction to the project was,
surely, just down to car sickness.
MAKE FRIENDS
Ken Shuttleworth, founder and director
of Make, bizarrely made it onto the
Evening Standard’s list of London’s
1000 Most Influential People,
alongside John Pawson, Deyan Sudjic
and Terry Farrell. Oddly, Norman Foster
didn’t make the cut (perhaps as he’s
now an ex-pat in Switzerland).
Identifying an unexpected obstacle to
BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011
the Shuttleworth’s career, the ES
argued that the architect ‘has
blossomed since leaving Norman
Foster, despite his Northern comic
name’. It also described him ‘as
disarming, modest — and talented.’
This is from a paper that also regularly,
and contentiously, says Shuttleworth
is the designer of the Gherkin. If they
carry on like this, maybe ES owner
Alexander Lebedev might get a
bombastic new pad, Make-style.
CRITICAL FACULTIES
The Critical Subjects Winter School
organized by ManTownHuman in
November was a great success. During
an intensive 27-hours, the participating
students produced an impressive set of
projects (see the Blueprint website for
details), despite the sleep deprivation,
confined conditions and a slightly
intimidating line-up of lecturers and
critics. These included journalist Hugh
Pearman, Sean Griffiths of FAT
architects, and architect-academic
Colin Fournier. Patrik Schumacher, of
Zaha Hadid Architects, was on typically
forthright form, rather outshining the
comparatively meek Kevin Carmody
during the discussion on What is
Beauty? With his new book, volume
two of the snappily titled The
Autopoiesis of Architecture,
Schumacher is clearly gearing up for a
few verbal battles to come.
IN DEMAND
News has reached Grapes of the new
architecture practice being set up by
Sam Chermayeff in Berlin. Chermayeff
(grandson of legendary designer Serge)
has until now been working closely
with Kazuyo Sejima at Sanaa, who, of
course, curated the 2010 Biennale.
One of the first projects undertaken by
his new practice will be a small bridge
for German artist Thomas Demand, who
featured prominently at Venice’s
International Pavilion. Ah, the Venice
Architecture Biennale…. always a
good place for networking.
ROYAL FLUSH
The Prince Phillip Designers Prize was
announced in November, awarded to
venerable interactive designer Bill
Moggridge. It was certainly a scaled-
JENNY BREWER
down affair compared to last year’s do,
which marked the scheme’s 50th
Anniversary and was held at
Buckingham Palace. Moggridge himself
was unable to attend, so he appeared
via video message and sent his big
brother (Hal, an eminent landscape
designer, who created the rose garden
in Hyde Park) to give a mercifully short
speech and pick up the prize instead.
The Duke of Edinburgh was there, as
always, to give out the gongs and
elicited an audible gasp from at least
half the audience when he claimed
that ‘behind every piece of design
there is a bloke.’ He’s still got it. Still,
the Design Council did their best to
make old Phil feel welcome, as shown
by a hastily made sign stuck up on its
Wheelchair Accessible Toilets. Not
quite so accessible now, eh?
34

BEST
BRITISH
BUILDINGSST
OF THE 21
CENTURY AS WE ENTER THE WIDELY
HERALDED ‘AGE OF AUSTERITY’,
THE PAST DECADE OF AFFLUENCE
IS ALREADY BEING DESCRIBED AS
A WASTED OPPORTUNITY FOR
QUALITY ARCHITECTURE.
BUT THIS IS JUST PART OF THE
PICTURE. THE BLUEPRINT TEAM
HAS TRAVELLED ACROSS BRITAIN
TO REVISIT THE MOST SIGNIFICANT
BUILDINGS COMPLETED SINCE
2000. OUR FINAL SELECTION OF
10 TELLS THE ALTERNATIVE
STORIES OF CONTEMPORARY
BRITISH ARCHITECTURE

BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011

 35

POINTLESS
VIRTUE
OF
BEING
Right: based in Brixton,
the academy features a
race track that bisects
LEGIBLE
the school buildings and
emphasises an excellent
in sport

EVELYN GRACE ACADEMY by a bureaucratic system. The Latham

ZAHA HADID
LONDON 2010
Zaha Hadid has built a reputation on
exceptional buildings. Not just in terms of
quality, but in terms of status. The Evelyn
Grace Academy is as exceptional as schools
get. It is also a fascinating contradiction. It
cost £32m, sponsored by the trust ARK, yet
it serves a difficult catchment area in south
London. The school is part of the Blairite
concept of city academies, created to bring
educational excellence into problem areas.
The 2000s saw the architect’s role as
master builder was further circumscribed
Report of 1994 sought to clarify
relationships in the UK’s construction
industry and became the basis for increased
collaboration between architects and other
consultants. In the USA, where this process
was also well under way, Frank Gehry
created ‘organization of the artist’ –
whereby single prestige projects would
stand apart from these rules.
At the beginning of the decade, Hadid
was known for experimental projects like
the Vitra Fire station in Weil Am Rhein.
Her reputation as too avant-garde for the
UK was exacerbated by the collapse of such
signature projects as the Cardiff Bay Opera Ω
LUKE HAYES

BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011


36
House and the Architecture Foundation. By
the end of the decade though, she has
arguably become Britain’s premier architect,
and is delivering stunning buildings within
the restrictive design-and-build contract –
including the Riverside Museum in
Glasgow and the Olympics Aquatic Centre.
With its interlocking, snaking volumes,
Evelyn Grace is similar in plan and detail to
the MAXXI Museum in Rome (a deserved
winner of the 2010 Stirling Prize).
It’s the differences between the two
projects that are so revealing about Hadid’s
versatility as an architect and make her
work so constantly fascinating.
In Rome, the dynamic forms knit
together an area of the city undergoing
development. In Brixton, the intersecting
volumes provide internal organisation of
the four-storey Evelyn Grace Academy,
rather than urban planning. The volumes
allow for wide corridors that prevent
congestion between lessons; they also
establish a network of varied teaching and
performance spaces.
It would be wrong to think of the
athletics track, which slices through the
centre of the site, as a gimmick. Not only
does it provide a moment of real, dramatic
chutzpah, it presents the school with an
identity, enforces its specialism in sport,
and focuses the whole institution around a
BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011
LUKE HAYES
symbol of achievement. Its presence means
that the lack of a single, large hall, to
accommodate the entire school
community at once, matters far less.
Indeed, other academies make a somewhat
pointless virtue of being instantly legible.
Evelyn Grace prioritises the students’
personal journeys rather than their role
96,256,000
TOTAL AREA IN SQ M OF CONCRETE BUILDING BLOCKS PRODUCED IN
THE UK IN 2004
in an institution.
Penoyre and Prasad’s Wren Academy,
for example, was delivered on £18.5m.
Whereas its design is dominated by a vast
atrium, the Evelyn Grace is a sinewy series
of corridors, unified by the architecture.
At the Hackney City Academy by
Studio E Architects, it is possible for the
headmaster to look into six classrooms
across two floors from a single vantage
50,394,000
TOTAL AREA IN SQ M OF CONCRETE BUILDING BLOCKS PRODUCED IN
THE UK IN 2009
SOURCE: LABOUR FORCE SURVEY, EXPERIAN, CONSTRUCTION SKILLS NETWORK
point. This might make parents feel like
their children are safe, but it places little
trust in the pupils and even less in the
teachers. Although there are numerous
CCTV cameras, Hadid’s 10,745 sq m
academy does not feel as if it’s under
constant surveillance
The architecture of the Evelyn Grace
Academy is dramatic and expansive, but it
is also occasionally intricate. The building
meets the young people of Brixton half way
and refuses to patronise them. This is –
sadly – an exception, but all schools should
be this good.
 38

DECIDEDLY
THEATRICAL
FASHION

TOP FIVE
PETER MURRAY CHAIR, NEW LONDON ARCHITECTURE

BRUNSWICK CENTRE PATRICK HODGKINSON/LEVITT BERNSTEIN

One of the first stories I covered as a journalist. It has brushed
up nicely, illustrating the power of a well-designed building.

PECKHAM LIBRARY ALSOP ARCHITECTS

The library has had a hugely positive influence on the area.

EAST BEACH CAFÉ HEATHERWICK STUDIO

This is a change maker. It changes with, and responds
wonderfully to, light and – as the client – it’s my pension.

PRIMARY ELECTRICAL SUBSTATION NORD ARCHITECTURE

The first completed building on the London Olympics site –
anyone who can make brick look so calm deserves a prize.
ALL IMAGES HELENE BINET

GREAT COURT, BRITISH MUSEUM FOSTER AND PARTNERS

Great piece of structure, great new piece of London.

BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011


NOTTINGHAM CONTEMPORARY
CARUSO ST JOHN
NOTTINGHAM 2009
Writing in Blueprint in 1998, Adam Caruso
wrestled with architecture’s relationship
with the market. ‘Architecture is by
definition about stasis,’ said Caruso. ‘It is
about making material inventions of a
finite size in specific situations. In the best
cases an architectural intervention has a
critical relationship with its situation and
its construction is communicative with the
existing physical and social context.’
Indeed, but as Caruso St. John discovered in
the first decade of the 21st century, physical
and social context are often hugely at odds.
The politicisation of the Heritage
Lottery Fund, following Labour’s 1997
victory and the subsequent creation of
regional development agencies, reaped
financial rewards for former industrial
cities in England. Government decided it
could support creativity but not industry.
The founding director of the New Art
Gallery Walsall, Peter Jenkinson, aspired to
turn the Garman Ryan collection into a
beacon of art. The gallery, a tasteful citadel
by Caruso St. John, dominates Walsall’s
skyline and stands utterly separate from it.
Some councils went mad and spent
unwisely. Sheffield City Council poured
their cash into the National Centre for
Left: the building’s design
takes inspiration from the
Popular Music; Branson Coates’ collection
of aluminium dome shapes atop a plinth
said everything about the specific social
context yet very little about the physical
(bizarrely, this building now works rather
well as a student union).
Some councils though, managed to
have their cake and eat it.
Nottingham Council, blessed with
thoughtful councillors who run well-
organised design competitions, has added
something more than fun to their city. The
New Art Exchange by Hawkins Brown
brought together two community arts
groups brilliantly in one tough-looking
brick building – a wilful response to the
excesses in the early part of the decade.
Whereas Walsall made a naïve claim
for culture as a financial model,
Nottingham Contemporary works as an art
gallery and as a piece of the city. Looking
northwards from the river Trent, the
building plays with Nottingham’s jumbled,
mediaeval cityscape instead of fighting it.
There is an engaging game between
taste and glamour on the gold and green
façade of concrete embossed with patterns
of lace. The main gallery provides a shop
window to the commercial activity of
Weekday Cross and curators have started
experimenting with placing artwork here
as window dressing.
Entering at the main entrance, the
39
Above: the galleries refer
to the artist-run spaces
found spaces of 1960s New York and
of factories and seek to challenge the art
warehouses exhibited here
building offers first its main galleries and
then cascades beautifully down the hill to a
double-height performance space and
library in the heart of the building. The
route descends until reaching an exterior
plaza guarded by the road above, which
creates an unlikely suntrap.
The stepped concrete tectonic of the
building is mediated further on the
interior with variations in colour and
texture – the deep red, sprayed concrete
ceiling of the café, for example. The
architect has chosen a grid pattern of
fluorescent lighting, similar to the one
seen in the ultimate Brutalist gallery, the
Hayward in London, but has softened it
with tall, tapering light diffusers.
There is a sense here that at the very
end of an architecturally exuberant decade,
municipal Brutalism has been married with
the expectation of a city to gain an icon
when it opens a new art gallery.
The ingenuity and sheer fun of
Nottingham Contemporary would not have
been possible without the earlier, less
successful attempts of the millennium.
Despite metropolitan tastes, these
buildings have driven a public desire for
structures that perform in a decidedly
theatrical fashion. However, it’s the a-
historical, solid stasis of Caruso
St John’s design that makes it a truly
great work of art.
BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011
40
SCOTLAND
THE BROUHAHA SURROUNDING
THE NEW PARLIAMENT BUILDING
HAS ECLIPSED SMALLER EXAMPLES
OF WORK THAT EPITOMISE THE
EXCELLENCE THAT CAN BE FOUND
IN SCOTTISH ARCHITECTURE.
PENNY LEWIS REPORTS
Above: the Pier Arts Back in the 1980s Alasdair Gray
Centre in Orkney needed popularised the expression ‘work as if you
a new pier constructed to live in the early days of a better nation’. It
support its airy extension
appears as one of 28 quotes cast into the
Canongate Wall, one of the public faces of
the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. In a
few words it captures that particular
Scottish mix of aspiration and realistic self-
reflection. The architect, EMBT, designed a
projecting window seat for each MSP to sit
and reflect on the issues of the day. That
these seats have proved superfluous, says
more about politicians than an architect
with a romantic sensibility.
The new building at Holyrood has had
a negative impact on architectural culture
in Scotland. The competition process
undermined the nationalists’ idea to
develop a Scots-but-modern architectural
language. Scottish architects were invited
to participate as junior partners to
internationally recognised stars. Then,
when Enric Miralles took the idea of the
land and the culture but gave it greater
expression using an aesthetic developed in
Spain, it made the notion of essential
Scottish forms, materials and tectonics
hard to sustain. The misery and drama of
the four-year construction programme,
with all the media hype, political horseplay
and cost overruns evoked a defensiveness
among Scottish practice. What the building
didn’t do was provoke architectural debate.
Even when it won the Stirling Prize, there
BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011
was little evaluation of the building’s
architectural quality.
Instead, the most interesting building
for Scottish architecture this decade is the
Pier Arts Centre in Orkney. In the 1970s
Margaret Gardiner gave her collection of
British abstract art (including work by
Nicholson, Hepworth and Paolozzi) to
Orkney. Levitt Bernstein converted a single
warehouse to house the works. In 1999
Reiach and Hall won the commission to
extend the gallery that sits within the
narrow warehouses along the harbour.
The building is made up from three
components: the meeting house (the
original residence); the strong house (the
original warehouse); and the black house
(the new extension). The original gallery is
domestic in scale with deep window
reveals. In contrast, the extension is much
lighter – a dark zinc-clad structure with
mullions at 450mm centres and a glazing
system that can appear black and solid or
transparent, depending on vantage point.
The only clue it’s a public building is the
large entrance cut out of the street face.
Reiach and Hall’s work has an
intellectual rigour – well organised plans,
tidy sections and legible structure – in
much the same way Rab Bennetts’ work
does, though somehow gentler. It is the
epitome of everything that is good about
contemporary British culture in the same
way that Tate St Ives is symptomatic of all
IOANA MARINESCU
that is frustrating. The comparison is
revealing. Both galleries exhibit work by
the same group of artists. Both are built at
the most extreme reaches of the British
Isles. Tate St Ives underestimates its
audience and undervalues its local artistic
output. The Pier focuses attention on the
art. Children are made welcome without
being indulged. At the top of the building
there is a library for people who want to
study. There is no café – Reiach and Hall’s
design director Neil Gillespie felt the
centre’s neighbour already provided a good
café. There is a shop but it’s modest and
doubles as a reception. When describing the
Pier, Gillespie uses the words ‘thin, low
northern light, reticence and stillness’.
It seems strange to suggest that a
modest little project on the edge of
Scotland should trump the parliament –
and yet it does. Reiach and Hall works as if
living ‘in the early days of a better nation’,
and as such provides inspiration for many
others. NORD’s 80m-long Olympic Park
Electricity Substation in London has
attracted much attention and Sutherland
Hussey was shortlisted to design the
Dundee V&A. Outside the Central Belt,
there are a number of practices exploring
the possibilities for new rural buildings
such as Dundee’s LJRH and Perth’s Fergus
Purdie, Neil Sutherland and Gokay
Deveci in the north east and Rural Design
and Dualchas in the west.
Thinking space

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 42

A
MANIFESTO
FOR
ABSURD
STRUCTURES
SEALAND AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHY

BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011


EDEN PROJECT
GRIMSHAW ARCHITECTS
CORNWALL 2001
When Eden Project founder Timothy Smit
proposed an ‘eighth wonder of the world’ in
the 1990s to a local development
committee, he was given a grant of £25,000.
Following his previous project – the Lost
Gardens of Heligan, also in Cornwall – the
idea was to build a massive dome sub-
divided into a number of separate
environments, each containing flora from
across the globe. After further fund-raising
efforts, he approached the newly established
Millennium Commission, which awarded
Smit half the then project cost of £74m.
The Eden Project, designed by
Grimshaw Architects is arguably the most
impressive of all projects funded by the
Commission, which distributed National
Lottery money to schemes and wound
up in 2006 after thirteen years.
Eden brings in an average of 7,000
visitors a day and its domes are perhaps
the only successful, large-scale use of
ETFE in a building (see Foster+Partner’s
lopsided Khan Shatyr Entertainment Centre
in Kazakhstan).
Each dome comprises a series of four
interconnected spherical caps of various
sizes. The biggest dome, the Humid Tropics
£500,821
TOTAL EXPENDITURE BY CABE FOR FINANCIAL YEAR 1999/2000
£29,224,454
TOTAL EXPENDITURE BY CABE FOR FINANCIAL YEAR 2009/2010
SOURCE: CABE ANNUAL REPORT 2000 AND 2010
biodome is 55m high, 100m wide and 200m
long. It covers 15,590 sq m and is designed
to maintain a temperature between 18 and
35 degrees C. The air inside is kept moist
by abundant water movement, including a
waterfall. Despite its outlandish
appearance, the building sits comfortably in
the topography of the area, complemented
by a coherent landscaping scheme. It is the
sheer boldness of the engineering though
that is most appealing.
The building immediately recalls the
geodesic domes of Buckminster Fuller, a
great influence on Nicholas Grimshaw. But
the structures at Eden seem less inspired by
visionary utopianism than by engineering
history. One can see the tradition of British
glasshouse construction, including the
Great Conservatory at Chatsworth House
(now demolished) and the Palm House at
Kew Gardens. More specifically, it was
clearly influenced by the work of Frei Otto
and the tent-like shapes of his German
Pavilion at Expo ‘67; the company with
which Otto worked, Mero Structures, was
also the steelwork contractor on this
Grimshaw building.
The Eden Project was the standard
bearer for an era of prosperity for the region.
Its inception in 2001 was followed swiftly
by that of Tate St Ives, the National
Maritime Museum and the expansion of
43
Padstein, Rick Stein’s culinary empire in
the village of Padstow. It triumphed where
other millennium projects failed.
Earth Centre, the ecological experience
near Doncaster featuring twee buildings by
Will Alsop, Bill Dunster and Feilden Clegg
Bradley Studios, was declared bankrupt and
closed in 2004. The National Botanic
Garden of Wales (see page 46) lacks the PR-
friendly audacity of Eden; Grimshaw’s
National Space Centre in Leicester shares
the formal playfulness of Eden, but teeters
into silliness with its ribbed, bulbous,
metallic exterior.
The Millennium Commission, with its
mission of bringing aid to communities
though exceptional schemes and buildings,
was a manifesto for building absurd
structures. The fact that Eden had a more
considered programme, developed by Smit,
helped mark it out. Yet the focus upon
engineering and structural clarity is a
quality shared with other successful, self-
conscious icons of the Millennium: the
Dome by Richard Rogers was a vague
cultural ‘experience’, but is blossoming as
a commercial events venue; the London
Eye by Marks Barfield was a populist
triumph from the moment it was erected
on the Thames. It’s not just the purpose
that’s important, it is also the clarity of
architectural expression.
BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011
 44
ALL IMAGES: MIRANDA VUKASOVIC

WEMBLEY STADIUM 1985. The twin towers that stood as an

FOSTER AND PARTNERS emblem of that stadium now lie in
LONDON 2007 foundations under the pitch. Former glories
are retained in the archaeology of the

AGGRESSIVE At the start of the new century, English

football entered an era of commercialism
and its Premiership league became the
most financially lucrative in the world.
futuristic stadium.
The architecture of Wembley stadium
is one of spectacle. Viewed from the
procession along Olympic Way or the

REBIRTH This situation arose from adverse

circumstances. The English sport suffered
tragedy during the 1970s and 1980s. The
disasters at Heysel (1985), Bradford (1986)
Whitehorse Bridge, the Wembley arch is an
ostentatious gesture of aspiration. The
133m high arch spans 315m and sits on
piles 35m deep. The lattice form has 41

OF and Hillsborough (1989) preceded the

Taylor report that resulted in all-seater
stadia for top-flight teams. That legislation
steel rings and tilts at 112 degrees. It
provides the stadium with an iconic
structure. For the arch to transcend its

FOOTBALL improved safety and reduced hooliganism,

but meant costly upgrades to venues across
the country and coincided with the
formation of the Premier League in 1992.
With the aggressive rebirth of football,
and big business as the backdrop, Wembley
Stadium by HOK Sport and Foster+Partners
is the single most expensive building in the
UK and the most expensive stadium in the
world. The project cost £757 million and
construction was dogged by contractors and
project managers being pulled off the job.
And it was always going to have to
Above: the partly Right: the soaring arch
retractable roof makes
compete with the much loved 120,000-
supports the roof
the new Wembley the structure and replaces capacity Empire Stadium that opened in
largest covered football the twin towers as 1923 and hosted the 1948 Olympic Games,
stadium in the world Wembley’s icon the 1966 World Cup finals and Live Aid in
material presence into the stuff of legend, it
will have to become the backdrop to an
event akin to 1966.
The new Wembley has reasserted the
model for stadia as ‘containers for
performance’. Preceding its construction,
Chelsea Football Club tried to capitalise on
its location with the inclusion of a hotel
and supporters village, Arsenal at the
Emirates (also by HOK) sought to tie
together the urban fabric in a tricky corner
of north London. Wembley ignored these
tendencies to look outside the stadium. It
stayed at its home in unloved Brent and
made a defiant statement.
The arch is visible from a great
distance; travelling into the city from the

BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011


west or north, it is one of the most
prominent landmarks on the skyline. The
building and arch may appear ludicrously
oversized, but this architectural statement
is not gratuitous. It is a marker that says
‘This is your national stadium.’
Below the arch and roof sits a stadium
that defies its troublesome construction.
The steeper seating bowl creates an
atmosphere of greater intensity than in the
old stadium. The running track has gone,
putting the crowd closer to the action. The
seating ensures clear views to the pitch, the
access is generous in size and the toilets
(one for every 35 people) are plentiful. This
attention to detail is the strength of the
project. The interior spaces below the
seating are not shoehorned into the plan
retrospectively. These commercial areas
offer views of the pitch and have robust,
yet highly designed, furniture that allows
visitors the time to stop and enjoy their
drinks before returning to their seats.
Wembley is a reflection of a moment
in time when football rediscovered itself as
the nation’s most popular sport. From the
exterior to the pitch, it is a building that
commands performance. As Roland Barthes
wrote: ‘Sport is a great modern institution
cast in the ancestral forms of spectacle’.
Wembley is already this, and if the future
allows, could be so much more.
45
TOP FIVE
FINN WILLIAMS URBAN DESIGNER
THE LIFT AGENTS OF CHANGE
A demountable meeting and performance space for up to 200 people to
be placed in various locations around London. The form and the quilt
pattern allow it to be commonplace and familiar without being generic.
DUNRAVEN SPORTS HALL SCABAL
A multi-purpose community facility that used sea containers as both
structure and internal accommodation. It proves that you can have
modular building, that isn’t temporary and doesn’t look like a portaloo.
THE CINEROLEUM
A derelict petrol station on Clerkenwell Road was transformed into a
hand-built cinema by a collective of young architects from Cambridge.
When the curtain rose up at the end, it made you see the city differently
SHOREDITCH NEWSPAPERS (UNKNOWN)
This is a building that actually makes money, to the extent that they’ve
now even given up the shop element, because the advertising has been
so successful. It is a very satisfying pavilion structure.
HAY BALES CASTLE ROBERT FIDLER
A great example of how regulation and legislation can actually intensify
someone’s inventiveness. Pushing this farm building into the realms of
Archigram, it even looks like a rural Graz Kunsthalle.
BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011
46
WALES
WHEN FACED WITH A DECISION THAT
COULD HAVE DEFINED THE FUTURE
OF WELSH ARCHITECTURE,
NOSTALGIA TRIUMPHED OVER
AMBITION. NOW THE BEST
BUILDINGS IN WALES REVEAL ONLY A
GLIMPSE OF WHAT COULD HAVE
BEEN, WRITES OWEN PRITCHARD
Above: the Great In 1992 a competition was held to find a
Glasshouse, completed by design for an opera house on the site where
Foster+Partners in 2000, the Wales Millennium Centre now sits.
is one of the jewels of
Zaha Hadid won the commission and work
the Welsh National
was scheduled for completion by 1996 at
Botanic Gardens
the latest. What followed was a farce that
resulted in the project being shelved and an
eight-year wait for the Welsh National
Opera’s new home that cost twice the
original budget. The steering committees,
Conservative government and funding
bodies conspired to deny Cardiff a building
that could have defined modern Wales. And
that lack of a definite concept of a new
Welsh architecture still dogs the country.
In 1979 Wales rejected the opportunity
of devolution. Following the closure of the
coal mines and the crippling effects of the
miner’s strikes in 1984-85, the country
found a new resolve and in 1997 voted in
favour of devolved powers from
Westminster. The Welsh Assembly
Government (WAG) first sat in 1999 and
Wales slowly emerged from the shadow of
Scargill and Thatcher – but only culturally.
‘In these stones horizons sing’
proclaims the Wales Millennium Centre by
Capita Percy Thomas that overlooks
Cardiff Bay. The £124m cultural centre sits
as the focal point of the regenerated Tiger
Bay. After the Millennium Stadium it is
probably the most famous recent building
in Wales and it is popular with those who
visit to see shows in the main 1900-seat
BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011
auditorium. Yet the building is a material
stereotype of Wales, taking inspiration
from the nation’s natural beauty, industrial
and cultural heritage. Although it tries to
represent the nation, the building is
nostalgic and overly literal. The rough-cut
stone cladding with seams of glass
represent depleted natural resources, the
steel roof represents departed industry,
while the calligraphy and poem inscribed
on the roof recalls a rich history of arts.
The Senedd building by Rogers Stirk
Harbour is the better of the two buildings
that occupy the site of Hadid’s proposal.
The impressive undulating Canadian cedar
roof canopy is delicately cantilevered above
a glass box. Here, says Rogers, ‘democracy
is not hidden’. The Siambr (debating
chamber) is a circular room designed into a
funnel shape – something of a signature for
Ivan Harbour, who directed the design. As a
spectacle, it works best from outside,
stepping down the slate steps to the marina
edge and the quite beautiful roof canopy
engaging with the public space outside.
Inside, the abundance of rooms carved out
of the interior expose the everyday business
of the Assembly.
Outside Cardiff, the completion of the
Mostyn Gallery by Ellis Williams
Architects in 2010 stands out in North
Wales. Atop Snowdon, the ‘highest slum in
Europe’ was replaced with a visitor centre
by Ray Hole Architects. Then there’s the
NIGEL YOUNG/FOSTER + PARTNERS
Ruthin Craft Centre by Sergison Bates and
the Newport City Footbridge across the
River Usk by Grimshaw with Atkins. All
these mark an improvement in locations,
aided by long overdue WAG central funding.
It is, in fact, outside the capital that
the most remarkable building can be found.
Early in the new millennium, set in the
Carmarthenshire countryside, the National
Botanic Gardens of Wales was constructed.
The historic parkland of Middleton Hall
outside Llanarthne became the first
national botanic gardens to be established
in the UK for 200 years. The centrepiece of
the park is the Great Glasshouse by
Foster+Partners. Completed in 2000, it is
the largest single spanned glasshouse in the
world. It comprises 785 individual glass
panels and 24 hollow tubular steel arches.
The building is orientated south to ensure
maximum daylight for the plants that
thrive in its Mediterranean climate and it
is then tilted seven degrees to further
maximise its exposure to the sun. The
landscaping, the first project by Gustafson
Porter, carves out cliff edges akin to a
quarry to create a rugged, dramatic terrain.
It’s an oddity, yet the remarkable
structure manages to sit gracefully in the
rolling countryside. This is one of the few
buildings where, in a very literal sense,
architecture looked beyond its borders and
became home to a building that represents
a less nostalgic, newly empowered Wales.
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 48
TIM GRIFFITH

BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011


COMMERCIAL
AND
MORAL
HEART
MANCHESTER CIVIL
JUSTICE CENTRE
DENTON CORKER MARSHALL
MANCHESTER 2007
The Manchester Civil Justice Centre
would stand out in any city. With its
assemblage of cantilevered structures that
extend beyond its normal footprint and
its astute use of colour, the MCJC’s
presence in the city is imposing and
unmistakable. As a building dedicated to
the justice system, it is unmatched in
terms of investment and ambition since
Queen Victoria commissioned the Royal
Courts of Justice in London in 1882.
MCJC is a bold, civic riposte to the
commercial bombast of Manchester’s
other modern icon, the top-heavy 170m-
high Beetham Tower by Ian Simpson –
also completed in 2007.
The courts, which deal mainly with
family and commercial cases, draw
together functions that were previously
scattered across the city. The 15-storey
building provides 34,000 sq m of floor
space – including 47 courtrooms of various
sizes as well as 75 consultation rooms.
The Courts Service (HMCS) wanted
a building to symbolise the open and
accessible character of the civil justice
system: a public building rather than a
secret enclave, inhabited only by criminals
and lawyers. Though the MCJC is not a
glass box, its functions are legible from
both inside and out. The core function is
expressed by housing the courts within
the protruding structures.
The public function of the building
is most clearly expressed in its light-filled,
atrium, which reaches up to the eleventh
storey and has a café at ground level. The
interior exudes genuine drama, albeit one
accessed through an airport-style system
of checks and scans. Projecting into this
space are coloured glass pods, which are
used as reception areas or consultation
rooms. The cantilevered pods are
supported on a sculptural explosion of
beams clad in a non-directional linnish
aluminium, which gives the atrium ceiling
a soft, pastel-white glow. The quality of
49
Left: a powerful façade
displays the openness of
the justice system as part
of the ‘city of morality’
the building is evident throughout, with
its detailing retaining the sharpness of the
plan and section.
Unlike many public buildings, the
signage, designed by Australian design
practice Emery Studio, is consistent with
the architecture and thus informs coherent
circulation. The engineering company,
Mott MacDonald, devised a natural
ventilation system with a mechanical
back-up. A complex stack effect system, it
operates using the main public atrium and
its double-skin glazed wall, wind scoops
and shafts, which draw air through the
building’s floor voids. Daylight bounces
into the courtrooms in the heart of the
section by high-level clerestories.
MCJC was built using a public-private
partnership (PPP), the flawed system that
was considered a blight on architectural
excellence during the New Labour years of
government. However, in an
unconventional arrangement, the Lord
Chancellor’s department chose the
designer independently of site and
developer. This approach seemed to avoid
many of the irrationalities associated with
the procurement method. The architect
was able to do much of the design work
up front, and the plans changed very little
as construction progressed. An example
of what can be achieved, the MCJC also
brings an exuberant injection of life to
Spinningfields, the largely soulless
financial and legal district of Manchester.
If Simpson’s Beetham Tower is symbolic
of the city’s shift from heritage-based
regeneration to a new economy, the
MCJC is a symbol of Manchester’s claim
to being a city of global significance. The
economic optimism of 2007 might have
evaporated, but this emblem of civic
confidence remains.
Despite the exceptional quality of
MCJC and its standout presence, the
building somehow embodies a specific
architectural quality of Manchester,
bringing it into alignment with the city’s
urban past and present. It is certainly
appropriate that one of Manchester’s most
prominent new buildings should be
concerned with the judicial process. In
BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011

50
Above: the interplay The Anxious City (2004), architectural
of solid and void creates historian Richard Williams describes the
a series of dynamic significance of morality in the built
interior spaces
environment of Manchester. When the
city was born from the Industrial
Revolution, Victorian values and social
structures were inscribed in the urban
planning. As Friedrich Engels noted in his
studies of the city in the 1840s, the central
business district were connected to the
middle class suburbs by means of wide
streets lined with respectable shops. The
working class districts, though, were
£311,010,000
TOTAL VALUE OF LOTTERY FUNDED CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS IN THE
UK IN 2007
hidden behind to remain in unconsidered
poverty. As industrial productivity
declined, along with the city centre’s
population, a new model emerged,
flavoured with the Christian
authoritarianism of Chief Constable James
SOURCE: GLENIGAN GROUP Anderton. Williams sees the multipurpose
megastructure of Manchester’s Arndale
Centre, built during the 1970s, as the ‘built
representation of the modern moral city.’
It was a place where citizens could enjoy
retail and leisure facilities during closely
policed daylight hours, but was then
locked up and shut down at night.
This tradition seemed to disappear
during the 1990s and 2000s as, in the
words of Williams, ‘spectacular
consumerism’ replaced morality as the
BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011
DANIEL HOPKINSON
driving force in Manchester’s architecture.
Spurred by the investment received
following the massively destructive 1996
IRA bomb at the Arndale Centre, and aided
by the XVII Commonwealth Games in
2002, Manchester’s city centre underwent
extensive regeneration. This period saw
the redevelopment of the city’s industrial
heritage for residential and leisure
purposes, epitomised by the rise of
developers, Urban Splash, which began
life in Manchester in 1993. It also saw
the rise of glass-and-steel commercial
or cultural developments. Notable among
these were Simpson’s Beetham Tower and
the practice’s Urbis building, an unfocused
museum that is to become the National
Football Museum in 2011.
With style, ambition and an
extraordinary attention to detail, MCJC
incorporates all the elements of
Manchester’s complex urban environment.
Where Simpson might have created a
spectacle of consumerism, Denton Corker
Marshall has created a spectacle of justice
– a place where justice can be seen to be
done, and its presence is felt throughout
the city. The product of a particular
moment of economic revival, the Civil
Justice Centre taps into the commercial
and moral heart of Manchester.
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52
The theatre unassumingly
fills a city block and feels
more like a continuation
of the dynamic street

ROUGH
GLAMOUR
OF
THE
ART
FORM THE YOUNG VIC
HAWORTH TOMPKINS
LONDON 2006
The Young Vic was originally intended to
be a temporary structure, and even
retained an existing butcher’s shop as its
entrance. That was back in 1970, when – at
a cost of £60,000 – Bill Howell’s design was
built on a bombsite in run-down Waterloo
using breeze blocks. Even after 35 years, it
still retained that temporary feel. Its
auditorium was designed in line with
Brechtian ideals of the theatre as a forum: a
space where the audience is always aware
that what it sees is a representation of
reality rather than reality itself.
Over in the more refined climes of
Sloane Square, Haworth Tompkins’
renovation of the Royal Court Theatre
(2000) was an act of excavation. It pulled
the Victorian building apart in order to
show how the physical structure works,

BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011


much as plays performed at the theatre had
pulled apart the edifice of the British
establishment in the 1960s.
The 2006 refurbishment of the Young
Vic, also by Haworth Tompkins, was a
different proposition altogether. David Lan,
the theatre’s artistic director said that in
contrast to the Royal Court, which is a
young writer’s theatre, the Young Vic is a
young director’s theatre and that should be
acknowledged in the design – the making
of theatre rather than a theatre structure
was important.
Haworth Tompkins’ renovation
retained the footprint and concept of the
original auditorium: an octagonal seating
arrangement inside a square box. However,
it added hidden passageways to act as a
backstage area. The height of the stage has
been raised, making way for a new lighting
grid and allowing the auditorium to extend
above workshop space – newly built – so
that an extended thrust stage could break
the former auditorium perimeter. Not even
the hallowed auditorium was allowed a
sense of permanence.
Featuring three performance spaces,
the Young Vic never feels like an
institution. The building operates as a
series of discreet yet interlocking spaces,
each with its own texture and logic. On
the exterior, the auditorium is clad with
cement board panels, hand-painted by
artist Clem Crosby, and then by an
aluminium mesh. On the interior, it is the
same black painted blockwork as before.
The public foyer is formed from an
inserted timber and steel structure,
along with retained elements of the old
butcher’s shop.
The exterior cladding and interior
circulation are designed to tantalise the
senses. Yet its inner core, where the
imaginative act takes place, is blank. It’s
an inversion of the preconceptions of
theatre architecture. The team behind the
53
TOP FIVE
PIERS GOUGH ARCHITECT, CZWG ARCHITECTS
SCOTTISH PARLIAMENT EMBT/RMJM
Brilliant meditation on townscape meeting landscape, creating
a sequence of stunning internal spaces of all sizes. It could
possibly be the last crafted building in Britain.
LIVERPOOL ONE BDP/VARIOUS ARCHITECTS
Completed in 2008, this is a spectacular piece of modern-day
patronage and planning by a private company. Strong urban
streets and arcades with elegant buildings.
MANCHESTER CIVIL JUSTICE CENTRE DENTON CORKER MARSHALL
This building (see page 48) makes clarity a heroic undertaking.
The complexity of circulation and security is effortlessly done.
LABAN DANCE CENTRE HERZOG AND DE MEURON
The first British building to be so apparently weightless and
ethereal, it’s the first truly 21st-century exterior. Also, it’s great
to have one non-authoritarian education building.
THE GREEN BRIDGE CZWG
‘The park that beat the road’. Located in Mile End, London, and
completed in 2000, this offers a double level of differing public
spaces: good urbanism and good for public finances.
Young Vic may have a messianic faith in
the value of theatre, but it typified the
decade by showing the rough glamour of
the art form.
The use of a diverse material palette is
one of the great defining characteristics of
cultural buildings completed in Britain
during this period. Sarah Wigglesworth
championed this approach with the
Siobhan Davies Dance Studios in London
(2006), a beautiful renovation of a
Victorian school whose cranked columns
and suspended canvas ceilings prove the
right of an architect to experiment.
Yet the sense of purpose to Haworth
Tompkins’ collage approach at the Young
Vic sets it apart. Much of the final fit-out
was carried out by the theatre itself –
constructed by set builders. David Lan and
Steve Tompkins were wise enough to
know that rather than diminishing the
power of theatre, revealing the way theatre
is made makes it all the more compelling.
PHILIP VILE
BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011
54
Above: Leaving behind
the building codes of the
Troubles, which
emphasised security over
all else, the Falls Leisure
Centre actively invites the
interest of passers-by
BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011
NORTHERN
IRELAND
ADDRESSING THE URBAN ISSUES
OF A FORMER WARZONE HAS BEEN
A SLOW TASK. YET SOME
CONTEMPORARY BUILDINGS
EMBODY A NEW OPTIMISM AND
OPENESS IN NORTHERN IRELAND
REPORTS MICHAEL HEGARTY
If decisions by the Welsh Assembly and
Scottish Government to commission new
parliament buildings was a sign of national
confidence in the future then the Good
Friday Agreement in 1998 and decision to
re-use the 1922 Stormont buildings was a
sign of Ulster coming to terms with its past.
However, a lot of issues remain
unaddressed and there are visible reminders
of the Troubles. More than 30 so-called
‘Peace Line’ walls still divide districts in
Belfast and Derry. Urban motorways
separate the largely uninhabited city centre
of Belfast from surrounding, segregated
neighbourhoods and provide the backbone of
the transport strategy. Meanwhile, under-
resourced railways pass all three Northern
Ireland airports without stopping.
The built heritage is remarkably
preserved despite bombing campaigns, slum
clearance and roads projects. Restore, re-use
and recycle approaches to historic buildings
in the last decade is a manifestation of the
growing appreciation and understanding of a
conflicted past.
The flagship restorations of Belfast City
Hall and Ulster Hall are less interesting
than the city’s St. Malachy’s Church, one of
the oldest Catholic churches in Belfast. Sir
John Betjeman described the interior
plasterwork (originally inspired by the
Henry VII chapel at Westminster Abbey) as a
‘many coloured cavern’. The church layout
varied from Victorian norms by having an
aisle on the short axis – akin to the style
favoured by the Catholic Church in the
1960s – which explains its survival during
zealous 1970s re-ordering elsewhere. The
building has now been restored by Consarc.
Perhaps the first building to encapsulate
growing confidence for the future was the
Falls Leisure Centre in Belfast by Kennedy
Fitzgerald (2003-04) where the priority is
vitality of space and interaction with
surroundings rather than the established
norm of bomb-proofing and low-
maintenance. Those norms set low quality
expectations for more than 30 years when
contemporary architecture was the exception
rather than the rule. Now, the building
visually connects the active interiors of
swimming pools and gyms to passers-by. It
also serves to mark the threshold between
the locality and the city centre.
Derry has a compact centre enclosed by
400-year-old city walls that act as a
promenade linking a series of separate
museums telling the story of each
community in their own terms. It will be
the first UK City of Culture in 2013 and
host events located in such venues as the
Playhouse, which reopened in 2009 after
featuring in BBC2’s Restoration programme.
The recent Irish-language arts centre
Cultúrlann Uí Chanáin by O’Donnell &
Tuomey in Derry is an object lesson in
creating unique architecture that is specific
to the locality and purpose of the space.
There are clear inspirational references to
local townscape textures of the city walls,
Georgian buildings and the Troubles’
security infrastructure.
Looking forward, the 400-seat
O’Donnell & Tuomey Lyric Theatre and
Hackett Hall McKnight Metropolitan Arts
Centre (both in Belfast) are currently being
completed. There’s also a RIBA
international design competition – with a
jury headed by Daniel Libeskind – to take
the contentious Andersontown Barracks
and change them into a community-led
regeneration project.
The past decade has seen a coming-to-
terms with non-Troubles history as
institutional buildings are restored, brought
back into use and made more open to the
public. The watchtowers and other
architectural components of the more recent
past, though, are being removed.
Although the private sector will have a
recession-reduced role for the next few
years, disused shipyards, former military
sites and prisons will be redeveloped. The
Department of Culture NI now defines
architecture as a leader of the creative
industry sector and achieving design
excellence is embedded as an ambition in
Northern Ireland. This is good news – but it
doesn’t mean uncomfortable recent history
can be ignored. It does, though, provide a
platform upon which Northern Ireland can
create excellent shared space.
 56
THE ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM
RICK MATHER ARCHITECTS
OXFORD 2009
A For historic significance and the
international scope of its collection,
Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum is
NEW comparable to the British Museum and the
V&A in London. While those institutions
were born during the Victorian age to
provide educationally improving facilities
APPROACH for the populace, the Asmolean was
founded in 1677 – some argue it’s the oldest
public museum in the world – and has been
TO tied to the more enclosed world of Oxford
University. Paradoxically, this resistance to
change, and its inability to significantly
CURATION expand through much of its history,
ultimately enabled a more radical
reappraisal of its public role and curatorial
approach than its London counterparts.
The museum has an eccentric history
reflected in the breadth of its collection. It
was founded through a donation to the
university by an avid collector of
curiosities, Elias Ashmole. His bequest
included an array of stuffed animals and
ethnographic relics acquired from John
Tradescant and his son, John the Younger,
17th-century plant smugglers. Over the
RICHARD BRYANT/ARCAID.CO.UK
BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011
centuries the collection has expanded and
become increasingly comprehensive. It
now possesses the most important
collection of pre-Dynastic Egyptian
material outside Cairo, the only great
collection of Minoan antiquities outside
Heraklion, the largest and most important
collection of Raphael drawings in the world
and the greatest Anglo-Saxon collection
outside the British Museum.
The new Ashmolean by Rick Mather
Architects is attached to the rear of the
original Greek revival building by Charles
Robert Cockerell. Not needing to provide a
new public face for the museum, the
architect was able to concentrate on
increasing its display space and recreate the
building for a new approach to curation.
The dilapidated state and inadequate
facilities of the existing building provided
the opportunity for a drastic overhaul.
Mather’s extension has six storeys,
with a floor area of 9000 sq m, 4000 sq m of
which has been given over to doubling the
display space. Essential facilities, such as
an education centre, conservation studios
and a loading bay were introduced without
interfering with the clarity of the main
galleries. Natural light is filtered vertically
through the building to the lower ground

level via inter-connecting galleries that
vary in floorspace and height to house the
differing objects on display.
As impressively elegant and coherent
as these provisions are, more significant is
the new curatorial approach. The agenda
that guided the remodeling of the museum
was called Crossing Cultures Crossing
Time, a vague slogan that involved
breaking chronological, geographical and
departmental categories in order to provide
more thematic and intellectually
stimulating displays. It required the
museum’s keepers to loosen their hold over
the artefacts in their care and to adopt an
approach to display that was popular
without being patronising.
A clear, spiraling route was established
through the museum for visitors to
appreciate the more nuanced historical
narrative now provided. This route is
largely dictated by a central, five-flight,
reinforced concrete staircase that acts a
grand sculptural showpiece in the generous
atrium. Deep interior walls throughout the
museum allow for the services to be
hidden, but also for apertures to be created
where artefacts can be displayed between
galleries. In an instantly appreciable way
these features demonstrate the links
57
Below left: a view
through the Islamic art
between objects from countries separated gallery to a staircase
by oceans and centuries. lightwell, which draws
Thanks to the smaller scale of the natural light deep into
Ashmolean, and the fact that it has avoided the museum plan
gradual evolution for most of its history,
Below: the relationship
this was a more radical reinvention than
between galleries in the
has been experienced by its London atrium means that
counterparts. The British Museum’s roof by visitors can enjoy many
Foster+Partners, completed in 2000, different exhibits at
introduced a new public space that the same time
established it as a grand meeting place. Its
future extension, designed by Rogers Stirk
Harbour + Partners will provide a ‘World
Conservation and Exhibitions Centre’. But
neither space explores its role as public
repositories of historic material.
The V&A’s redevelopment programme,
established in 2002 has included the
creation of the British Galleries, new
sculpture galleries and – in a move that is
understandable if uninspiring – puts the
museum shop in the central route through
the ground floor of the museum. Yet these,
by comparison seem more like acts of
curatorial tidying and ways of dealing with
financial constraints. In a seemingly
modest way, the Ashmolean Museum
has made a contribution to museum
architecture and curation that far
outstrips its scale.
GREG SMOLONSKI/PHOTOVIBE
BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011
58

A
SYMBOL
OF
LONDON
Above: Despite its
appearance only the
Gherkin’s glass apex
curves

BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011


30 ST MARY AXE
FOSTER AND PARTNERS
LONDON 2010
Skyscrapers would never be the same again.
When 30 St Mary Axe, to give the 40-storey
Gherkin its proper name, was completed in
2004, the glass skyscraper became an icon –
in this case one that redefined a city’s
image. Before the Gherkin, the skyscraper,
at least outside China and the Gulf, had
twice been declared dead – in the 1980s,
when office developers built wide
‘groundscrapers’ to accommodate electronic
trading floors, and again after 9/11.
After the Gherkin, the skyscraper was
back, but had to be a sculptural landmark
with green credentials. It was the starting
gun that unleashed a wave of them across
London, including Rafael Viñoly’s ‘Walkie-
Talkie’ in Fenchurch Street, BFLS’s also-
curvy Strata (‘The Razor’) in Elephant and
Castle and the ultimate – Renzo Piano’s
Shard at London Bridge. (The Gherkin also
started the London habit of giving
skyscrapers silly nicknames).
In 2000, The City approved Norman
Foster’s 180m-high design for the Baltic
Exchange site, cleared by an IRA bomb,
partially because developer Swiss Re
threatened to quit London if they couldn’t
build a skyscraper there, and partly because
Canary Wharf, free of central London’s
-19.02%
DROP IN NUMBER OF ARCHITECTS EMPLOYED IN THE UK ECONOMY BETWEEN 2007 AND 2009
SOURCE: LABOUR FORCE SURVEY, EXPERIAN, CONSTRUCTION SKILLS NETWORK
conservation constraints, was building big
and bleeding global financial corporations
away from the Square Mile.
High-tech and Post-modernism had
already dismissed the paradigm of the
International Style rectilinear glass tower,
but now parametric computer modelling
enabled newer shapes. In the 1970s, Foster
had worked with Buckminster Fuller on
the Climatroffice concept of enclosing a
building in an exterior bubble. The
Gherkin’s steel-frame diagrid shell,
engineered by Arup, is effectively that. But
it also shares the vertical load of the floors
with the core, which could be steel rather
than concrete. Skyscrapers must resist
lateral wind forces and a circular cross-
section deflects them, but the Gherkin
design went further, curving vertically as
well, increasing its aerodynamism and
creating its simple, elegant yet
unprecedented form. Wedge-gaps in the
concrete floors are rotated five degrees
clockwise with each storey, creating helical
voids, defined by stripes of darker glass set
into the diagrid’s 5,500 triangles, as
distinctive as a barber’s pole. Only the
Gherkin’s horizontal circular glass apex
and the platform below it curve. The
design led the Stirling Prize panel in 2005
to agree unanimously for the first time.
Foster went on to wow New York with
the Gherkin’s sister, the Hearst Building,
59
designed with the same principles but a
different shape. Arguably, his starchitect
factor broke the American monopoly on
skyscraper design in the world’s greatest
high-rise city, now host to projects by
Piano, Rem Koolhaas, Jean Nouvel and
Richard Rogers. Back in London, the
Gherkin became a scene in an on-going
power-play between titans of architecture.
Rogers’ Lloyds Building was The City’s
previous high-rise icon, but the Gherkin
made its high-tech look old hat, and thrusts
almost 100m over it. Rogers is set to have
the last laugh because his ‘Cheesegrater’
nearby will eclipse it.
The Gherkin remains a wildly popular
building and a symbol of London as
synonymous as Big Ben. But Ken
Shuttleworth of Make, who claimed the
design was his when a Foster partner, has
declared the glass skyscraper dead. That
isn’t the case yet, although Nouvel’s Torre
Agbar in Barcelona – completed a year after
the Gherkin and sharing its suggestive
form – has a concrete shell punctuated
with random windows. Other sorts of
structures are now jostling into London’s
skyline action – Anish Kapoor and Cecil
Balmond’s Orbit is under construction,
and Donis’ London Arch may follow.
Even when iconic glass towers have had
their day, the Gherkin will leave a legacy
of high drama.
BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011
60

MARKET SQUARE is avoided by tiered terraces, which reflect

GUSTAFSON PORTER the material presence of the buildings
NOTTINGHAM 2007 around it. The terraces provide planters,
seating and act to control the existing
Nottingham is a jumble of a mediaeval landscape of the square – allowing vehicle

THE street plan, Victorian grandeur in the Lace

Market and post-war commercial
developments squeezed in for good
and disabled access to the centre. The
water feature at the western edge is large,
but does not compete with the ornate,

THREAT measure. As a result the urban fabric is

incoherent and mixed.
Located at the commercial and civic
heart of the city, its 800-year-old Market
complex detail of the Council House
façade it faces. Instead, it acts as an
austere counterbalance, part of the careful
orchestration of a picturesque space.

OF Square was, in the early part of this decade,

looking its age. A circulation survey
carried out in 2004 discovered that 78 per
Market Square is a story of an
organised client with a clear brief and an
architect astute enough to understand it.

MATERIAL cent of the public navigated the perimeter

of the square rather than pass across its
core. What had once been a working
market had become a bleak landscape of
The process involved consulting all users
of the space, from teenage school children
and Nottingham civic society to the police.
‘I spoke to the person who coordinates the

MONOTONY wonky concrete slabs and dirty fountains.

So in 2007, the UK’s second largest square
(after Trafalgar) was given a revamp by
landscape architects Gustafson Porter.
The practice combined boldness and
subtlety in knitting together the space. The
design fixes attention on the edges,
clearing the centre of the square for
activity. The mat of Portuguese granite
blocks that paves the area mirrors the
Portland stone of the grand council
building. The threat of material monotony
public programme for the square recently,’
says Neil Porter of Gustafson Porter.
‘They said that there is only one day each
month that the square is not scheduled
for use.’
The provision of services including
power outlets, public address systems and
concealed drainage provide a space that is
adaptable enough to hold events ranging
from a temporary ice rink to a pop concert.
Using public space has always been
problematic in the UK. Central Europe

BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011

 61
TOP FIVE
enjoys a climate that has supported a rich ADAM CARUSO ARCHITECT
tradition of plazas and piazzas – Britain
RAVEN ROW 6A ARCHITECTS
has since the Victorian era, struggled to A remarkable contemporary art gallery in a set of restored/remade rooms
create public spaces that combine a sense that resonate with the ethic of the institution. It’s a building that
of identity with practicality. Currently, encourages the visitor to spend time with the work.
public space suffers its own identity crisis
CHRIST CHURCH SPITALFIELDS RED MASON/PURCELL MILLER TRITTON
as in many cases what is perceived as Walking into the restored Christ Church Spitalfields is like discovering a
being public is privately owned. This is new Hawksmoor interior, slightly surreal but a great pleasure.
illustrated in the space at More London on
TATE MODERN HERZOG DE MEURON
the capital’s South Bank. There, sculpted
The choice of the building, and the way it has been programmed over
out of the grey stone paving sits an the last ten years, has changed the role of contemporary art in the UK.
amphitheatre. The monotony of the dark
paving and unwieldy staircases give the THE RED HOUSE TONY FRETTON
A significant private house that revives the public role that such
space a monolithic, imposing and deeply
buildings have traditionally played in the European city. It’s a building
unfriendly presence. The ambiguity of that is the equal of great city houses of London’s past.
ownership and resultant paranoia about the
right to be in such places is the blight of SCOTTISH PARLIAMENT EMBT/RMJM
A rare example of a building that is intended to embody the difficult
many public spaces.
values of a new parliament. The building’s beautiful and purposeful
The quiet strength of the Nottingham construction makes it feel like something that will last for a long time.
Market Square is the rationalisation of the
space to simple elements and textures
underpinned by the thoughtful availability
of supporting services. The planning of the
space responds to careful analysis of the
way people use it. It may seem bizarre to
praise a public space for encouraging
people to use it, but this is why
Nottingham Market Square stands out. It
is a modern space, used by the city to bring
together its citizens – the simple
appearance hides its complex functions.

DOM HENRY

BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011

 62

TATE MODERN
HERZOG & DE MEURON
LONDON 2000

POWER With more than 4.7m visitors a year, Tate

Modern is the most successful gallery in the
world – beating the 900,000 of New York’s

STATION Guggenheim and St Petersburg’s Hermitage

with 2.5m. But less than 20 years ago,
Bankside Power Station was slated for

AS demolition, that is, until Tate announced it

would house its new modern art gallery
there. Tate director, Sir Nicholas Serota
should be lauded for pulling off his greatest

PARAGON gamble in what seemed like an effortless

process. The competition was announced
in July 1994 and by the new year, Herzog &

OF THE de Meuron were awarded the project. Five

years later, in 2000, Tate Modern officially
opened and became the architectural
superstar of the new century.

ARTS When plans for the coal-fired Battersea

Power Station were proposed in 1927, there
TATE PHOTOGRAPHY

BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011


was a cacophony of protest about the
potential eyesore, as well as the possible
harm that pollution could cause paintings in
the nearby Tate Gallery. To placate the
aesthetic criticism, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott
was brought in to design the monumental
building. Battersea has since transformed
into an iconic landmark, with help from
Pink Floyd and an inflatable pig. Scott also
designed Bankside, a smaller, oil-fired
station, which started operations in 1952.
By the early 1980s, both power stations
had been decommissioned. While Battersea
went on an Odyssean voyage of unrealised
proposals, Bankside was able to benefit from
another success story from the late 20th
century. Emerging in 1988, the Young British
Artists inspired an enduring public craze for
contemporary art. The transformation of a
power station into a temple of modern art
reflects the wider impetus of the nation’s
transition from an industrial to a services
economy. As the first nation to kick-start the
Left: Tate Modern’s
presence on the South
Bank has become
ingrained in British
culture
This page: the Turbine
Hall is large enough to
feel like an outdoor space
and informal enough to
be a meeting place
industrial revolution, it was fitting that the
British cultural legacy created by its ‘new
creative industries’ should have a power
station as a paragon of the arts.
The transition in the economy means
that there is a wealth of vacant industrial
buildings awaiting new life. Similar
reinventions include the Baltic, on
Gateshead’s quayside, where a redundant
grain warehouse was redeveloped into a
centre for contemporary visual arts. There
are even plans to convert a disused
Gasometer at London’s King’s Cross into a
flexible amenity space for the community.
Tate Modern is as good as building
conversion gets. It has instigated the
incredible transformation of the area south
of the Thames into a cultural hub.
Herzog & de Meuron’s design provided
the ideal balance between old and new.
Unlike Nicholas Grimshaw, who wanted the
building to stay exactly the same, or David
Chipperfield’s proposal, which included
63
lopping off the chimney, Herzog & de
Meuron kept the shell of the building – its
iconicity – while creating new gallery spaces
in the old boiler house, capping it all off with
a two-storey opaque lightbox.
It has been argued that the popularity of
Tate Modern is due to it being the only
modern art gallery of its size in London. This
is undermined by the fact that, compared to
similar attractions such as the Louvre and
Bilbao’s Guggenheim, it has both a modest
permanent collection and display area.
Though the sacrifice of space to the Turbine
Hall is felt in the more constricted galleries,
the gesture was worth it. The Turbine Hall,
with its enormous concourse in a muted
colour palette and long strips of daylight,
offers a contemplative space for each visitor
to reflect after viewing the art. The planned
extension, by Herzog & de Meuron, will
deliver another 5,000 sq m of gallery space,
alleviating the current congestion and
further enhancing the Tate experience.
BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011
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Ω PRODUCE 65
Delving into children’s fiction,
Pippa Nissen Studio has
crafted models that capture
the horrors of war for a
forthcoming exhibition at
the Imperial War Museum.
Owen Pritchard reports
Right: Japanese
company Kokuyo
presented their
futuristic
workstation,
Harmonii,
at Orgatec
Once Upon a Wartime brings five
20th-century children’s stories about
the experience of war to life in a
forthcoming exhibition at the
Imperial War Museum. The exhibition,
designed by Pippa Nissen Studio,
uses the books: War Horse; Carrie’s
War; The Machine Gunners; The Silver
Sword and Little Soldier to provide an
insight into the reality behind the
fiction. Nissen’s role has been to
create a unified approach that brings
the fictional stories into the detailed
and realistic settings required by the
TOM MERREL
museum’s educative mission. ‘Working
with the experts from the Imperial
Above: the initial
model of a First
World War
War Museum, we had to find a
balance between engaging,
battlefield is
prepared for
entertaining and educating children casting
without scaring them,’ she says.
The architects rented a
warehouse space in East London for
the project and – with the help of a
team of architecture students from
Kingston University and the Bartlett
– produced models of three stories in
four months. Working with the
experts from the museum and using Ω
Orgatec 2010 was the
setting for a fascinating
discussion about what
makes a space an office or
a home. Have the two
environments become
interchangeable, asks
Gian Luca Amadei (page 70)
BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011
66 its massive archives, Nissen and her
team determined the landscapes,
constructions and materials needed
for each story. The models were made
in cardboard, clay and plaster before
being cast in silicone rubber. The
the children’s imagination could do
the rest – making them technicolour.’
The resultant models are simple yet
detailed, and disarmingly beautiful.
War Horse by Michael Morpurgo,
published in 1982, looks at the
directed movie of it is due in cinemas
later this year.
The model used here is a
recreation of World War One trenches.
It was researched from the
construction manuals in the museum
across a bombed out no-mans-land.
The backdrop to this will be video
imagery of actual WWI battlefields
and specially commissioned
photographs of mud. The playfulness
and craft of the models belie the

Ω
silicone was then used as a negative
to cast the final model in plaster. ‘We
wanted to avoid making them too
dolls housey and quaint,’ says Nissen.
‘If they were cast and monochrome,
horrors of the First World War
through the eyes of the horse. A play
of the book has wowed audiences at
the National Theatre for the last
three years and a Steven Spielberg-
archive. The German trenches are
wider than the Allies, and situated
on higher ground. The model, divided
into six parts, slopes gently to the
narrow, plank-clad Allied trenches
academic rigour of realising them.
For The Silver Sword, Ian
Serraillier’s 1956 book, Nissen used
the devastation of Warsaw to provide
context for the model. It cuts a

Left: Nissen’s
original sketch for
the War Horse
room explores
possibilities for
the exhibition

Left: To create
unique atmospheres
in each room,
maquettes that
explored textures
were used to
test ideas

BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011

section through the shell of a house
and street to reveal the warren of
spaces the characters occupied. Dust
and debris scatters the model,
makeshift furniture sits in the
basement, the bricks on the walls are
imperfect and cracked.
In providing this hyperreal image
of the set for the book the young
audience can decipher the landscape
on a scale they are familiar with. ‘For
all the models we had to focus on
the detail at a tiny scale,’ says Joel
Cady who ran the project with
Nissen. ‘Children will be aware of
that and it will speak to them.’
The Machine Gunners model is
the most theatrical of the three. The
1975 Robert Westall novel is set in
North Wales, so Nissen instructed
museum photographers to take
photographs of the trees and
landscapes described in the book.
This is then abstracted into laser-cut
panels that build up in three layers.
The bunker around which the
narrative is set appears appears in 3D
against the rest of the 2D landscape.
The room designed for Carrie’s
War, the 1973 tale of child evacuees
by Nina Bawden, will be framed by a
blank proscenium arch through which
you enter a kitchen. This careful
balance of theatrics with the
uncanny reflects the dialogue
between the reality of history and
the fictional narrative. The kitchen
will be stocked with rations and
contains such artefacts as ration
67
books. The set helps prove the
context of the fiction as fact. It’s
educational, but entertaining as well.
The museum had experts for
everything,’ says Nissen. ‘Every detail

Left: The process

of the War Horse
model. The original
cardboard model,
the plaster
negative and the
final cast model

DAVID LAMBERT
Left: The office
relocated to the
RARA workshop in
Clapton, east
London, to create
the models. The
process was too big
and messy to
complete in the
Nissen Studio
TOM MERREL

Above: elements of
a Warsaw
townshouse are
laid out before
being assembled

Ω
for the Silver Sword
model
TOM MERREL

BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011

68 Ω down to the colours in the wallpaper
is authentic.’
The design of the exhibition
displays a firm belief in the strength
of children’s imagination. The spatial
arrangement of the rooms is irregular,
resulting in a sense of dynamism
and adventure. ‘The spaces were
conceived as immersive,’ says Nissen.
‘Sometimes they reveal the history
behind the story and sometimes they
are more emotional to capture the
imagination and create a metaphor
for part of the story.’
The ambition of delivering an
idea of a horrific, incomprehensible
situation to children is not to be
underestimated. The combination
of painstaking research, meticulous
design and sheer hard work is likely
to ensure that this exhibition will
be engaging, understandable and
enjoyable, rather than patronising
or overly academic.

DAVID LAMBERT
Left: the completed Above: meticulous
Silver Sword model attention is paid to
depicts a section detail to ensure
through a street that every aspect
during WWII of the model will
engage the
imagination of
children and
DAVID LAMBERT

adults alike

Right: the model of

the Warsaw
streetscape was
researched using
films and
photography to
find a context
that lent itself to
the narrative of
The Silver Sword
TOM MERRIL

BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011

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70 As technology transforms

Ω ORGATEC the idea of what an office

environment can be, this
year’s Orgatec, featuring a

COLOGNE conference by Steelcase,

looked towards the future.
Gian Luca Amadei reports
PHOTO: TONATIUH AMBROSETTI COPYRIGHT VITRA (WWW.VITRA.COM)

Above: individual
booths form part of
the 1991 Citizen
Office project that
Vitra started with
Andrea Branzi,
Michele de Lucchi
and the late Ettore
Sottsass. The
PHOTO: MARC EGGIMANN COPYRIGHT VITRA (WWW.VITRA.COM)

project anticipated
the blending of
working and living
spaces

Right: the HAL

chair system by
Jasper Morrison,
based on the idea
of furniture for
both work and
residential spaces

BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011

In recent years the definition of what
constitutes an office has been
subverted by the wireless network
(WiFi). This hasn’t just freed the
office from yards of cables but has
also reconfigured the space and the
way people use it.
The office is everywhere. With
WiFi internet access, you can have an
office – no matter where you are.
This way of blurring the
boundaries between the office and
private dwelling was key to the
presentation by Swiss furniture
company Vitra at Orgatec, the
biennial international fair for the
office held in Cologne, Germany.
Vitra’s view of the office could be
seen as nostalgic, partly because of
the retro look of the colours and
forms. However, the Vitra Citizen
Office concept is about a new
formality that is both functional and
flexible. For example, the HAL chair
by Jasper Morrison is cleverly
reinterpreting the shell chair.
The research into a new aesthetic
language for the office also means
experimentation – looking at
manufacturing techniques used by
other industries. And that is what
German company Wilkhahn did when
it unveiled Chassis, a new chair by
designer Stefan Diez, who is also
known for his work with Thonet. In
this challenging project Diez and
Wilkhahn exploited robotic
manufacturing techniques used by
Audi to construct car chassis.
71
The need for a change of
approach to the office of the future
was also trumpeted at the Steelcase
conference, which took place at the
same time and next door to Orgatec.
This two-day verbal marathon marked
the return to Orgatec of the American
office furniture giant after being
absent for the past three exhibitions.

Left: Harmonii is
the futuristic
workstation
unveiled at Orgatec
by Japanese
company Kokuyo.
Designed by
Gwenael Nicolas,
Harmonii proposes
to mediate
between individual
and social space.

Left: Haven is the

latest design by
Mark Gabbertas for
Allermuir. This
includes a seating
system and a range
of tables that is
designed to make
working spaces
more adaptable
and functional

Ω
BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011
72
Ω Although the corporate scale of the
conference was alarming, the line-up
of speakers from the worlds of
architecture, engineering and design
stole the show in Cologne.
One of Steelcase’s most inspiring
presentations came from Dr Chris
Luebkeman, a geologist, structural
engineer and architect who leads the
Global Foresight & Innovation team
at Arup. Luebkeman showed extracts
BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011
from his publication Drivers of
Change, a project that looks at 175
factors that Luebkeman posits will
affect the way we live and think.
These are organised in a system
named STEEP (social, technological,
economic, environmental and
political) that envisage the
integration of more than one aspect
Luebkeman’s, it’s clear that the entire
concept of the office/workplace is
changing – both as an environment
in itself and as space that needs to
be furnished.
Which rather begs the question of
why there is a need for office
concepts to be isolated at
conferences like Orgatec and
when evaluating a project or a task. Steelcase instead of being integrated
With presentations like into the design world at large.
Left and below Below: testing the Below right: A shot
left: work-in- polypropylene of the recently
progress images membrane shaping presented final
during the making Chassis, in one of prototype of
of Chassis, the new the early prototypes Chassis at Orgatec
chair designed by
Stefan Diez
 
   


  

 

 



 
 







 



  

   





 

 


  

 





  
 


 


 

 

  















>>EXHIBITION
NORDIC MODELS AND
COMMON GROUNDS
28 October - 9 March
American-Scandinavian Foundation,
New York, USA
Review by Gwen Webber
Right: Lars When Niels Poulson established the
Tunbjörk’s 1997 American-Scandinavian Foundation
view of a lawyer’s (ASF) in 1910, it was with the aim of
office in New York
fostering diplomacy in a post-war
Below: David
climate and cultivating an intellectual
Salmela’s Bagley bridge between his native Denmark
Classroom for the and America, where he made his
University of fortune in steel. To mark the
Minnesota-Duluth foundation's centennial this year, the
exhibition Nordic Models and Common
Grounds sets out to illustrate the
cultural exchange that has since
blossomed across the Atlantic.
Celebrating more than just the
foundation's birth, the exhibition also
looks forward to the growing trend of
collaborative practice among the five
Nordic countries. Curated by Oslo and
New York-based architects Snøhetta,
with display design by Brooklyn-based
Situ Studio, the show brings together
35 interdisciplinary projects, spanning
architecture, music production
and knitting.
The two distinct principles of
Scandinavian design – modernism and
interdisciplinary practice – also serve
as measures for Snøhetta's own
philosophy. Its approach to
architecture is one of plurality and the
practice's Oslo Opera House (2008)
put Norway back on the design map.
This and such projects as the 2007
Serpentine Pavilion in London, with
artist Olafur Eliasson, emphasised the
potential of collaboration in
PAUL CROSBY
architecture. Although familiar
projects feature, such as the Sandnes
plaza by Atelier Oslo and French
studio AWP, the majority of work on
show demonstrates a new generation
of emerging practices.
'We eliminated the walls,' says
Greg Dykers, co-curator and co-
founder of Snøhetta, referencing both
the gallery space and the more
ephemeral divisions between practices
represented. The origami display cases
and plinths physically manifest the
ideas driving both the foundation and
exhibition: by enabling views of
numerous projects simultaneously, any
conceptual or geographic boundaries
visually dissolve. The angular plywood
forms, envisioned as 'an urban grid,
much like New York', according to
Kjitel Thorsen of Snøhetta, aim to
show the cross-pollination of ideas
and skills, designers and aesthetics.
The team has achieved a holistic
REVIEW
experience – the visitor is liberated
from a predetermined path so that
projects merge and commonalities
between them arise without dictation.
This seeming absence of curation
isn't always easy on the eye, however,
as the lack of formal framing can be
disorienting and from some
perspectives, the show resembles the
interior of an overzealous
contemporary art collector. At times
the effect is overstimulating, but the
message that modern Scandinavian
design is a shifting cross-over of
styles is received loud and clear.
Each of the designers is fiercely
independent, but as an ensemble they
exemplify the region's unifying
features of humanism, tradition,
quietude and purposefulness. The
show doesn't turn this sober
characterisation of Scandinavian
design on its head, rather it offers a
proud perspective on home-grown
75
LARS TUNBJÖRK/AGENCE VU/AMADOR GALLERY
craft and technology. There is also an
undercurrent of humour in offering
alternative design solutions to age-
old forms. For example, Luthier Hans
Johannsson uses computer software
to develop an instrument shaped on
Elial Saarinen's TWA airport in New
York. Indeed, technical and material
innovation is present throughout and
illustrates the balance of functionality
and simplicity, which has been
globalised through such outlets as
IKEA. It is notable that such major
players, who have been the most
important catalyst in making
Scandinavian design marketable, are
absent from this particular
conversation.
The show comes at an important
time for Scandinavian design. This
year, Bjarke Ingels represented
Denmark at the Shanghai Expo and
was won the European Architecture
Prize. Inviting Snøhetta to curate was
also a canny choice for this New York
gallery: the practice received the
Norwegian American Trade Award
2010 and has designed the Memorial
at the World Trade Centre site in New
York and San Francisco's MoMA.
From the offset, Snøhetta's
curation reflects modernism in its
broadest sense and offers a weather
bell for international design. It is a
shame that the exhibition, which is a
reminder of the importance of cross-
cultural collaborations – exemplified
by Poulson a century ago – is limited
to showing only one American-
Scandinavian project: Finnish-
American David Salmela's Bagley
Classroom Building, University of
Minnesota-Duluth. This gesture,
hinting towards a more tangible
relationship between nations, opens
up intriguing questions about global
practice, rather than just regional.
BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011
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>>EXHIBITION
THE CRATE SERIES
Spring Projects, London NW5
5 November - 14 January
Review by Esme Fieldhouse
Right: This project first planted itself in the
VacuumCleaner consciousness of Studio Makkink &
Crate wears a Bey in India. Architect Rianne Makkink
colourful skin of
witnessed the humble crate defining
thread
all measure of everyday environments
Below: The plaid for inhabitants of the cramped cities,
pattern covering and wondered how this might be
BedCrate imitates tested in her own familiar
that found on surroundings. Upon returning to the
pyjamas Netherlands, Makkink, along with
product designer Jurgen Bey, began an
exploration into furniture units that
could generate human scale as well as
personal autonomy. ‘We have created a
landscape for living and working,’ Bey
states proudly. The exhibition
resembles a Hejduk-esque theatre set
BOTH IMAGES: NOAH DA COSTA
>>BOOK
JUST MY TYPE
Simon Garfield, £14.99
Review by Patrick Myles
Right: Vincent Simon Garfield isn’t a designer. Or an
Connare’s invention architect or a visual artist or a
of Comic Sans typesetter. What he is, is a journalist
typeface has led to
and author of many excellent books
a world of digital
bunny abuse – for
on esoteric subjects. Oh, I lied about
which Connare has him not being a typersetter – he is,
apologised, but but only on an amateur basis. And
only in Comic Sans that’s the setting-off point for his
humorous book on fonts: everyone
can be a passionate amateur now.
Opening with a light-hearted
chapter on Comic Sans, he sets the
tone for the rest of the book: amusing
and informative. Most graphic
designers hate Comic Sans. It was
designed by Vincent Connare in 1994
for Microsoft and was included as a
supplementary typeface in Windows
95. It was an instant smash hit. But
not with designers. To make the
point, Garfield points you towards
the website – BanComicSans –
dedicated to its death.
Garfield narrates a history of
and includes different blends of
antique furniture and shipping crates,
which reinvent the functional objects
of our domestic lives.
The works appear deceptively raw
at first glance. Soft materials wrap
around the hard wood on only those
introspective surfaces that are
touched. BedCrate encloses a raised
sleeping area, with the private interior
covered in fur and leather; the
material extends to a square on the
floor just at the point where the
rousing resident steps out of bed.
A Rotterdam warehouse played
host to Studio Makkink & Bey in the
creation of the Crate Series. A time
constraint of two months (before the
lease ran out) highlighted the
necessity to pack away the furniture in
containers, ready to decant elsewhere.
ClockCrate is the most obvious
depiction of the temporal balance
between work and leisure. A 19th-
lettering through a series of themed
chapters interspersed with such
general chapters as The Ampersand or
DIY Type.
And with all this, he shows how
social convention has changed in just
a short space of time. These days,
capital letters in email or text
messages means ‘YOU HATE SOMEONE
AND ARE SHOUTING’. Included is the
cautionary tale of Vicki Walker, an
unfortunate accountant, who lost her
job for sending out a straightforward
memo in upper case – giving it (what
was deemed) an inappropriate and
aggressive meaning.
A knowledge of typefaces has
become accessible to everyone in the
digital age and no longer exclusive to
a small group of specialists, or those
working in the media industry.
Garfield recounts the Guardian’s
now famous April Fool’s hoax of 1977
when they ran a piece marking the
10th anniversary of the independence
of San Serriffe: a republic whose
every name was taken from the world
of fonts. Situated in the middle of the
Indian Ocean it is said that some
readers actually tried to book a
century clock chimes as a work
apron hangs on a hook to the left
and pyjamas to the right, marking
the abrupt transition from labour
to relaxation.
The importance of temporary
combinations that change according
to the situation led the team to devise
multi-functioning objects.
VacuumCleanerCrate, with its ornate
tea set, acts as a place for refreshment
but the inclusion of a vacuum cleaner,
to clean up the crumbs, flips the piece
into a work tool. Paradoxically, this
Crate solves a problem that it created
in the first place – revealing it as a
unit of research rather than one of
furniture. Through latching onto the
mechanisms of existing furniture and
appliances, the designers have entered
the project as much into a discourse
on Duchamp’s readymades as one on
sustainable design.
Makkink confesses to being
‘WE HAVE CREATED
A LANDSCAPE FOR
LIVING AND
WORKING’ BEY
STATES PROUDLY OF
THE HEJDUK-ESQUE
THEATRE SET
frustrated by the politics of
architecture, particularly at an urban
scale, owing to the constraints of any
commission. She remembers the
freedom of product design upon first
collaborating with Bey in 2002,
holiday there, but no travel agent
could locate Bodoni International
airport. Today it would be far too
obvious a prank to pull off.
What’s more, Garfield shows,
changing the typeface of a global
brand like IKEA can have enormous
commercial implications. He says:
‘When IKEA dropped its elegant
Futura for the more contemporary
Verdana, the switch had caused
consternation not only among type
geeks, but also among real people’
77
transferring her skills and knowledge
as architect to the most intimate
of spaces.
Each piece in the Crate Series is
thoughtful and imaginative, and sit
happily in the gallery as products of an
engaging process. The titles brand the
units as functional objects, not pieces
of art, as if preparing them for mass-
production, with the reinterpretation
of transport crates challenging the
greedy consumption of consumerism.
It’s an exhibition that demonstrates
furniture design as firmly within the
realm of architecture. The Crates are
instinctively spatial: they self-
consciously contain functions within
particular spaces, but, equally,
experiment with the blurring of
boundaries between activities. Studio
Makkink & Bey has crafted miniature
pieces of architecture, which playfully
toy with how our household objects
might define and deconstruct the
balance between work and play.
– who reacted by buying less. To ram
this point home, he drops a
monstrosity on the reader – the 2012
Olympic typeface. Read that chunky,
sportless font – and weep.
Just My Type is an immensely
refreshing offering from an author
who is fascinated by his subject.
Conveying the richness and the
personality of typefaces with love
and passion, this is an accessible and
entertaining introduction to the
world of lettering.
BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011
78

>>EXHIBITION desirability, the images they

DRAWING FASHION
Design Museum, London SE1
3 November - 6 March
Review by Natre Wannathepsakul
Right: Mats Drawing Fashion comprises a
Gustafson’s selection of 150 works by 16 fashion
watercolour of a illustrators, created for various
catwalk model is
designers as advertising material,
subtle, but insular
usually for publication in
Below: Of the three commercial magazines.
contemporary They have been drawn from the
illustrators, extensive collection of Joëlle
Berthoud is the Chariau, founder and owner of a
most graphical
Munich gallery specialising in
fashion drawings. The exhibition
produce are mesmerising.
Conspicuous within the works of
illustrators at the beginning of the
20th century, particularly Georges
Lepape and Erté, is the conversation
between art and fashion, where the
influences of art deco, Picasso and
Japonisme permeate. Lepape and
André Edouard Marty, whose
popularity peaked in the 1910s and
20s, represented fashion in context.
They placed women in scenarios
that evoke a narrative, an area of
potential in the medium that seems
to have been abandoned by later
illustrators. In a drawing by Lepape,
a demure lady in evening dress

MATS GUSTAFSON, ‘RED DRESS’, YOHJI YAMAMOTO, 1999

spans a century beginning with the
heyday of fashion drawing in the
1910s and 20s, when it was the
principal means of communicating
fashion to the consumer. The show
follows through to the present,
where fashion drawings are coming
to be seen more and more as art.
Visibly, there is a unifying style to a
whole century’s output, or at least,
a congruence in the mediums used.
The prominence of pencil, charcoal
and watercolour; the looseness of
the lines and the sparseness of
detail; the emphasis on the outline
of forms and not the textuality of
materials, are evident throughout
the show.
At their best, these works
transcend any photography: they
demand a far more personal
response from the illustrators.
And when they can capture the
essence of a design and its
FRANÇOIS BERTHOUD, LUCIE, SONIA RYKIEL, 2004
stands alone, with a crowd of high
society men and women looking on
from a distance and commenting. It
is an ambiguous image, and all the
more intriguing because of it.
In July 1932, Vogue placed the
first photographic image on its
cover. It was a fateful moment that
spelt the rapid decline of drawing in
fashion magazines and advertising.
Despite such adversity, in 1947
René Gruau relaunched drawing as
the exemplary platform for haute
couture by conveying so
convincingly the allure of Christian
Dior’s first collection through a
buoyant and coolly flirtatious
femininity. Then in the 60s and 70s,
Antonio Lopez was able to woo the
fashion world’s attention by
capturing in his drawings the
exuberance of youth culture through
fierce and masculine women. Lopez
was also the master of tongue-in-
BY PRESENTING ONLY
A HANDFUL OF
ILLUSTRATORS FROM
EACH ERA, IT
REINFORCES THE
DOMINANCE OF
PHOTOGRAPHY
cheek quotations, that range in
their sources from Cubism to
Futurism and Pop Art. His work went
beyond fashion magazines: a piece
in an untitled series for the New
images within a time and place,
defined by clothing and landmark
events that would have been
chronicled by the NYT. Despite this,
it is still far from a serious critique.
They are, rather, frivolous and fun
takes on the times.
Today’s illustration marks a
significant departure from these
precedents. They are represented by
the works of the three contemporary
artists, hailed by the exhibition as
the ‘Fashion Drawing for the Future’.
The triumvirate is composed of Mats
Gustafson, Aurore de La Morinerie
and François Berthoud. Gustafson is
a favourite of the Vogue magazines:
his drawings for Alexander McQueen
appeared in Vogue China’s May issue
of this year. His delicate
watercolours depict minimal
outlines; sometimes his figures are
merely shadows, lost in a haze or
hidden behind a translucent screen.
La Morinerie’s monotypes, most
of which were printed in the past
two years, show a striking similarity
to Gustafson’s work, though her
images are rougher and employ a
stronger colour palette. Collectively,
medium’s burgeoning reputation
among art curators. This, however,
feels misplaced. The trend towards
more and more abstraction signals
fashion drawing’s final defeat, as it
begins to abandon its engagement
with the outside world. It is also
denying its consumerist and
populist nature, retreating into the
realm of fine art. This can be seen in
the establishment of the Fashion
Illustration Gallery, which opened in
London’s Mayfair in 2007, and
collects and sells works by fashion
illustrators, most of which were only
created in the past decade.
Contemporary fashion drawings,
elegant but de-sensualised, have
shed much of the refined seduction
– as opposed to the crude one of
pornography – that once made the
work so appealing. In pieces such as
In the Mirror (2009), Berthoud
ramps up the sexualisation to such a
degree that even Lopez, working in
the decades of the sexual
revolution, resisted. This
exhibition’s note of optimism is
doubly false: by presenting only a
handful of renowned illustrators

York Times in 1965 is a three panel
comic strip with a pastiche of the
weeping woman from Roy
Lichtenstein’s Hopeless (1963),
with photographic collages of a
space shuttle taking off in the
background. Lopez’s social
commentary is quite unique among
fashion drawings, it places his
they differ to their predecessors
on a more fundamental level,
they have cede to portray
seductive women. Morinerie and
Gustafson’s women appear as
anonymous bodies, muted and
silent as mannequins.
The exhibition ends on an
optimistic note, celebrating the
from each era despite the
substantial exhibition space,
Drawing Fashion reinforces the
irrevocable dominance of
photography within fashion. It
unwittingly confirms drawing as
a niche discipline for only a few
masters who can rise above the
horde of superstar photographers.

BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011

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08457 298 298
www.idsurfaces.co.uk
>> HOLLOWAY WHITE ALLOM
The £31.75 million renovation of the
V&A’s Medieval & Renaissance Galleries by
architects MUMA and builders Holloway
White Allom has just scooped the
prestigious Conservation Award at the
British Construction Industry Awards,
which celebrate management best
practice, innovation and team work in the
building industry. Featuring the first new
build at the museum for 100 years, the
Grade-I listed galleries received an
impressive new day-lit gallery (shown
here) and central orientation hub created
out of previously unused space.
Holloway White Allom Limited
43 South Audley Street
Grosvenor Square
London W1K 2PU
020 7499 3962
www.hollowaywhiteallom.co.uk
Polyrey UK
Langley Place
99 Langley Road
Watford WD17 4AU
01923 202700
www.polyrey.com
BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011
<< IDS
For the 2010 brand re-launch Tuscan has
included a brand new product category
within the impressive portfolio of solid
wood and engineered wood – Tuscan Elite.
Offering a premium specification in
engineered flooring, Tuscan Elite boasts
two unique advantages which add a new
dimension to engineered wood flooring.
Firstly, Elite features a lacquered finish,
air-dried for 48 hours. During this process,
the stain and lacquer penetrate into the
surface finish of the board giving a more
natural, less processed look and a more
pleasing aesthetic. Secondly, Tuscan Elite
features the respected Välinge drop-loc
profile which gives speedy and easy
location of the boards. There is no forced
locating of the joints using tapping blocks
or hammers which minimises the risk of
damage to the boards during installation.
Tuscan Elite and Tuscan engineered
flooring come with a 25 year residential
warranty against manufacturing defect.
<< POLYREY
Bois Ebene, an exotic and deeply luxurious
looking laminate that is a recent addition
to Polyrey’s Origine Premier range has been
specified as a key finish within the interior
of the new Cento Italian restaurant and
cocktail bar in Wimbledon. Designed by
Surrey-based practise, Scott Wills Design,
the brief was to create a distinctive
contemporary interior that was warm and
luxurious, while integrating the very latest
lighting technology as design features
across the three floors of the restaurant.
Bois Ebene was specified by the designer
for its distinctive graining based around
caramel and bitter chocolate tones, being
confident that it would create an on-trend
and inviting interior. Origine Premier offers
33 woodgrain laminates, covering all major
species in design-oriented shades with
clever use of surface textures and high
definition print.
Maine
40 Barton Road
Water Eaton Industrial Est.
Bletchley
Milton Keynes MK2 3LJ UK
01908 271688
www.maine.co.uk
<<
MAINE
Maine now have a selection of product ranges available to view in Scotland, including
pedestals, lockers, tambours, towers, maineseries31, mainestream, cupboards and lateral
files. This follows Maine’s successful open day in Livingston, near Edinburgh. To visit
the showroom, please contact Colin Platt – colin.platt@maine.co.uk. Manufactured in
the UK, guaranteed for life and 40% recycled previously, 98% recyclable.
Design at Knightsbridge
Thornton Road
Bradford
West Yorks, BD1 2JT
01274 731900
www.design-at-
knightsbridge.co.uk
DESIGN AT KNIGHTSBRIDGE
<<
Reflecting the heritage and classic comfort of their surroundings, over 200 bedroom
chairs created by Design at Knightsbridge have been installed in York’s Cedar Court
Grand Hotel & Spa, which is aspiring to be the first 5-star hotel in the city and which
opened earlier this year after a £25m redevelopment programme. The chairs are all from
the Millie collection, and have been created exclusively for Design at Knightsbridge by
James A Wright. Models selected for The Grand include compact club chairs and upright
armless chairs, all featuring Wenge show-wood and two-tone upholstery in Panaz Aston
faux leather using subtle shades of Cream and Dove. A further consignment of Millie
upright chairs has also been supplied in Franklin Mediterranean.
Milliken Contract
01942 612888
www.millikencontract.co.uk
<<
MILLIKEN CONTRACT
Sophisticated layers of textural pattern and colour launch Scattergraph from out of the
shadows in the latest modular carpet from Milliken Contract. As one half of the newly
created Out of the Shadows collection, Scattergraph takes its colour cues from nature
forging striking colour combinations influenced by stormy skies and the intensity of
light as it breaks through the clouds in a dazzling three-dimensional product. Created
through Milliken Contract’s Convergence technology, the Tufted Textured Loop Pile is
married with proprietary digital colour placement to create organic texture on the
floorplane, complementing the more structured Shadowbox in a palette of 14 shades.
 5bUkUfX An award for excellence in British Design
of Furniture in volume production.
ZcfYlWY``YbWY The Design Guild Mark rewards the work
]b6f]h]g\ of the finest designers working in Britain
and the best of British designers working
:ifb]hifY8Yg][b abroad.

7U``ZcfYbhf]Yg Closing date 25 February 2011.

Apply on-line at:
www.furnituremakers.org.uk
or call: 020 7256 5558.

A Guild Mark of the Worshipful Company of Furniture Makers











 










 

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 www.silentgliss.co.uk
82
PRODUCTS To place products contact: Sophia Sahin T +44 (0)20 7936 6856 F +44 (0)20 7936 6813 E sophia.sahin@blueprintmagazine.co.uk W blueprintmagazine.co.uk

Jennifer Newman KI (UK) Ltd

Studio Ltd. Commonwealth House
Worlds End Studios 148/153 High Holborn
132–134 Lots Road London WC1V 6PJ
Chelsea 020 7404 7441
London SW10 0RJ www.kieurope.com
0207 349 7222

<<
www.jennifernewman.com
KI
BreakOut from KI, designed by SoVibrant, is an innovative seating system. It is the new
<<

JENNIFER NEWMAN
Specialists in hand-made aluminium furniture, Jennifer Newman Studio provide
architects with the opportunity of customising products to suit their schemes,
resulting in individuality at affordable prices. All Newman designs have a timeless
simplicity and are built for long-life, giving the products strong sustainability
credentials. Jennifer Newman herself is an acknowledged colour expert and her input
is part of the service offered by the studio. A totally bespoke service is also available
for architects wanting unique products, and prototypes can be produced to order. High
profile architects such as Swanke Hayden Connell Architects, Dyer and Schmidt
Hammer Lassen are working with the studio for clients such as Imperial College,
Westminster College, 02 and the BBC.
alternative and adaptable solution designed to act as an intimate sanctuary for the
open plan working environment and also combines the use of technology as the perfect
meeting point. The understated elegance of BreakOut will compliment any working
environment, with stylish slatted timber fins providing a light but private enclosure.
BreakOut from KI is not only a flexible meeting product but also combines the use of
the latest technology. Multiple laptop users may connect to a single screen housed
within the enclosure or use the network. The modular design of BreakOut allows
multiple seating units to be connected in series, to create a product tailored to the
number of people who need to use it and to the space available. BreakOut from KI has
been created with an understated elegance and sophistication that will compliment any
working environment.

>> LAUFEN
Swiss bathroom manufacturer Laufen has
launched several extensions to its
flagship designer Il Bagno Alessi One
Telling Architectural
series, with luxury and elegance
7 The Dell
remaining at the forefront of this iconic
Enterprise Drive
collection. Central to the range is the
Four Ashes
countertop washbasin complete with
Wolverhampton WV10 7DF
handy ceramic shelf, which is fired from
01902 797700
one piece using a traditional fine fire clay
www.telling.co.uk
technique to create a beautiful rippling
TELLING ARCHITECTURAL
<<

wave that works effectively alone or with

the complementary furniture. This is
joined by a new 400mm high ‘half Tam
Tam’, without a taphole or overflow,
which can be combined with new
washtops in various widths, plus a new
semi-recessed washbasin and washbasin
bowl characterised by a flat, oval design
and practical wide rim.
Rainscreens incorporating solar photovoltaic panels have recently been specified and
installed in the re-development of The Blandford School in Dorset for the Children’s
Laufen Ltd
Services Directorate, Dorset County Council. The rainscreens form part of the façade on
Samson Road
the new extension to Block 5 in the third phase of the project which started in 2004
Hermitage Industrial Estate
with the objective of bringing the secondary school together into one coherent suite of
Coalville
buildings. The architects chose to specify Vidursolar PV rainscreens from Telling
Leics LE67 3FP
Architectural. Some 180, 1 metre square PV panels are used on the curved south facing
01530 510007
rear façade of the new building. The solar PV rainscreen panels were supplied in a
www.laufen.co.uk
metallic gold to meet the architect’s specification.

>> CONCORD
Concord was the original designer
and manufacturer of architectural
downlights and had a registered
patent on the term “downlighter”,
which lasted from 1966 to 2006.
Concord’s LED 150 was launched
in 1996 and defined the term Low
Energy Downlighter, specifically
designed for the new energy
saving TC-D and TC-T compact The Interiors Group
fluorescent lamps. With over 40 020 7495 1885
years experience in downlighter www.interiorsgroup.co.uk
technology, Concord introduces
<<

the NEW LEDLED 150 once again

redefining the genre of Low
Energy Downlights. LEDLED 150
provides a true economic and
highly efficient replacement for
existing CFL downlights offering
unprecedented efficiency and
unmatched luminous flux.
THE INTERIORS GROUP
The Interiors Group has just completed the third in a series of office refurbishments
Havells Sylvania (Concord) for Esselco Services, the premium serviced office provider. The extensive refurbishment
Avis Way of the Grade II Listed Green Park House, within the Mayfair Conservation Area, follows
Newhaven on from the Company’s successful completion of 3 Lloyd’s Avenue and Warnford Court
East Sussex, BN9 0ED in the City. The Interiors Group used Scott Brownrigg Interior Design to create a
0870 606 2030 flexible, light and modern interior whilst retaining a boutique feel that paid respect to
www.concord-lighting.com the building’s prestigious residential roots.

BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011


FLIGHT DESIGN
S TA I R C A S E S | B A L U S T R A D E | A R C H I T E C T U R A L F E AT U R E S
T. 0 2 0 8 9 8 0 1 0 0 0 E . I N F O @ F L I G H T D E S I G N . C O . U K W . F L I G H T D E S I G N . C O . U K
| www.fowlerco.co.uk | 01273 423111 | ben@brighton.co.uk |
Fowler & Co. designed and made this striking staircase for an
elegant Edwardian mansion apartment.
The stair strings are laser cut from 12mm thick steel to support
solid Native Oaks treads. A lighting channel runs up the edges of
the stairs to light the lobby below. The staircase hangs sweetly in
the space, with it's glass balustrade.
84
PRODUCTS To place products contact: Sophia Sahin T +44 (0)20 7936 6856 F +44 (0)20 7936 6813 E sophia.sahin@blueprintmagazine.co.uk W blueprintmagazine.co.uk

Royde & Tucker Ltd

Bilton Road
Miele Cadwell lane
0845 365 6600 Hitchin SG4 0SB
www.miele.co.uk 01462 444444
www.ratman.co.uk
<<

MIELE

Miele announces a world’s first for the domestic laundry market, with the launch of
the W1945 Eco-feedback washing machine. The washing machine is the first appliance
to record cycle-by-cycle information about its energy usage to report back to the
user. Introducing a new era in environmentally-friendly domestic laundry, the
innovative Eco-feedback machine calculates the energy, water use and duration with
every programme to provide the user with accurate consumption data. Displaying the
information on a clear ‘dashboard’ screen on the front of the machine, it raises
homeowners’ knowledge of their energy usage and allows them complete control over
resource consumption via their laundry routines
<<
ROYDE AND TUCKER
Royde & Tucker has raised the bar for aesthetics in architectural ironmongery, with
the launch of a new range of decorative hinge cover plates. Completely unique in the
market place, R&T’s new decorative cover plates conceal the often unsightly screws
and can now feature intricate custom designs cut into them. This opens up a new
realm of possibilities for specifiers seeking the utmost attention to detail in every
aspect of their project. Offering an unprecedented breadth of choice, R&T’s cover
plated hinges are a blank canvas in which to bring a unique element of design and
differentiation to the ironmongery specification.

>> ROCA
Following the success of The Gap,
Roca’s latest design led suite
which was launched earlier this
year, the sanitaryware range has
Samuel Heath & Sons
been expanded to offer an
Leopold Street
extensive furniture and bath
Birmingham B12 0UJ
collection combining style with
0121 766 4216
substance. The furniture
www.samuel-heath.com
collection comprises a wall hung
SAMUEL HEATH
<<

column unit as well as seven

base units to complement the
wide range of basins in the
following sizes: 650, 600, 550
500, 450 400 and 350mm.
Available in three matt finishes –
Beige, White and Grape – the
range offers something to suit all
tastes. All three finishes will add
a sophisticated touch to any
bathroom.
Samuel Heath has introduced three beautifully designed door levers to its extensive
ranges of internal and external door and window hardware. Carefully crafted from the
highest quality brass and hand-polished to achieve an outstanding finish, the three
Roca Limited
new levers expand the company’s Profile and Contour collections. Continuing the
Samson Road
simple and timeless style of the Profile collection, the first lever has an elliptical form
Hermitage Industrial Estate
designed to give it solid weight and volume with soft lines and a smooth finish. The
Coalville
second is made with a more crisp and contemporary style in mind, whilst retaining an
Leics LE67 3FP
elegant form that flows directly from the rose. The third and final lever complements
01530 830080
the Contour collection, with precise styling and a concentric pattern creating an eye-
www.roca.com
catching and highly tactile design.

Strata Tiles Forbo Flooring UK Ltd

0800 012 1454 PO Box 1
www.stratatiles.co.uk/ Kirkcaldy KY1 2SB
presence 0800 0935 258
www.forbo-flooring.co.uk/DNA
<<

STRATA TILES
<<

A striking yet functional tile from Strata Tiles, Options expands your horizons. Sleek
curves unite, creating unique patterns or circles – Options lives up to its name. Perfect
for swimming pools, wet rooms and changing areas – clichés are banished by
combining different colours and styles. Options offers a signature statement, enabling
you to use your creativity in traditionally neutral areas. Options is available in our
self-cleaning, antibacterial Hydrotect finish – infinitely valuable when hygiene and
easy maintenance are paramount. Free Hydrotect CPD available. With Options, the
possibilities are endless! Call today for information, or to book a CPD.
FORBO FLOORING SYSTEMS
Forbo Flooring Systems is proud to launch its latest collaboration with Design Studio
Sottsass Associati of Milan: DNA. Conceived to deliver the blueprint of life underfoot,
this innovative creation breaks down the boundaries of traditional carpet tiling giving
the freedom to blend, fuse and create spaces with individual characteristics. The DNA
design, available in a range of sophisticated colourways, is a combination of two
contrasting yarn colours developed to create a subtle tone on tone contrast, which is
then interspersed with random blocks of textured genetic code.

BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011

 Stockists of:
Arper
BestLite
Cassina
Driade
Established & Sons
Flos
Kartell
Magis
Moooi
Santa & Cole
Tom Dixon
Vitra
Zanotta
and many more...

Tel:
0114 —
2433000
www.

COTTAGE CRAFT SPIRALS

Specialist designers and manufacturers of high quality, hand built, bespoke

spiral, helical, straight and combination stairs in cast aluminium and timber
Cottage Craft Spirals • T: 01663 750716 • sales@castspiralstairs.com • www.castspiralstairs.com
Tilleys London Castings • T: 020 8341 5975 • tilleyslondon@btconnect.com • www.tilleyslondoncastings.co.uk

Farnham Common, Buckinghamshire

Period village farmhouse

with separate, two storey
design studio/office
FOR SALE
Main House 202 sq m (2174 sq ft)
B2 Office 44 sq m (477 sq ft)
M40 (J2) 2.9 miles
Slough Station 3.8 miles
Gerrards Cross 4.3 miles
Heathrow Airport 11.6 miles

Savills Beaconsfield
beaconsfield@savills.com
01494 731950
savills.co.uk

T: 01908 308777 F: 01908 308775 E: sales@christy-carpets.co.uk W: www.christycarpets.com

86
PRODUCTS To place products contact: Sophia Sahin T +44 (0)20 7936 6856 F +44 (0)20 7936 6813 E sophia.sahin@blueprintmagazine.co.uk W blueprintmagazine.co.uk
Hacel Lighting Ltd
The Silverlink
Wallsend
Newcastle upon Tyne, NE28 9ND
0191 280 9911
www.hacel.net
>> MODULAR
LIGHTING
Modular Lighting Instruments has provided
a combination of internal and external
architectural lighting products for a new
contemporary property in London. The
finished project was so impressive that it
was used in a recent episode of Silent
Witness on BBC1. When it came to the
specification of the lighting - this was
integral to create an overall contemporary
interior design scheme that would provide
the perfect backdrop for the various
sculptures and artwork in the house. The
new property was designed with a large
amount of glazing to provide the interior
space with lots of natural light therefore it
was crucial to specify products that would
maintain this level and Duell and Lotis
offered the perfect solution.
>> PAVIOM
The new Rombilus pendant from architectural
lighting company Paviom is highly visual with a
strong environmental focus. A breathtaking glass
object – the specular lenses of the Rombilus
pendant reflect and refract light. The Rombilus is
the latest piece of light art from commissioned
designer Jonathan Coles that, including the lamp
itself, is 95% recyclable. The striking Rombilus
glass pendant takes its inspiration from French
physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel who invented a
technique in 1823 to reduce the thickness of a
large lens by splitting it into an array of smaller
lenses for use in lighthouses. Manufactured from
pressed and hand polished glass, the specular
glass layers that create the Rombilus pendant are
mounted on a steel frame. Rombilus has been
designed with a high efficiency light source and is
95% recyclable to meet the environmental ethos
of Paviom for ethical and efficient design.
BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011
<< HACEL
Hacel's comprehensive new 404
page Evolution catalogue features
a range of innovative and exciting
products designed and
manufactured in the UK. The Aer
range offers performance and
engineering excellence by
stylishly integrating both ambient
and accent lighting. Aerline
boasts a choice of energy efficient
T5 fluorescent luminaires for
general lighting including
dimming and emergency versions.
Aerport luminaires provide accent
lighting in the form of
single/twin head power spots. All
luminaires are available in
Trunking, Surface or Pendant
versions each manufactured with
extruded aluminium and precision
die-cast end caps.
Modular Lighting Instruments
Centre Point
22-24 St Giles High Street
London WC2H 8TA
020 7681 9933
www.modular-lighting.co.uk
Paviom Limited
The Beehive
City Place
Gatwick RH6 0PA
01293 804688
www.paviom.com
Halers Lighting Ltd
Brooklands House
Sywell Aerodrome
Sywell
Northants NN6 0BT
01604 679700
www.halers.com
HALERS LIGHTING
<<
Halers Lighting has launched the Halers Revo LED, an exceptionally high-powered LED
luminaire that combines unparalleled optical performance with energy savings of up to
60 percent, compared to ordinary compact fluorescent lamps. With a lumen output of
1725, the Revo LED is a cost effective solution for the commercial setting, providing a
number of optimum performance benefits. An innovative heat management system
gives the Revo LED a much longer life than the standard fluorescent lamp, which
dramatically reduces both maintenance time and costs. Offering a 60-degree beam angle
with virtually no loss of light, the Revo LED will typically only need to be changed once
every 20 years.
>> INTERFACEFLOR
InterfaceFLOR, a worldwide leader in the
design and production of innovative modular
flooring and a recognised environmental
pioneer, has unveiled Ambiance – a new
collection of carpet tiles which brings together
visually stunning designs with superb
environmental credentials. Reflecting
InterfaceFLOR’s long-standing commitment to
sustainability, products within the Ambiance
collection are some of the company’s most
environmental yet. Designed to have minimal
impact on the environment, many of the
carpet tiles have recycled content in the
backing and pile yarn whilst two of the ranges
Interface Europe Ltd
are based on Microtuft technology, which uses
Shelf Mills
20% less yarn but maintains high performance
Shelf
through a hard wearing surface. Capturing the
Halifax
vivid lights and colours of fireworks, café
West Yorkshire HX3 7PA
lights and neon at night, Razzle Dazzle adds a
08705 304030
touch of sparkle to any space.
www.interfaceflor.eu
Hanson Plywood
Drakes Industrial Estate
Shay Lane
Halifax, HX3 6RL
01422 330444
www.hanson-plywood.co.uk
paperstone@hanson-plywood.co.uk
PAPERSTONE
<<
PaperStone is arguably the 'greenest' architectural surface on the market today,
manufactured using 100% recycled paper, pigments and petroleum-free phenolic
resins. It is a unique material for both commercial and residential application. With
its stonelike composition and finish, PaperStone is an ideal choice for interior and
exterior countertops, cladding, tables, plaques or signs, cutting boards, sills, toilet
partitions and much more. PaperStone is a U.S. supplied product, available in the UK
through UCM Timber Plc. and its stocking partner, Hanson Plywood.
 T: 01638 500338 F: 05603 419105 W: WWW.ARCHITECTURALTEXTILES.CO.UK
Bespoke murals
ARCHITECTURAL TEXTILES LTD Dramatic prints
Exclusive blinds

We give you unique

access to some of the
most exciting imagery
around and create
ebsite
high quality bespoke
New W nched interior graphics to
au suit your environment.
Now L
Explore our website at
www.surfaceview.co.uk

Architectural Textiles Ltd, Shardelows Farm House, New England Lane, Cowlinge, Suffolk CB8 9HP

Imagine your walls dripping with high gloss lacquer with a vertical texture! New from
PHILLIP JEFFRIES this LACQUERED STRIÉ wallcovering is embossed with a vertical strié
pattern that is virtually seamless. Too luxurious not to fall in love with, the LACQUERED Perroquet Rouge, water & bodycolour on vellum
by George Dionysus Ehret, 1744.
STRIÉ is conveniently matched with coordinating solids.

SwivelUK
For all the best modern
classic reproductions

www.swiveluk.com
Tel: 020 7100 7454 Established 2005
88
SPECIALIST INDUSTRY: 2010 REVIEW
1 2 3

4 5
1 FORMANI UK
www.formani.co.uk T. +44 (0)1628 899710

2 SAMUEL HEATH
www.samuel-heath.com T. +44 (0)121 766 4200

3 PHILLIPS & WOOD

www.phillipsandwood.co.uk T. +44 (0)20 8222 8117

4 NEW IMAGE STONE LIMITED

www.newimagestone.com T. +44 (0)1784 454 955

5 NORTH 4 DESIGN LTD

www.north4.com T. +44 (0)20 8885 4404

6 ACDC
www.acdclighting.co.uk T. +44 (0)845 862 6400

7 HADDONSTONE
www.haddonstone.com T. +44 (0)1604 770 711

8 NORTHERN LIGHTS (CHESTERFIELD) LTD

www.northern-lights.co.uk T. +44 (0)1246 858 750

6 7 8

BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011

Contact: Liam O’Donnell T +44 (0)20 7936 6859 E liam.odonnell@worldmarketintelligence.com
SPECIALIST INDUSTRY: 2010 REVIEW 89
9 10 11

12 13
9 ISLAND STONE
www.islandstone.co.uk T. +44 (0)800 083 9351

10 STONECIRCLE
www.stone-circle.com T. +44 (0)845 481 0130

11 R. HAMILTON & CO. LTD

www.hamilton-litestat.com T. +44 (0)1747 860088

12 SOLARLUX SYSTEMS
www.solarlux.co.uk T. +44 (0)1707 339970

13 DELTALIGHT
www.deltalight.co.uk T. +44 (0)870 757 7087

14 LUXO (UK) LTD

www.luxo.co.uk T. +44 (0)20 8687 3370

15 DURAT
www.durat.com T. +44 (0)7977 857 848

16 PHILIP WATTS DESIGN

www.philipwattsdesign.com T. +44 (0)115 926 9756

14 15 16

BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011

90

MAN AND MACHINE

POSTLERFERGUSON
The Life-Machine Project looks to the future when products will be designed to
accommodate the needs of both humans and robots. Considering that this robotic
entity will one day live among us and coexist in our households, what would
happen if we take a range of kitchen tools like graters, spoons, plates or knifes and
redesign them in a way that a robot intelligence will be able to use them as well.
Keeping the main functions like cutting, pouring or containing, the products
respond to the robot’s need for orientation, recognition and navigation by colour
and shape. The image shows a real life scenario of how the man-machine kitchen
tools would be stored resulting in a product landscape which could be navigated
by man and robot alike. In this world gravity does not matter and and what really
counts is order and function. PostlerFerguson is a design consultancy based in
London founded by Ian Ferguson and Martin Postler after they graduated from the
RCA in 2007. www.postlerferguson.com

BLUEPRINT JANUARY 2011


 

  

      

  
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