Cecil Balmond: The Latest Architecture and News

As you make your way through the symphony of wooden colonnades, leafy screen walls, and unfurled roofing, towards the converging veins of flooring and ceiling ribs leading to the light, it feels like a space that was always meant to be there. Part of the park, the pavilion complements the nature around it, reflecting its patterns, and illuminates a main interior feature: a concentric set of tables and stools that inspire people to sit at the moment, hold conversations, and connect with each other. This narrative tells the tale of this year's Serpentine Pavilion, designed by French-Lebanese architect Lina Ghotmeh.

Titled, À table, It draws inspiration from the designer’s connection with nature growing up and is reminiscent of the French call to sit together at a table, share a meal and enter a dialogue. It foregrounds the table as a laboratory of ideas, concerns, joys, connections, and essentially brings people together. It further reflects on the architectural ideals that can provoke and welcome moments of collective conversations.

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If the surest sign of summer in London is the appearance of a new pavilion in front of the Serpentine Gallery, then it’s perhaps fair to say that summer is over once the pavilion is taken down. The installations have gained prominence since its inaugural edition in 2000, acting as a kind of exclusive honor and indication of talent for those chosen to present; celebrated names from the past names include Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, and Olafur Eliasson.

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See things differently?
Show your idea. Enter the Re-think competition and your work could be showcased on TiP, Balmond Studio’s influential online ideas lab. The winner will also receive a £100 iTunes voucher and enjoy a private call with Cecil Balmond himself, one of the world’s leading thinkers on space form and structure.

What is a Re-think?
Anything with an original idea at its core is a Re-think. To put it simply – a piece of work that challenges the norm. Something that pushes the boundaries, creating an alternate way of thinking.

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The violent insertion of Daniel Libeskind’s Spiral into the Victorian neighborhood of South Kensington renders a cataclysmic disruption into a landscape of order and propriety. It envisions a rupture in the fabric of space and time, aggressively anachronistic from the building it adjoins, unapologetically appealing not to cultured humanism but to the mathematical logic of complexity and chaos. What is now textbook "Libeskind" was in 1996 a shocking non-starter for the London establishment, an unacceptable risk for a city perpetually torn between its agitated cosmopolitan energies and its quintessential impulse toward nostalgia and restraint. Nearly twenty years after the Spiral was selected as the winner of a distinguished international competition, this controversial extension proposal for the Victoria and Albert Museum remains unbuilt.

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John Quinlan Terry, one of Prince Charles' preferred architects, is being recognized on the UK’s 2015 New Year Honours list and awarded the Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his services in classical architecture. The Queen’s annual awards will also be honoring architect Cecil Balmond, former deputy chairman of UK Arup, with the Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE). Former City Planning Officer and professor Peter Wynne Rees, who oversaw the realization of the Gherkin and highly disputed Walkie Talkie, will also receive a CBE for his services. Katharine Heron, professor of Architecture University of Westminster, has been selected to receive a Members of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for her services to architecture and higher education.

A couple of months ago we told you about reSITE Conference 2013, the largest event of its kind in Central and Eastern Europe. During the conference, the reSITE dPAV Competition Workshop also took place. Led by Cecil Balmond, formerly of Arup Engineers and currently leading Balmond Studio in London, and Tyson Hosmer, Lead Designer, Balmond Studio, dPAV: 2.5 Days in Prague competition workshop was a 2.5 days intensive and collaborative investigation to compete to design the future reSITE pavilion to be used in urban design festivals around Central and Eastern Europe.