UK: The Latest Architecture and News

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) announced the President’s Medals Student Awards at a special event yesterday in London. The awards, recognised as the world’s most prestigious in architectural education, were inaugurated in 1836 (making them, including the RIBA Gold Medal, the institute's oldest award). Three medals in particular – the Bronze for a Part I student (Bachelor level), the Silver for a Part II student (Master level), and the Dissertation Medal – are awarded to “promote excellence in the study of architecture [and] to reward talent and to encourage architectural debate worldwide.” In addition to these, the winners of the Serjeant Award for Excellence in Drawing and the inaugural RIBA Research Medal alongside a rostra of commendations have also been announced.

See the winning projects and a full list of commendations after the break.

+ 38

The six concept designs for the Tintagel Castle footbridge, the practices behind which were announced earlier this year, have now been revealed. With a shortlist featuring design consortiums led, among others, by WilkinsonEyre and Niall McLaughlin Architects, the proposals all respond to English Heritage's ambition for "a bridge that is of its place, [...] that, with its structural elegance and beauty, is in harmony with its extraordinary setting and landscape."

+ 8

Following the announcement earlier this year that Herzog & de Meuron were developing designs for a new £500million stadium for Chelsea Football Club, the Swiss practice have released a series of official images which narrate the project's design intentions and contextual implications. The new stadium, which will be built in place of the football club's existing stadium at Stamford Bridge, will contain a "three-tier, four-stand, bowl with a capacity of 60,000 supporters" (compared to the current 41,837 capacity) and have around 60,000sqm of facilities housed within its ribbed shell.

+ 4

Now in its second year, DesignCurial has revealed the results of their annual “Top 10 Public Toilets” award, recognizing outstanding lavatory design across the world. The top 10 emerged as exemplars among over 1,000 public toilet designs, evaluated on “design, innovation and the relationship with surroundings”. “The aim of the list was to bring international design to the fore, especially unique architecture that may be overlooked due to the structure’s mundane stereotype,” said Katherine Houston, web editor at DesignCurial. “This list is well geographically spread, with distinctive designs emerging from Japan, Australia and the UK to name a few.” See the world’s best public toilets for 2015 after the break.

+ 23

In an article for the Financial Times, Edwin Heathcote responds to the recent news that OMA, based in Rotterdam, have won the competition to design the British city of Manchester's new "ultra-flexible" arts venue. The Factory, so-named because of city's rich musical heritage, will be one of the largest cultural projects of its kind. Having gained and maintained financial support from Westminster, the building—which must be able to transform from a 2,200-seat theatre into an open 5,000-capacity space—is a flagship project for the British government.

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA)'s Future Trends Survey for October 2015 showed a level of caution among UK architects, reflecting a period of slowing growth in the industry. The Future Trends workload index dropped to +18 from last month's mark of +21, showing a decrease in the number of practices that expect their workload to increase in the coming months. All regions of the UK still reported a positive balance though, with the most optimism coming from Northern Ireland with a balance figure of +25, while the most uncertain figures came from the Midlands and East Anglia, where a balance figure of +12 was reported.

Rotterdam-based Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) have been announced by the UK's Chancellor of the Exchequer as the winning team in the competition to design the city of Manchester's high-profile Factory art space. Following the announcement of the shortlist earlier this year, featuring practices including Rafael Viñoly, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Zaha Hadid and Mecanoo, it has since been reported by The Guardian that the British government's original pledge of £78million ($117million) to the cost of the building will be raised by a further £9million per year from around 2018.

London-based practice Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSHP) have announced the elevation of five associates to partner level while Mike Davies CBE, who has worked alongside Lord Rogers for more than forty years, will be reducing his roles. Davies has been involved in some of the practice's most significant projects including the Pompidou Centre in Paris, Lloyd's of London, the Millennium Dome, and Terminal 5 at London's Heathrow Airport. As a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, Davies is currently the project director for Grand Paris, the masterplan for Greater Paris 2025 which was commissioned by former President Nicolas Sarkozy. According to RSHP, Davies "will remain employed in a part-time role."

Using an innovative method of casting concrete in lightweight fabric molds, the architects of Orkidstudio -- along with StructureMode -- teamed up with a group of Khmer women in Sihanoukville, Cambodia to rebuild a community centre in the city’s urban heart.

The construction technique was developed and tested by engineers from StructureMode using a combination of physical testing and computer analysis software, Oasys GSA Suite, to predict the stretch of a particular fabric when concrete is poured inside. Through three-dimensional sketches the seamstresses and building team could understand the construction sequence of the form, completing the entire project in just eight weeks.

+ 34

"A spectre," writes Kevin McKenna for The Guardian, "thought happily to have been exorcised from the heart of beautiful Edinburgh, is stalking the city’s old wynds and crevices once more." To put it more bluntly, the "formal recognition of [the Scottish capital] as one of the world’s most beautiful cities is under threat, amid a battle for the soul of its most historic quarter." As the UNESCO inspectorate moves in to determine whether the city's World Heritage Status should be renewed McKenna laments, through a series of case studies, the potentially bleak built future of one of Britain's most loved urban centres.

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA)’s Future Trends Survey for September 2015 shows a level of consistency with the workload index remaining unchanged at a balance figure of +21. All nations and regions within the United Kingdom returned positive balance figures, with practices in Scotland responding most confidently about workloads in the next quarter. The report states that practices remain firmly positive about overall workload prospects in the medium term, though with "an apparent leveling-off in the rate of growth."

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) have made 90,000 unique images from their visual archive available online. Architecture.com/images (also known as RIBApix) hosts the world's largest collection of 16th century drawings by Palladio, as well as drawings by Sir Christopher Wren, Erno Goldfinger, Augustus Pugin, Denys Lasdun, and Edwin Lutyens. In addition, many original London Underground station designs sit alongside collections of some of the world’s leading photographers, including John Maltby, Edwin Smith, Henk Snoek, John Donat, Dell & Wainwright, Martin Charles and Tony Ray-Jones.

Last month a Kickstarter campaign launched by the Real Estate Architecture Laboratory (REAL) reached its funding target: the Real Review, an independent bi-monthly magazine which intends to "revive the review as a writing form" to a general readership within the architectural sphere, will soon be a reality. ArchDaily sat down with editors Jack Self and Shumi Bose to discuss how the project came into being and what this—the flagship publication of REAL—will look like when its first issue is published in early 2016.

The Southbank Centre—a large complex of Grade One listed, Modernist cultural venues on the banks of the River Thames—are poised to refurbish three of their most loved spaces: the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Purcell Room and the Hayward Gallery. As part of this transformation, London-based practice Jonathan Tuckey Design (JTD) have been commissioned to create a new 'Archive Studio' set within the foyer of the Royal Festival Hall, all part and parcel of the Southbank Centre’s desire to open up access to their collections and archives. JTD's free-standing, self-supporting structure is "an open framework which makes the scale the archival process apparent to visitors, held together by polished brass nuts and bolts and clad in perforated hardboard."

'Defiance' manifests itself in many forms: riots in Baltimore, makeshift housing in Rwanda, Pink Floyd in Venice and plants growing where they ought not sprout. To defy the norm is an act of rebellion and in architecture, doubly so. In the third issue of LOBBY, the burgeoning magazine from London's Bartlett School of Architecture, the notion of defiance and its incarnations are investigated in a collection of essays, interviews and discussions with leading and emerging thinkers in urbanism and architecture. From Swiss master Mario Botta to Carme Pinós, former partner to Enric Miralles, this latest LOBBY investigates the act of defiance as a core tenet of architectural practice.

+ 10

A much anticipated retrospective—The World of Charles and Ray Eames—opens today at London's Barbican Centre. The show, curated by Catherine Ince and designed by 6a architects, surveys the careers of Charles (1907-1978) and Ray (1912-1988), and the extraordinary body of work prodced by the Eames Office: a ‘laboratory’, active for over four decades, in which the Eameses, their collaborators and staff produced "an array of pioneering and influential work – from architecture, furniture, graphic and product design, to painting, drawing, film, sculpture, photography, multi-media installation and exhibitions, as well as new models for education."

+ 5

At its 2017 Annual International Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, SAH will offer a total of 36 paper sessions. The Society invites its members, including graduate students and independent scholars, representatives of SAH chapters, and partner organizations, to chair a session at the conference. As SAH membership is required to chair or present research at the Annual International Conference, non-members who wish to chair a session will be required to join SAH at the time of submitting a session proposal.

A Kickstarter campaign recently launched by Jack Self and Shumi Bose of the Real Estate Architecture Laboratory (REAL) has reached its funding target in only twenty days. Produced by an independent team of editors and designers, this bi-monthly magazine intends to "revive the review as a writing form" to a general readership within the architectural sphere and its orbital subjects, with a particular focus on politics and economics. Their campaign has so far seen considerable support from the architectural community and beyond — testament to their 'no-ads policy' and dedication to paying their contributors.

In a statement to those who have pledged so far, the editors have said that "the Real Review will happen, and it is directly and completely due to your commitment, your vision and your generosity. We can’t thank you enough for getting us here!" They are now looking to surpass this crowdfunded milestone, with Kickstarter remaining the only way to subscribe.