London Festival of Architecture - Save the date

In 2013 LFA will become an annual, month-long and citywide exploration of London’s built environment; investigating the importance of architecture and design in London’s success and celebrating the city’s role as a global hub of architectural experimentation, thinking, learning and practice.
Many festivals celebrate history, cultural activities and human achievements. The London Festival of Architecture, established in 2004, does all this but also actively promotes positive change and improvement in the city’s public realm.
Taking place 1-30 June 2013, LFA will be a ‘time for architecture’ in the city and will incorporate a programme by invited Festival Partners from leading architectural and cultural institutions in order to harness and to link the enormous energy inherent in the London scene.
A rich and varied programme organised by independent actors, such as individual practices and artists will be promoted as the London Festival of Architecture Fringe.

Via lfa website

The view from The Shard viewing platform opens

The tallest building in Western Europe at 1016ft (309.6m) in height, the Shard skyscraper in London Bridge was inaugurated on 5th July.
Starting from 6th July the first batch of tickets is released for its viewing platform, the View from The Shard.

The View from The Shard observation area will be housed in the 68th-72nd floors of the skyscraper some 800ft (244m) above the capital. From that vantage point, guests will be able to see up to 40 miles (64km) away.

The viewing platforms are accessed by two high-speed ‘kaleidoscopic’ lifts that ascend to the building’s 68th level in 30 seconds. From that point, visitors are invited to the triple-height, glass-fronted Level 69 where the surrounding cityscape is fully exposed. The highest point accessible to The View from The Shard visitors is on Level 72 where it will be possible to look upwards and see the few remaining floors taper out of sight as the separate panels of the building converge at its tip.

 The View from The Shard will be almost twice as high as any other viewing point in London and its developers expect it to become a major tourist attraction. To mitigate overcrowding it will be necessary for visitors to pre-book a defined arrival time and date in order to access the viewing area. Although information on exact capacity hasn’t yet been confirmed, organisers have stated that the system will ensure a “crowd- and queue-free premium experience”. Over 17,500 people had already registered to secure tickets in advance of their release today.
Costing £24.95 for adults and £18.95 for children, tickets are now available through The View from The Shard website or via the box office hotline 0844 499 7111 which, unlike web bookings, applies a handling fee to all purchases. The View from The Shard will be open to the public from February 1, 2013.

Carbuncle Cup 2012

The UK’s leading architecture newspaper BD invites the public to put forward their worst new building for this year’s Carbuncle Cup.

Nominations are already pouring in from disgruntled architects and local residents. The list includes several high profile schemes including the renovation of the Cutty Sark and one of Prince Charles’ pet projects.

But the hot favourite is one of the most controversial projects of the 2012 Olympics - the ArcellorMittal Orbit tower by artist Anish Kapoor and engineer Cecil Balmond.

The ArcelorMittal Orbit, London:

Each week, one nominated building will be published on Bdonline - visit www.bdonline.co.uk/carbunclecup to see them all.

The nominations that receive the most support in the comments section will automatically make the shortlist which will be revealed on July 20th. A final winner will be chosen by public vote and a jury of built environment specialists led by BD’s executive editor Ellis Woodman.

“BD’s annual Carbuncle Cup offers the British public the chance to voice their distress at shoddy architecture, venal development and feckless planning,” said Woodman.

“The ever-growing support that the prize receives suggests the UK still has a long way to go before the quality of its built environment meets its citizens’ aspirations. Until that happy day, the Carbuncle Cup will be there to name and shame the worst offenders.”

Any building completed within the past 12 months or due for completion by the 2012 Olympics is eligible and anyone can nominate by sending in a short paragraph about the building to bdonline@ubm.com . The deadline for nominations is Friday July 13th.


Carbuncle Cup 2012 nominations

Jubilee Pantone Queen Palette

For Queen Elizabeth II's diamond jubilee, celebrating 60 years of her reign over England, advertising agency Leo Burnett London and Pantone have developed a numbered shade guide to her majesty's most memorable choices of color for her stately ensembles. the creative companies have collaborated in order to assemble a limited edition pigment manual picturing the Queen's six decades on the british throne. Leatrice Eiseman, the executive director of the pantone colour institute reflects upon her majesty's notable shade selections, including 'pantone 13-0755 primrose yellow' of Queen Elizabeth II's outfit worn in april of 2011 to the wedding of her grandson, prince William to Kate Middleton or 'pantone 13-4411 crystal blue' for which Eiseman notes,
'blue is a colour staple in the queen's wardrobe, it's a colour that communicates constancy and it is also symbolic of her devotion to the british people.
blues traditionally have calming properties and she is often seen wearing them during difficult times...'.
The small, queen-shaped book contains sixty years of queen elizabeth II's most memorable wardrobe shades, printed by precision imaging using HP indigo technology and is comprised of sixty separate images picturing varying pigments. beginning with color choices dating back to the queen's coronation, each of the individual shade references include the date and location of that particular ensemble. images of Her Majesties wardrobe selections were matched by Pantone's emulation system, achieving exact color matching from the pantone shade range.

 [via] core77

Amazing panorama

Will Pearson is a professional panoramic photographer living in London and working worldwide. He specialises in large-scale gigapixel panoramas and high resolution interactive panoramas (also known as virtual tours). He loves working with panoramas as they allow the viewer to truly inhabit a space.
Last project is an interactive panorama of London, a series of photos taken from The Shard.
Click here to see his complete work.

Latest pictures of Shard of London

Shard London Bridge, view from Borough High Street. August 2011

 

Shard London Bridge, view from Southwark Bridge. August 2011

 Shard London Bridge, view from Southwark Bridge. August 2011

photographs by Wilson Yau

Source: RIBA Blogs

Carbuncle Cup 2011

Carbuncle Cup 2011 is now open for nominations!

Anyone can nominate an ugly building for the award by submitting a photograph of the offending structure to BD's Carbuncle Cup Flickr group, along with the name of the building, its location and the name of the architect responsible. You can also include your reasons for nominating it to boost its chances of winning.

To be eligible, your carbuncle must have been completed within the UK in the past 12 months.

If you have any questions about the cup, or would like to make an anonymous nomination, drop us an email at bdonline@ubm.com

Buildings already nominated:

Museum of Liverpool

 Excerpted Citation:

“Next to our three gently ageing Edwardian Beauties, The Three Graces, The Port of Liverpool Building, The Cunard Building and the Liver Building, they stick a trashy tart.

“A building that jerks against the restrained classiscism that made Liverpool famous, that escaped the blitz, that managed to survive against all odds……….only now to look alien in their own settings.

“Is it only Liverpool that thinks it can get away with destroying its history in a World Heritage Site. It is being bravefaced but it really is like giving a pretty girl a black eye, knocking all her teeth out and saying ’smile you look lovely’.”

 

One Hyde Park

 

One Hyde Park is the famous ‘glitziest, priciest piece of real estate in the world’, built by the Candy Brothers.

 

Phoenix High School Post-16 Centre, London

 

This one is in a Conservation Area. and is nominated thus:

“The school seems to have been built in Jenga blocks by someone who is colour blind … children do, of course, like to draw pictures of buildings in bright colours at funny angles but there is nothing that says architects have to build them.”

 

Ebenezer Chapel and Housing Development

 

Excerpted Citation:

“This recently completed block of flats by Molyneux Architects gives East Brighton yet another feeble building and reinforces the divide between rich and poor.  So bad on so many levels. Described by the architects as ‘a lively contributor to the immediate locality’.  It is these mediocre buildings that damage our cities more than bolder failures.”

Carbuncle Cup 2010 winner was Strata Tower in Elephant and Castle.

 Source: Building Design

How a painting became a garden

Photo: B. Alter

It's the first living painting in London's Trafalgar Square, and maybe the first anywhere. A Van Gogh picture has been turned into a green living vertical wall.
Depicting Van Gogh's painting, A Wheatfield with Cypresses, it's a new way to draw people into the National Gallery to see the real thing.

Photo: National Gallery: A Wheatfield, with Cypresses 1889
The living painting has been constructed by a horticulture and design company which specialises in green walls and roofs. They also did the recently installed living wall in the hotel which bills itself as the "largest vertical wall in Europe."
They used over 8,000 plants of 25 different varieties. In order to recreate the strong bands of colour in the painting, plants were selected to match the tones. They were then hand-planted into a modular system according to a numbered drawing. The 640 modules were grown vertically at a nursery, ready for installation.

Photo: B. Alter

It took 3 days to install the wall which forms part of a hoarding outside the gallery. It will remain there throughout the summer and autumn, until the end of October, 2011. Given the range of plants; some flowering now, some later, it will be interesting to watch how it grows and changes over the coming seasons.

Photo: B. Alter

'A Wheatfield, with Cypresses' was painted in September 1889, when Van Gogh was in the St-Rémy mental asylum, near Arles, where he was a patient from May 1889 until May 1890. Van Gogh promised to send his brother 'twelve size 30 canvases' and it seems likely that 'A Wheatfield, with Cypresses' was one of them.
The painting has been brought to life with the sponsorship of GE (General Electric) as part of the Gallery's long-term plan to reduce its carbon footprint. It's all part of the National Gallery's plan to go green. It is already the first gallery to have switched to LED lighting in all of its galleries.

Via: treehugger

World Architecture 100

The review Building Design has just published the list of the 100 world largest architecture practice.
This ranking is the result of a questionnaire made by Camargue, a comunication agency, and sent to over 2000 offices across the world.
Many societies confirm their position from the 2010 list, like Gensler, Nikken Sekkei, IBI Group, P&T Architects & Engineers, Rmjm, Foster & Partners and Bdp. At the top the american society Aecom with 1488 architects in its workforce, the second group is Aedas, like in the past ranking.
At position 21 there is Arup from London, although this office during september 2010 fired about 600 employees for the deletion of a 4 milion dollars project in Saudi Arabia.
Two big practices are missing in this list: Nicholas Grimshaw and David Chipperfield.

Source: Building Design

European tallest building

With its concrete core (800 feet/244 meters) ended last week The Shard by the italian architect Renzo Piano became the tallest building in Europe.
This construction will be 1018 feet/311 meters high and will include office space, luxury flats, restaurants and bars, the five-star hotel and a public viewing gallery, for overall floor area of 50000 sq feet/5110 sq meters.
The skyscraper will be completed in 2012 in time for the London Olympic Game (construction of the tower began in 2009).

Two sky gardens are located on each office floor to help improve indoor air quality as well as naturally ventilate the work areas. The building’s design was influenced heavily by the irregular site plan and the multiple facets will rise up to a point, but will not touch. Access to public transportation via bus and train are located directly on site.

Source: Building Design