Category Archives: Architecture

Leaning tower in Bologna to be saved as city announces €4m repair project

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Work to be carried out on Garisenda tower in new year after area around it was cordoned off due to collapse fears

Officials have announced plans to repair one of two 12th-century towers in the Italian city of Bologna after the area around it had to secured last month over fears its leaning could lead to collapse.

The city said the €4.3m (£3.7m) project to shore up the Garisenda tower – one of the Two Towers that look out over central Bologna, providing inspiration over the centuries to painters and poets and a lookout spot during conflicts – would proceed in January and February.

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‘Demand interestingness’: Thomas Heatherwick rails against boring buildings

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Designer says soulless structures make people stressed and lonely as he launches book and campaign

Boring, soulless buildings are making people stressed and lonely, according to Thomas Heatherwick, the British designer behind the 2012 Olympic cauldron.

The designer is embarking on a crusade to persuade architects and developers to create buildings that inspire feelings of joy and stimulation.

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Chewing gum artist makes plea to save Millennium Bridge works

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Ben Wilson told most of his art on discarded gum to be removed during engineering and cleaning work

An artist who paints tiny pictures on discarded chewing gum has pleaded for his works to be saved after being told most of them will be removed from the Millennium Bridge in London as part of engineering work.

Ben Wilson, nicknamed “the chewing gum man”, has been painting on pieces of chewing gum trodden into the bridge since 2013.

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World’s tallest wooden building to be built in Perth after developers win approval

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Developers say South Perth’s C6 building will be made up of 42% timber and be carbon negative

Western Australia is set to become home to the world’s tallest timber building, a “revolutionary” 50-storey hybrid design reaching a height of 191.2 metres.

Timber will make up 42% of South Perth’s C6 building, including the tower’s beams, floor panels, studs, joinery and linings.

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‘No more lives lost’: Glasgow architects urge road changes after colleague’s cycling death

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Road infrastructure campaign has been launched in honour of designer Emma Burke Newman, who was killed in lorry collision

On the long and busy stretch of road where Glasgow’s riverside meets its city centre, hundreds of commuters and visitors travel into and out of town each day. Since January this year, many will have spotted a new addition to their route: a white “ghost bike”, adorned with flowers and messages, parked at a busy junction where 22-year-old French-American architecture student and experienced cyclist Emma Burke Newman was killed in a collision with a lorry, just six months after moving to the city.

Now, former colleagues at architectural firm New Practice, where she worked as a designer while studying at Glasgow School of Art, have launched a road infrastructure campaign in her honour. Focusing on three specific junctions along the riverside, including the one where Burke Newman lost her life, the Waiting To Happen campaign aims to gather data about road users’ experiences of these locations with a view to creating a set of possible improvements.

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NSW premier open to ‘pattern-book’ housing across Sydney as solution for crisis

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Unlikely alliance pushes for more medium-density housing of the sort typically found in inner-city suburbs

The New South Wales premier, Chris Minns, says he is open to a proposal to pre-approve “pattern-book” housing designs that can be rolled out in Sydney suburbs – an idea being championed by an unlikely alliance of unions, big business and universities.

The Housing Now group, launched on Monday, argues that 30 suburbs need to be, in effect, transformed into inner-city Surry Hills by adding higher density houses and medium-rise apartment buildings.

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Bye bye brutalism, hello Instagrammers: inside Geelong’s spectacular $140m arts centre

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Australia’s newest and largest regional arts centre features malleable theatres, Indigenous art and spaces especially designed to get your camera out

When Joel McGuinness was brought on to oversee the redevelopment of the Geelong Arts Centre, and subsequently run the venue as its CEO and creative director, he wanted to change more than the 1980s building’s brutalist aesthetics. He wanted to redefine its purpose, to open it up to people who may have thought they didn’t belong.

“I really wanted to challenge the notion of black box theatres that turn their back on the world,” he says. “To change the relationship between the art and the audience. Because when the baby boomers die out, maybe the institutions as we know them will die out too.”

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Shell accused of eco-destruction in push to demolish old HQ

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Plan to knock down former offices in Aberdeen will release ‘vast amount of carbon emissions in atmosphere’ warn experts

Aberdeen is arguably best known for two things: granite – found in nearby quarries and used to construct almost all of the coastal city’s buildings – and oil. After the discovery of a significant reserve in the North Sea in the 1970s, Aberdeen became known as Europe’s oil capital and a thriving oil and gas industry sprang up in Scotland’s north-east.

At the centre of the boom was the multinational company Shell, which built a five-storey modernist headquarters in the city’s Tullos area, from where it operated for half a century, before moving last year. Now the building has become the subject of a bitter row after Shell announced its intention to demolish rather than upgrade and repurpose it.

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Outcry over loss of features on Bangkok’s landmark ‘robot building’

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Campaigners criticise renovation and call for better protection for the city’s distinctive architecture

A Bangkok landmark known as the “robot building” has been stripped of its identity, heritage campaigners have said, as they called for the city’s distinctive architecture to preserved.

The building – in the form of a giant robot made up of stacks of cubes and inspired by the architect watching his son play with a toy – has loomed over one of Bangkok’s busiest commercial districts for decades. Its design included oversized bolts and antenna, and windows shaped like cartoonish eyes.

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UK philanthropist gives almost £29m to heritage skills training

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Hamish Ogston’s donation will fund up to 2,700 apprenticeships in crafts to preserve historic buildings

A British philanthropist has given almost £29m to heritage skills training, breathing new life into dying crafts and addressing the chronic shortage of specialists who can prevent historic buildings from deteriorating beyond repair.

Hamish Ogston’s donation, which has been made through his charitable foundation, will be announced on Thursday.

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Architect Rafael Viñoly, designer of Walkie Talkie building, dies aged 78

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Uruguayan-born Viñoly’s sometimes controversial work included more than 600 structures around world

Rafael Viñoly, the Uruguayan-born and New York-based architect known for designing landmark buildings around the world, has died aged 78.

Viñoly’s death on Thursday was announced by his son, Roman, on the website of the family firm, Rafael Viñoly Architects.

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‘It’s a bit too castle-y’: plans to turn Cumbrian fortress into eco-attraction

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Young ‘custodian’ hopes to make ancestral home of Muncaster first carbon-zero castle in UK

In 1990, the year Ewan Frost-Pennington was born, the final bears left Muncaster Castle in the westernmost corner of the Lake District. Winnie, an Asiatic black bear, departed Cumbria for Dudley zoo, along with Inca, her daughter, and her sister, Gretel.

Three decades later, the bear pit has now been covered over with a solar farm. It is the brainchild of Frost-Pennington, the heir to the 800-year-old pink granite fortress, as he tries to make Muncaster the first carbon-zero castle in the UK.

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Victorian architecture’s lost giant to regain rightful recognition

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The designer of the glasshouses at Kew Gardens fell out of favour – but supporters of a new museum hope to change all that

One major name is missing from the line-up of great British architects that students learn have shaped the way that Britain looks. And it is a name with quite a ring to it: Decimus Burton.

Now members of the Decimus Burton Society believe they are about to put that right by establishing this Victorian classical revivalist’s place alongside better known titans such as Christopher Wren, John Nash and Edwin Lutyens. A new museum celebrating his achievements is on the drawing board and awaits approval this spring.

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Row growing after third historic rail bridge filled in with concrete

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National Highways faces third intervention by a local authority over infilling, after burying Congham bridge in Norfolk in tonnes of concrete

A controversial practice by the government’s roads agency of burying historic railway bridges in concrete has been dealt a fresh blow after a third council intervened over another infilled structure.

King’s Lynn and West Norfolk council has told National Highways it must apply for retrospective planning permission if it wants to retain hundreds of tonnes of aggregate and concrete it used to submerge Congham bridge, a few miles east of King’s Lynn.

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Jair Bolsonaro wrecked Brazil’s presidential palace, TV report suggests

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Journalist touring residence with new first lady is shown torn sofas, broken windows and art damaged by the sun

Jair Bolsonaro’s wrecking of the Amazon made him a global outcast – but his acts of desecration were not limited to the rainforest.

A report by the Brazilian broadcaster GloboNews suggests that even the official presidential residence – a 1950s masterpiece by the architect Oscar Niemeyer – was defiled by the far-right politician during his four years in power.

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Legacy of Japan’s Nakagin Capsule Tower lives on in restored pods

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One of Tokyo’s most famous buildings was dismantled in April due to asbestos fears. Now 23 of the capsules have been saved for posterity

Tatsuyuki Maeda had more reason than most to feel a pang of regret as he joined admirers and passing office workers to watch Nakagin Capsule Tower being dismantled.

The building was not just one of Tokyo’s most famous structures; for more than a decade it had been Maeda’s occasional home – a pied-à-terre in the heart of the city he had coveted since he first set eyes on it from his nearby workplace.

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Newly released files reveal plan to move Millennium Dome to Swindon

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Labour government received bid to relocate controversial London building before it was rebranded as the O2

The “Swindon Dome” does have a ring to it.

It has emerged Tony Blair’s government received a proposition to move the Millennium Dome – later redeveloped and rebranded as the O2 – to Swindon.

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Japanese architect and ‘postmodern giant’ Arata Isozaki dies aged 91

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Pritzker prize winner who combined Asian and western influences said postwar ruins of Japan stayed with him in his work

Pritzker-winning Japanese architect Arata Isozaki, known for his avant garde style and category-defying works, has died at the age of 91, his office says.

Isozaki died of old age at his home in Okinawa on Wednesday, with the funeral to be attended only by his close family, the office said in a statement on Friday.

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Sydney festival 2023: Town Hall to be filled with 26 tonnes of sand for program showpiece

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The heritage building’s floor will become an indoor beach for an award-winning opera – one of a few architectural landmarks that will get a new life this summer

Twenty-six tonnes of sand will be shipped into Sydney town hall as part of the 2023 Sydney festival, with the heritage-listed building transformed into a faux beach for an award-winning opera starring 79 people and a dog.

The program for the annual festival, announced today, will amplify stories from Indigenous and female-identifying creatives next year. Led by artistic director Olivia Ansell for the second time, it will champion climate action, marginalised voices and the rediscovery of underused spaces in the city – including Harry Seidler’s mushroom-shaped building in Martin Place, which will be turned into a 1970s-themed bar and live music hub, with audiences invited to stay in the retro hotel rooms above.

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Battersea power station: timeline of a modern classic

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Begun in 1929, the building was a collaboration between architects Theo Halliday and Sir Giles Gilbert Scott

Battersea power station was built in two phases, as a collaboration between the architects Theo Halliday and Sir Giles Gilbert Scott.

Halliday was responsible for the overall shape and the interior.

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