Architects & design Focus – Page 8
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FeaturesKing's Cross Western Concourse: Space Travel
John McAslan’s 8,500m2 Western Concourse at King’s Cross is transport architecture on an epic scale, returning the station to the grandeur of the golden age of trave. Just a shame about the glazing …
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FeaturesRedeveloping Bart's and Royal London hospitals
It was tempting to hang a ‘do not resuscitate’ sign on two dingy, barely accessible London hospitals, but Skanska’s redevelopment of the sites has made them functional again - which should perk up medical staff and patients alike
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FeaturesExhibition Road: Walkin' & wheels
Dixon Jones’ £28m reworking of South Kensington’s great museum quarter, Exhibition Road, resolves the long stand-off between pedestrians and cars by allowing them to share the same space. Ike Ijeh is knocked over by the simplicity of the design. Photographs by Tim Crocker
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FeaturesStanton Williams: The Attraction of Opposites
Architect Stanton Williams is a company that likes to be different - so when its profit plunged by 90% at the start of the financial crisis it didn’t do what so many other architects are doing and look abroad for work. It decided to stick with what it knows best: ...
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FeaturesCanada's bold new library: Can we borrow it?
A city near Vancouver has taken a bold approach with its new public library - throwing out traditional study spaces and pioneering design by social media. Could it provide a template for our own beleaguered institutions? Ike Ijeh reports
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FeaturesThe notorious work of Richard Seifert
Ten years after Richard Seifert’s death, Ike Ijeh asks how some of his most well-known works have shaped the architecture of modern Britain - and how controversial they really were
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FeaturesArts-led regeneration projects: Join the culture club
These days museums, art galleries and concert halls are built not for their own sake but in the hope they can transform deprived urban wastelands into vibrant communities. Ike Ijeh looks at the resounding successes - and some abject failures
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FeaturesFlood-proof house: Home and dry
Would you build a house on the Norfolk Broads, one of the most flood-prone areas of the UK? LSI Architects did and its sophisticated design meant getting the project through planning was plain sailing.
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FeaturesThe Tom Bloxham interview
For 20 years, renowned regeneration company Urban Splash grew and grew. Then in 2008 the bottom fell out of the market and soon after the firm found itself on the ‘brink of collapse’. Its founder tells Emily Wright how it changed everything - and nothing
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FeaturesFree school conversions: Making the switch
The government went out of its way to make it easier for free schools to be formed in non-school buildings by easing planning laws. So now that they’ve opened their doors, do they actually work? Take a look at two very different conversions…
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FeaturesRafael Viñoly's Firstsite centre: show time
Rafael Viñoly’s latest UK building finally takes centre stage, but why was it nearly undone by delays, overspends and legal spats? Thomas Lane reports, while below Ike Ijeh asks if it was worth all the pain
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FeaturesWestfield Stratford City: Maxing out
Westfield Stratford City in east London - dead handy for the Olympic park - is Europe’s biggest urban shopping centre, a retail behemoth so large it is really a city within a city with more than 300 shops and 2 million ft2 of retail and leisure space. Ike Ijeh goes ...
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FeaturesGround Zero: The world's emptiest space
Until the physical gap is filled, the emotional void of 9/11 will continue to haunt the city. Ike Ijeh looks at how designers, architects and builders are working to do justice to the significance of the site. Photography by Keith Kleiner
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FeaturesRestarting work on Universities: Any news is good news
Financial uncertainty can dampen any spending mood. But now the government has set funding and raised tuition fees, UK universities are getting on with attracting students – which means restarting schemes put on hold during the recession.
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FeaturesKen Shuttleworth: No more crazy shapes & silly profiles
Ken Shuttleworth, the man behind the Gherkin, doesn’t ’get’ the Shard, reckons the era of tall glass boxes is over and thinks a lot of designers are really egotistical. So why does the founder of Make think this is such a great time to be an architect? He tells Building.
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FeaturesSainsbury Laboratory: Nurture vs nature
Stanton Williams’ serene Sainsbury Laboratory combines classicism with modernism while remaining anchored to its natural surroundings
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FeaturesEngineering Britain's biggest retained facade: Going to great lengths
This was once a dilapidated hotel that just so happened to be on prime land overlooking Hyde Park. To convert it into luxury flats the whole thing had to be demolished and rebuilt – apart from the facade. Building talks to the team responsible for the largest ever retained Victorian ...
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FeaturesRiver trip: Zaha Hadid's Riverside Transport Museum
Far from the Olympic aquatics centre, the first of Zaha Hadid’s big UK projects is complete. Building reviews her dramatic and somewhat psychedelic transport museum in Glasgow
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FeaturesThe construction strategy: Together at last?
The government and the construction industry. It’s been a long, love-hate affair but the new construction strategy is an offer to try to work things out
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FeaturesDe-coding BIM
Building information modelling could be applied to save time and money on every government project within five years. But few people are using it and many don’t even know it exists. Here are seven key ways BIM will affect you and your work