All articles by Martin Spring – Page 6

  • Gas leak
    Archive Titles

    What a gas

    2006-04-28T00:00:00Z

    A contaminated, derelict gas works isn't where you'd normally expect to hang out listening to music, watching a film or dancing. But Amsterdam's Westergasfabriek has been turned into landscaped parkland and a vibrant cultural mecca - thanks to the tenacity of the local community.

  • An angular student accommodation block overlooks a landscaped deck over the sports facilities
    Features

    A £64m rumpus room

    2006-04-28T00:00:00Z

    Avant-garde architect Morphosis has created an extraordinary recreational centre for this Ohio university, complete with suspended running track, swimming pool and restaurant

  • Features

    Down from the mountain

    2006-04-13T00:00:00Z

    How do you convince a collection of plants at Kew Gardens that west London enjoys an alpine climate? Wilkinson Eyre came up with an elegant and ingenious solution

  • Smooth surfaces and sharp detailing help the square box transcend the run-of-the-mill retail-shed image
    Features

    Ken's zen

    2006-04-07T00:00:00Z

    A few lines of architectural history have been written in Dartford, where Ken Shuttleworth's Make has just completed its first project - and shown how a judo dojo can fit into what appears to be a retail shed with perfect economy of form...

  • Two stupendous terminals at Beijing Airport are being designed and built in just four years by using repetitive components for the reinforced concrete floors and steel space-framed roof
    Features

    Forget T5, here's T-Rex

    2006-04-07T00:00:00Z

    Beijing is about to get an airport that is large enough to handle the entire population of Britain in a single year, thanks to yet another collaboration between Arup and Foster and Partners

  • Even the three-storey flats at the street corner wear
    Features

    Is this a joke?

    2006-03-31T00:00:00Z

    Architectural practice FAT has a reputation for taking the mick. But its new social housing scheme in Manchester is at once playful and perfectly serious.

  • The new law courts building, with its shiny, spiky roofline and public park, makes a dramatic city gateway to Antwerp
    Features

    A law unto itself

    2006-03-24T00:00:00Z

    Richard Rogers has once again turned convention on its head in its radical design of Antwerp's law courts building, opened this week by the King of Belgium.

  • Barcelona’s Santa Catarina market
    Features

    Enric's last hurrah

    2006-03-17T00:00:00Z

    Part magic carpet ride, part Indonesian village hall, Barcelona's Santa Catarina market bears all the inventiveness of its architect's founder - the late Enric Miralles.

  • Alsop & Partners set out to connect inside and outside by means of a solid, timber-clad vault that is extruded at one end in transparent glass.
    Features

    Could you live here?

    2006-03-10T00:00:00Z

    Well, somebody is going to - these extraordinary houses, designed by top architects for an idyllic Cotswolds location, have all just won planning permission.

  • The rippling forms facing the park are created by horseshoe-shaped lecture halls shaded by hanging gardens
    Features

    Equatorial chic

    2006-03-03T00:00:00Z

    Edward Cullinan Architects knew how to design a university, but not how to design one in a country where the annual temperature varies between 85 and 89°F. Yet its solution was brilliant...

  • Martin Spring
    News

    A slight pain in the glass

    2006-02-28T20:12:00Z

    Building's architectural editor lives in a Victorian house. Read his diatribe on modern windows and you'll understand why.

  • The gleaming white buildings rise straight from a car-free alleyway passing through the complex
    Features

    Costa del Cockney

    2006-02-24T00:00:00Z

    A sparkling white apartment scheme, straight out of a Mediterranean resort, has just been built in the heart of London's East End

  • Milton Keynes
    Features

    The Eurovision house contest

    2006-02-17T00:00:00Z

    Welcome to Europan, the competition in which young European architects design housing schemes for 74 sites across the continent. Here are the designs that triumphed in the UK

  • Though more like a frozen splash in a pond, the roof of the vast Beijing South Station was inspired by traditional Chinese pagodas
    Features

    The station master

    2006-02-10T00:00:00Z

    Sir Terry Farrell has often reserved his most iconic architecture for Far-Eastern railway stations, as three futuristic airport-sized interchanges reveal.

  • A freestanding glazed screen has smartened up the drab 1960s college building
    Features

    City slicker

    2006-02-10T00:00:00Z

    Further education colleges are often slated as universities' backward cousins. But if Wilkinson Eyre's City and Islington College refurbishment is anything to go by, they're going forward fast.

  • The London Eye lit up
    Features

    Lovers in the air

    2006-02-10T00:00:00Z

    Inspired by Valentine's Day and the promise of free champagne, the latest in our series of Projects Reunited is less about reuniting old friends than celebrating those special unions that have stood the test of time. We took four happy couples that met through the construction industry for a trip ...

  • Tony Wilson, pop impresario, news journalist, regeneration guru and now – along with partner Yvette Livesey
    Features

    The making of Manchester

    2006-01-27T00:00:00Z

    First there were derelict warehouses and deserted mills, the wreckage of a great industrial past. Then came music and madness of a generation liberated from that tradition. And at the centre of this Manchester was Factory Records and the Hacienda, both the creation of Tony Wilson, pop impresario, news journalist, ...

  • Manchester Civil Justice Centre
    Features

    24 hour construction city

    2006-01-27T00:00:00Z

    Here are six construction sites that epitomise Manchester's changing cityscape, from a slum regeneration in a stricken suburb to this £1bn legal district being built in the heart of the commercial centre.

  • The primal forms of jagged, striated concrete walls and smooth-flowing metal roofs were inspired by Tenerife’s volcanic mountains and surrounding Atlantic ocean
    Features

    Into the volcano

    2006-01-20T00:00:00Z

    In the Spanish resort of Tenerife, local architect Fernando Menis has created an arts centre that brilliantly evokes the island's mountains, cliffs, beaches and ocean

  • Santiago Calatrava’s £82m opera house in Valencia
    Features

    Music, maestro

    2006-01-06T00:00:00Z

    Santiago Calatrava’s £82m opera house in Valencia is a symphony in concrete and glass: the largest auditorium in Europe and the centrepiece of an arts and sciences complex designed by the local virtuoso