CONTEMPORARY DESIGN NEWS
News of Contemporary Design, Architecture and Interiors
News of contemporary, modern, architecture including works around the world by both leading and emerging architects.
30 September 2020
Sir David Adjaye's significant influence on the advancement of architecture over the last 25 years has been recognised with the UK's highest honour for architecture, the RIBA Royal Gold Medal. His completed projects range from private homes to major art centres and include the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC, and Ruby City, an art centre in San Antonio Texas. Photo credit Josh Huskin
Dominique Coulon and Associates designed the replacement for the historic theatre in Freyming-Merleback. The 'Théodore Gouvy' Theatre is situated close to the town centre and has become a symbol of the town's renewal. Dominique Coulon & Associates
The Amsterdam based practice, Civic Architects, have transformed the former locomotive shed in Tilburg, Netherlands to create the Lochal library which incorporates co-working and events space. The Lochal is situated in the railway zone adjacent to the Central Station which is being transformed to form the new heart of the city. Civic Architects
Carmody Groarke create two pavilions in the grounds of a rural family house. One of the pavilions is made of board marked concrete connected to the house by a 40m tunnel. The other is the renovation of the ruins of an 18th century farmhouse, by completing the walls in concrete and adding a new plate steel roof. Carmody Groarke Architects
Two residential towers by David Chipperfield Architects form part of a master plan by Karakusevic Carson Architects. The apartments in the towers are for private sale in order to fund the redevelopment of the Coleville Estate in Hackney. The towers are faced in handmade bricks, blue/grey for the western tower and red for the eastern one. At entrance level the bricks from the vaulted sofits. David Chipperfield Architects
6a Architects created Cowan Court, a new hall of residence for the 1960s Churchill College Cambridge, which is listed in recognition of it being a fine example of British Brutalism. The building was awarded the 2017 RIBA East award. 6a architects was founded by Tom Emerson and Stephanie Macdonald in 2001. Photograph by David Grandorge. 6a Architects
Architect Balkrishna Doshi has been named as the 45th Pritzer Prize Laureate. Balkrishna Doshi is responsible for the Indian Institute of Management (Bangalore, 1977-1992), the Aranya Low Cost Housing (Indore, 1989) and his Sangath Studio (Ahmedabad, 1980). Pritzker Prize
Architects 31/44 extends and refurbishes an existing 1960s light industrial building to create a boutique hotel in Redchurch Street, Shoreditch. The design is contemporary yet reflects the character of the adjacent Victorian warehouses on Club Row and the surrounding Georgian brick facades. 31/44 Architects
Carmody Groake have extended the studio of artist Julian Opie. In the mid 19th century the building was used as as a furniture workshop. The building has now been extended with a series of aluminium clad boxes which bring daylight deep into the plan. Carmody Groarke
The first architecture project by Phillipe Malouin is Core. Core is a small brutalist concrete modular structure designed as part of the Superbenches project to regenerate Kvarnbacken, a park in Järfälla, Sweden. Philippe Malouin
Tony Fretton Architects transformed an existing building in 1986 and created a new building in 1992 to form the Lisson Gallery. Founded in 1982, Tony Fretton Architects is an international practice based in London. Tony Fretton
R7 is a mixed use office building at Kings Cross designed by Duggan Morris Architects, a London practice established in 2004. The building's façade is constructed of lightweight aluminum that has thin and elegant profiles to accentuate a fine structure. Duggan Morris
Claesson Koivisto Rune, the Swedish architectural practice, has created a spa with a summertime and wintertime pool next to a 1796 mansion in south Sweden. The pool draws inspiration from the chevron pattern of French parquet. The tiles are laser cut in a chevron pattern which is amplified by the water and reflected by the glass wall. Claesson Koivisto Rune
Gigon Guyer's detached house in Zurich has a hexagonal volume on a trapezoid shaped plot. The exterior walls and the roof are load bearing concrete, and large windows open by sliding into a recess between the outer concrete and the inner brick wall. The main living room is on the upper floor, where the ceiling rises from 2.4m to 5.2m. Gigon / Guyer
23 March - 25 June 2017.
The Japanese House welcomes you inside the Moriyama House (2005), designed in Tokyo by Ryue Nishizawa (SANAA) and inhabited by Yasuo Moriyama, an enigmatic urban hermit. As well as the full-size recreation of the Moriyama House, the exhibition also features a Japanese teahouse and garden designed by Terunobu Fujimori. The Japanese House is the centrepiece of the UK’s first major exhibition exploring Japanese domestic architecture from the end of the Second World War. Barbican
Kanaal, a former distillery and malting complex, transformed by architects Coulee & Goris, is conceived as a city in the country. Incorporating the site’s heritage as a thriving hub of economic activity, the development is geared towards the inspired combination of living, working, culture and nature. Alongside the continued operations of the Axel Vervoordt Company, and accommodation for other offices, Kanaal will also be the home of the Axel & May Vervoordt Foundation’s collection. Axel Vervoordt
This new detached family house creates a strong relationship between its context, its external form and the composition of its internal spaces. Brick is used externally and internally and the sculptural use of brick provides a coherence with the surrounding houses in North London. Photograph Helene Binet. Carmody Groarke
O'Donnell Tuomey architects create a community centre on reclaimed land in East Wall. O'Donnell Tuomey
Newport Street Gallery involved the conversion and transformation of a street facing a railway line in Vauxhall, south London, into a free public gallery for artist Damien Hirst's private art collection. Three listed Victorian industrial buildings, formerly carpentry and scenery painting workshops for West End theatres, have been remodelled and flanked at either end by entirely new buildings; one with a spiky saw-tooth roof. RIBA.
Although this project involved working within an existing envelope, the transformation is a radical one that pushes at the limits of what is covered by conventional definitions of remodeling. A complex of eighteenth-century barns is transformed into a series of residential spaces in which the refinement of the newly inserted elements, full-height glass walls and low white plaster partitions contrasts with the intricate configuration of the original timber frame. Rather than cut inappropriate openings into old walls, the interior is lit by large-scale sheets of glass which sit directly on the ground and make the original pitched roofs appear to float. Tilty Barn, Essex, England 1994-1995. John Pawson.
Situated in a leafy suburb in the south-west of Berlin, this house is organised around a south-facing courtyard overlooking a large garden. Enveloped entirely in a brick skin, the house gains a physical solidity reminiscent of the early Modernist houses of Erich Mendelsohn and Mies van der Rohe, especially the latter’s three projects of the late 1920s: Wolf, Esters and Lange. 1994-1996. David Chipperfield Architects.
On a constricted site in West London stands a family house designed by Caruso St John. The unusual shape of the site has shaped the interior living spaces and is in contrast with the typologies of the London town house that surround Brick House. The interior spaces are broad, intimate and overlook small gardens. Caruso St John was formed in London, with a second office in Zurich, by Adam Caruso and Peter St John in 1990 with the aim of pursuing architecture that is rooted in place. The practice's refined and considered approach has won them international competitions and prizes. Caruso St John