Luke Butcher

Architecture’s New Terrain

Landform Building: Architecture’s New Terrain documents the influence and manifestations of both landscape and ecology in contemporary architectural practice that is resulting in not simply a “cross-disciplinary phenomenon” but new design techniques and formal strategies. It is edited by Stan Allen, Dean of the Princeton University School of Architecture and practicing architect in New York who …

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Spatial Agency: Other Ways of Doing Architecture

Architecture “as a profession…is based on the need for architecture (as practice and product) to be the protected domain of the architect” (2011: 28). In a new book, Spatial Agency: Other Ways of Doing Architecture, co-authored by Nishat Awan, Tatjana Schneider, and Jeremy Till, this narrow definition of architecture, and the limited discourses surrounding it, …

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The Hepworth Wakefield

The city of Wakefield was once known for its coal and textile industries but these have long since gone, victims of the Thatcher government in the 1970s and 80s. Today it is best known as the hometown to one the most renowned British sculptors of the 20th century: Barbara Hepworth. A contemporary of Henry Moore, …

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Bjarke Ingels (II) – at Warpspeed

In a previous post we wrote that Bjarke Ingels (1974), founder of the relatively young architectural practice BIG, is amongst the most prominent representatives of a generation of architects that tries and surpasses postmodern conventions, attitudes and strategies. Ingels’ approach to architecture is perhaps best described, in his own words, as Yes is More, sustainable hedonism …

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Small scale, big change

Between October 3rd, 2010 and January 3rd, 2011, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York held an exhibition entitled ‘Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement‘. The show presented eleven projects, across five continents, and sought to highlight both the social commitment of the architects (and others) involved and the functinonal, …

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