Architecture
London Festival of Architecture
Architecture
New York’s Storefront for Art and Architecture, which hosted a ‘pop-up’ installation just south of the V&A was the first port of call on this week's tour of London's architecture events. The store itself was dominated by Bjarke Ingels Group’s vast LEGO towers, along with six other models investigating new forms for new urban conditions. It was also the venue for Geoff Manuagh’s ambitious interview marathon.
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The author of the influential BLDG BLOG booked himself in for an eight-hour stint with some of London’s most innovative authors, historians, architects and designers. Hell-bent on investigating the flipside of the glossy surfaces and heroic imagery of modern architecture, Manaugh asked uncomfortable questions - and received some uncomfortable answers - about the socio-political shifts that will shape the structures of the tomorrow, without skimping on the minutae.
Skywalk
Friday 4 July also saw the launch of the LFA’s Bloomsbury Hub. At its heart was Carmody Groarke’s 160m long Skywalk, a bold attempt at reinventing a rather dismal slice of this central London neighbourhood with the installation of a raised temporary platform for events, viewing and general hanging around. Tucked in behind the British Museum, the platform was a masterpiece of swift construction, if not quite the dramatically jagged lightning strike that it appeared on the drawings. With fresh turf underfoot, champagne in hand and a succession of live bands on the new stage, it was easy to forget you were standing in a coach park behind the museum’s rather uninspiring north elevation.
Greening Bays
Parked right next to the Skywalk party, were the winning designs for Greening Bays, a project exploring how London would be without parked cars. Taking old cars and transforming them into eco-friendly green spaces in 24-hours, the competition by Ramboll Whitbybird announced its winning designs last Friday: Urban Golf for Innovation, Something & Sons for Recycled materials, and Emily Read and Kirsten Jack for Sustainable materials.
AA Show
From the Skywalk, it was a short hop to Bedford Square, where the graduating class of 2008 had donned their finest frocks and smartest suits and thrown open the Architectural Association’s elegant Georgian structure to all and sundry to showcase the fruits of the past year’s study. As ever, complexity and contradiction won the day, with a dizzying array of models and drawings confirming the AA’s reputation as the bastion of computer-generated complexity. Outside, twin student pavilions, one of wood, one built from thin blades of concrete, made an elegant contrast with the formal facades of the square.
Blueprint Party
Blueprint chose the LFA to hold their triumphant 25th birthday party, filling a disused dairy in Kings Cross with the great and the good of modern British design. It was a fine reflection of the magazine’s influence over the years, and the assembled crowd was addressed by one of the original backers, a proud Sir Terence Conran, and its original publisher, LFA supremo Peter Murray. The festivities were arranged around The Diary of a Derelict Dairy, a refreshingly gritty art show curated by Minnie Weisz. Having haunted the fast-changing Kings Cross district for several years now, Weisz continues to stay one step ahead of the rapid regeneration process and uses using abandoned spaces and places as both showcases and generators of new artworks.
Jelly Party
The Architectural Jelly Banquet, held at University College London, attempted to recapture something of the spirit of the pre-war avant-garde event, mixing gelatine, surrealism and dressing up to create an excuse for a good party. Sure, there was architecture in there somewhere, in the form of a long line of delicate jelly structures (overseen by master jelly makers Bompass & Parr), but the event was dominated by fairground-style stalls, dancing girls, the promise of late-night jelly wrestling and a queue for free drinks that was in danger of turning into an installation in its own right. In the fast-fading light, UCL’s neo-classical quad looked set to descend into a truly Bacchanalian scene.
Toby Paterson Portavilion
The third of the four temporary pavilions included in the Portavilion project, artist Toby Paterson’s Powder Blue Orthogonal Pavilion for Potters Fields Park was also unveiled on Friday. Reflecting the sun via its unusual extra-light blue colour, the lovely composition of lines and planes will make for an excellent spot to sit and enjoy the sun throughout the summer, as it is set to stay put until the end of September. Curated by Emma Underhill, the project combines contemporary art with architecture, creating an interesting trail linking four of London’s most popular parks. Two more pavilions are already built in different London parks – Dan Graham’s Triangular Pavilion with Circular Inserts Variation H is in Holland Park, and Annika Eriksson’s The Smallest Cinema in the World For the Good and the Wealthy in Regent’s Park – and the last one of the series, Monika Sosnowska’s The Wind House in Primrose Hill, will be up and ready on the 26th July.
Chipperfield LFA keynote lecture
Finally, we couldn’t miss this Festival’s keynote lecture, delivered by none other than last year’s RIBA Stirling Prize winner David Chipperfield. The audience enjoyed a great talk in a packed hall in the Institute of Education, where the speaker touched on contemporary architecture, in both the East and West, from modernism to post-modernism, including a look at his own work, starting from early projects in Japan and the UK, right up to the many recent works in Berlin. In conclusion, Chipperfield proudly gave the audience a detailed look at one of the practice’s biggest ongoing projects – and what appeared to be one of his personal favourites - the Neues Museum in Berlin’s museum island.
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