Hasta La Ideas

Following the huge success of Sam Jacob’s regular opinion column, we’re proud to announce that four more world-class writers are joining us as columnists: Dan Hill, Alexandra Lange, Kieran Long and Justin McGuirk.

They’ll each be contributing a monthly column starting this month (apart from Alexandra, who will be joining us in January due to her commitments at Harvard).

Sam Jacob’s next column will appear tomorrow and after that we’ll publish an Opinion piece by one of our writers every week.

Here are some biographical details of our new writing team:

Dan Hill

Designer and urbanist Dan Hill is CEO of Fabrica, a research centre and design studio based in Treviso, Italy. Hill has previously worked for Arup, Monocle, and the BBC and has written for Domus magazine. His blog cityofsound.com covers the intersection between architecture, design, culture and technology.

Alexandra Lange

New York-based architecture and design critic Alexandra Lange has contributed essays, reviews, and features to publications including Domus, Metropolis, New York Magazine, the New Yorker blog, and the New York Times. Lange is a featured writer at Design Observer and has taught architecture criticism in the Design Criticism Program at the School of Visual Arts and the Urban Design & Architecture Studies Program at New York University. She is a Loeb Fellow at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design for academic year 2013-2014.

Lange is the author of Writing About Architecture: Mastering the Language of Buildings and Cities (Princeton Architectural Press, 2012), a primer on how to read and write architecture criticism, as well as the e-book The Dot-Com City: Silicon Valley Urbanism (Strelka Press, 2012), which considers the message of the physical spaces of Facebook, Google, and Apple.

Justin McGuirk

Justin McGuirk is a writer, critic and curator based in London. He is the director of Strelka Press, the publishing arm of the Strelka Institute in Moscow. He has been the design columnist for The Guardian, the editor of Icon magazine and the design consultant to Domus. In 2012 he was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture for an exhibition he curated with Urban Think Tank.

Kieran Long

Kieran Long is Senior Curator of Contemporary Architecture, Design and Digital at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Most of his career has been spent as a critic, writer and editor for a wide variety of publications about architecture. He was deputy editor Icon magazine, editor in chief of the Architects’ Journal and the Architectural Review, and is currently the architecture critic for the Evening Standard newspaper.

Kieran presents Restoration Home and the forthcoming series The £100,000 House for the BBC and was principal assistant to David Chipperfield for the 2012 International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale.

Long’s books include Common Ground: A Critical Reader, which came out last year to coincide with the biennale. He has taught at the Royal College of Art, London Metropolitan University, Greenwich University and Kingston University, and an invited lecturer at Yale University, KTH Stockholm, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, the Swiss Architecture Forum, and many other universities and institutions in the UK.

Read all our Opinion columns »

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News: the “death-ray” effect created by sunlight reflected off the glazed facade of Rafael Viñoly’s Walkie Talkie skyscraper in London were predicted over a year ago by a professional CGI artist, it emerged today as developers rush to install protective screens.

The artist, who goes by the forum username Bobdobbs, anticipated that the curvaceous facade of the 37-storey tower at 20 Fenchurch Street could at certain times of the year create light reflections up to 600% brighter that its surroundings buildings, using a simple 3D mock-up of the volume.

“A clear hot late September/October day may throw up some very interesting lighting effects,” he wrote on a thread at website SkyscraperCity. “I’m fairly confident that the difference, from measurement, is about 600% brighter! I know where I wouldn’t want to stand!”

Comparing the project to nearby skyscraper The Shard, which is reported to have dazzled train drivers, Bobdobbs added: “The Shard’s death ray will be nothing compared to this.”

The news emerges as developers Land Securities and Canary Wharf take emergency action to prevent more damage being caused by intense glare from the nicknamed “Walkie Scorchie”, which is said to have melted vehicles, cracked pavement tiles and even started a small fire.

“Following approval from the City of London, we will be erecting a temporary scaffold screen at street level on Eastcheap within the next 24 hours,” said a spokesperson. “This solution should minimise the impact on the local area over the next two to three weeks, after which time the phenomenon is expected to have disappeared.”

They added: “We are also continuing to evaluate longer-term solutions to ensure this issue does not recur in future.”

Philip Oldfield, a tall buildings expert from the University of Nottingham, has suggested that amendments to Rafael Viñoly’s initial concept could be to blame. “It seems the original design included small horizontal balconies on the south facade rather than the continuous glass facade as built now,” he told The Independent. “This would have surely mitigated any significant glare like we are seeing at the moment.”

Other preventative measures that could be taken include adding small fins to the exterior or applying a special coating that reduces the impact of the reflections.

This isn’t the first time that a building by the Uruguayan architect has prompted complaints about glare. In 2010, guests at the Vdara Hotel in Las Vegas complained of scorched hair and melted drinks glasses. The hotel has since used anti-reflective film, oversized plants and rows of umbrellas to fix the problem.

The unfinished skyscraper is not set to open until next year and will feature an elevated garden and observation deck that will be open to the public.

See more architecture by Rafael Viñoly »
See more skyscraper news »

Photograph of the Walkie Talkie is courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post CGI artist predicted “Walkie Scorchie”
effect a year ago appeared first on Dezeen.

wants a Sr. Backpack & Accessory Designer
in Los Angeles, California

Since 1972, The Outdoor Recreation Group has been having fun and delivering only the best in branded backpacks, camping accessories and apparel. They’re looking for someone with a passion for exceptional outdoor product design who is also able to take the lead on their design process.

Does that sound like you? Would you be psyched to support and execute all seasonal projects from concept to completion of final samples for all accessory product categories including, outdoor technical backpacks, hydration bags, lifestyle daypacks, fishing tackle bags, luggage and travel accessories, tactical gear and hunting bags?

If so, Apply Now.

(more…)

Illustrator Chris Dent has drawn a cityscape mural featuring iconic landmarks from eight locations for AOL’s London office.

Dent’s mural represents the eight cities AOL is based in and features 15 landmarks from London, New York, Paris, Toronto, Madrid, Stockholm, Berlin and Copenhagen, including the CN Tower, the Empire State Building, the Shard and the Eiffel Tower.

“It was important to have a variation of architecture within the piece to provide balance but also to make it visually stimulating for the people seeing it every day,” says Dent.

“The process for the AOL piece was very much similar to my normal working process, just on a much larger scale: I collage together a landscape on the computer, then work it into a sketch which forms the base of my final drawing.

“All of my work is hand drawn with rapidograph pens, which are extremely delicate but for this piece, I had to use posca pens, which are obviously thicker and more durable,” he adds.

Dent has specialised in architectural and cityscape illustrations since graduating from Camberwell College of Arts in 2006. “Ever since visiting New York as a child, I have been fascinated by the workings of cities and how they adapt to the world we live in. As much as I find cityscapes beautiful to look at, it’s the construction of buildings and their context which gives me such a passion for this subject,” he says.

He has previously worked with AOL on smaller-scale canvases and was commissioned by the AOL Artists programme, an initiative that funds original art, exhibitions and installations. The programme recruits a different guest curator each month and now has a collection of 150 artworks – you can see more of them on the AOL Artists website.

Slumbering Lepidoptera for the win! A vaguely ectoplasmic, creamed pistachio hue known as “Chrysalis” has triumphed over a highly pigmented field of finalists to win Farrow & Ball’s “My Colour” contest, in which fans of the quirky-luxe purveyor of paint and wallcoverings submitted inspired and inspirational colors that would play nice with the likes of F&B’s “Elephant’s Breath” and “Churlish Green.”

The celadon-meets-Slimer shade emerged at the top of a field of some 800 entries, narrowed to 20 impressive finalists that included colors such as “Jodhpur Blue” (think Yves Klein goes to India!) and “Federal Pink,” a complexion-enhancing match for the rosy newsprint favored by the Financial Times. “It is a beautiful grey/green shade, almost shagreen, which makes a lovely modern neutral,” says winner Samantha Mansell, who will receive 10 gallons of paint in Chrysalis, inspired by the pupa casing of the monarch butterfly. “The sculptural shape of the chrysalis with its gold details also makes it look like a precious piece of jewelry. Natural, stunning, and simple.”
continued…

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