The Royal Institute of British Architects has announced the 49 winners of its national awards, including the Tate St Ives, Bloomberg’s Foster + Partners-designed London HQ, and a housing development in old gasholders.

Recognising the best buildings of the past 12 months, the RIBA National Awards 2018 includes major public and commercial projects from the Britain’s major cities to private buildings in remote locations.

“For over 50 years the RIBA Awards have celebrated the best new buildings, large or small; shining a light on trends in the construction industry, and illustrating why the UK’s architects and architecture have an enviable global reputation,” said RIBA president Ben Derbyshire.

“I am particularly pleased to see some excellent examples of large-scale housing schemes amongst this year’s winners,” he continued.

“Projects such as these are beacons showing how it is possible for enlightened local authorities and developers to create the well-designed, desirable and sustainable homes that communities so desperately need.”

“From exceptional mixed-use buildings that bring a community together, and breathing new life into dilapidated historic buildings, to getting the best value from an awkward site or limited budget, every one of this year’s award winners is a testament to the architects’ skill in solving a range of challenges to create projects that will inspire and delight their users and communities for years to come,” he added.

The high quality housing schemes include the redevelopment of the King’s Crescent Estate in Hackney, and the first phase of the Royal Albert Wharf, also in east London, where Maccreanor Lavington are designing over 200 new homes, over half of which will be affordable.

Another winning London project – indeed many of the projects are London-centric – was WilkinsonEyre’s Gasholders, which delivered new homes built inside the Grade-II listed industrial frames of the gasworks behind King’s Cross. Ro

und the corner Duggan Morris Architects’ R7 building, with its millenial pink facade, was also named a winner.

Large offices such as Foster + Partners headquarters for Bloomberg and Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners’ Leadenhall Building were also winners. Projects on the smaller side were championed too, with particular mention made of Arboreal Architecture’s Bethnal Green Memorial, and a sustainable home in the West Highlands designed by HaysomWardMiller Architects.

This year’s winners also included several cultural buildings including, the new Tate St Ives building by Jamie Fobert Architects, the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire from Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, and AL_A’s extension to the Victoria and Albert Museum.

RIBA noted that several of these projects were careful to be sensitive to the context, with AL_A using simple ceramic tiles to clad the new entrance to the museum. Allford Hall Monaghan Morris were also singled out for their tactful renovation of Liverpool’s Royal Court theatre.

Repurposing buildings for offices while retaining their character was another key theme, with special mention being given to Piercy&Company’s 25 Savile Row, which saw a new steel staircase suspended in the atrium of the art deco building.

The judges also praised practices that had produced projects that gave back to the local community in some form, such as Storey’s Field Community Centre and Nursery, where MUMA creatively combined a nursery and community hall using courtyard architecture, and Bennett Associate’s renovation of an art deco cinema in that now serves as a library during the day and a theatre after hours.

No matter the client or the budget the awards, which have been running since 1966, aim to highlight the best that British architecture has to offer. It is from this list that the shortlist for the 2018 RIBA Stirling Prize will be drawn and announced next month.

Scroll down for the full list of winners of the RIBA National Awards 2017:

› 15 Clerkenwell Close, by Groupwork + Amin Taha Architects
› 25 Savile Row, by Piercy&Company
› 53 Great Suffolk Street, by HawkinsBrown
› Albert Works, by Cartwright Pickard Architects
› Bethnal Green Memorial, by Arboreal Architecture
› Bloomberg, London, by Foster + Partners
› Boroughmuir High School, by Allan Murray Architects
› Bushey Cemetery, by Waugh Thistleton Architects
› Caroline Place, by Amin Taha + Groupwork
› Chadwick Hall, by Henley Halebrown
› City of London Freemen’s School, Swimming Pool, by HawkinsBrown
› Coastal House, by 6a Architects

› Durham Cathedral Open Treasure, by Durham Cathedral
› Five Acre Barn, by Blee Halligan
› Gasholders, by WilkinsonEyre with Jonathan Tuckey Design
› Kings Crescent Estate Phases 1 and 2, by Karakusevic Carson Architects with Henley Halebrow
› Kingsgate Primary Lower School, by Maccreanor Lavington Architects
› Knox Bhavan Studio, by Knox Bhavan Architects
› Liverpool’s Royal Court, by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris
› Lochside House, by HaysomWardMiller Architects
› Maggie’s Oldham, by dRMM Architects
› Marlborough Primary School, by Dixon Jones
› New Tate St Ives, by Jamie Fobert Architects with Evans & Shalev
› Nucleus, The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and Caithness Archive, by Reiach and Hall Architects

› Old Shed New House, by Tonkin Liu
› R7, Kings Cross, by Duggan Morris Architects with Weedon Architects
› Riverlight, by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners with EPR Architects
› Royal Academy of Music – The Angela Burgess Recital Hall and The Susie Sainsbury Theatre, by Ian Ritchie Architects
› Royal Albert Wharf Phase 1, by Maccreanor Lavington
› Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, by Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios
› Shaftesbury Theatre, by Bennetts Associates
› Sibson Building, by Penoyre & Prasad
› St Augustines Church, by Roz Barr Architects
› St David’s Hospice, New In- Patient Unit, by KKE Architects
› Storey’s Field Community Centre and Nursery, by MUMA
› Storyhouse, by Bennetts Associates with Ellis Williams

› The David Attenborough Building, by Nicholas Hare Architects
› The Department Store, by Squire and Partners
› The Leadenhall Building, by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners
› The Piece Hall and Calderdale Central Library and Archives, by LDN Architects
› The Sultan Nazrin Shah Centre, by Niall McLaughlin Architects
› University of Birmingham Indoor Sports Centre, by Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands
› University of Roehampton Library, by Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios
› Victoria and Albert Museum Exhibition Road Quarter, by AL_A
› Victoria Hall King’s Cross (student accommodation), by Stanton Williams
› Walthamstow Wetlands, by Witherford Watson Mann Architects
› West Court Jesus College, by Niall McLaughlin Architects
› Weston Street, by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris
› White Collar Factory, by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris

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Graphiste, Directeur Artistique, Retoucheur (très) Créatif, Pawel Nolbert est avant tout un faiseur d’images. Il développe, au fur et à mesure des années, un regard surréaliste décliné en séries. Sneaker Cube, Atypical, Constructed sont autant de phases de distorsion de la réalité, qui ont rythmé ses dernières années et fait exploser sa notoriété. Papier, peinture, photo, graphisme, voyage, studio… Il n’y a aucune limite à l’expression de son imaginaire et c’est bien ça qui fait la différence.

Retrouvez le sur Instagram et Behance.

The internet offers a world of opportunities for architects, says Amanda Baillieu, but they have to learn to embrace it.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the years negotiating architects’ websites and, like people who work themselves up into righteous indignation when they spot a typo, I feel a jolt of outrage when I see pages where tiny text is on a light grey background and basic details like a phone number are buried somewhere in the footer.

While the bad days of surprise pop-up menus and Flash animation are more or less over, and practices have started to invest heavily in their online presence, the way architects think and do business hasn’t changed – and perhaps it never will.

This is not a surprise. Architects are slow to move and unwilling to change, and some still see a website as a form of vanity publishing with infinite space.

Does this matter? While an architect’s website is their shop window, like any business, they don’t have to sell directly from it. And maintaining a web presence takes time and commitment that doesn’t easily translate into commissions.

Architects are slow to move and unwilling to change

Australian architect Sean Godsell, of the designers of one of the Holy See Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, proudly told me he refused to use any social networks. Meanwhile his website is just a list of his completed buildings, exhibitions, awards and contact details. “If people want to get hold of me they can email,” he said.

Like other architects with an impressive back catalogue and who are heavily published, his view is that, if you need to look on the internet, you’re really not worthy to commission him anyway. This is perhaps the reason why Herzog and de Meuron didn’t have a website until 2011 and Peter Zumthor still doesn’t.

Yet among younger architects, social-media platforms and networks are their lifeblood, because it’s how they connect with others and it’s what clients increasingly expect.

But is this new way of interacting with clients and the interested public really what architects want? I’m still not sure but I launched the Archiboo Web Awards partly as a way of finding out.

Architecture has become a hugely popular topic of conservation on social networks

After two years of running the awards I can report there are plenty of glimmers of hope.

While architects were initially suspicious of the way the internet allows images to be shared easily, quickly and for free, architecture has become a hugely popular topic of conservation on social networks. And architects have become avid users of Instagram, no one more so than Norman Foster, whose account “officialnormanfoster“, which he runs himself, has over 200,000 followers.

While practices themselves still struggle to balance corporate language with creativity, architectural debate is alive and well on Twitter. It doesn’t always fare well, as architectural criticism is still seen as specialists’ turf. But as the number of paid critics dwindles, it is Twitter and other social networks where the real debate is taking place.

Of course, there will always be clients who enjoy the rather lengthy courtship that has to be played out in order to persuade Rem Koolhaas or Renzo Piano to design your new office or opera house, but it is hard to imagine this will last. With one just one swipe of our phone, you can see the work of any architect in the world and what people are saying about it, making it difficult for bad architecture to hide.

David Miller, whose practice David Miller Architects was the overall winner of the Archiboo Web Awards in 2017 said: “We believe that openness and transparency are increasingly important attributes of practice… and by giving the visitor more freedom, we’ll continue to move away from the over-controlled image to a more transparent representation.”

There has to be a more conscious effort to explain what an architect does

His is just one of many practices that understand architecture can’t simply rely on static imagery to lure people in – there has to be a more conscious effort to explain what an architect does, whether that’s 3D augmented-reality capture on completed buildings, or finding ways for visitors to look “inside” buildings to see how they perform.

Technology has fundamentally changed the way buildings are designed and constructed. It has provided solutions to problems that have faced some of the world’s most ambitious buildings from the Sydney Opera House to the Gherkin. The question now is whether technology in the form of the internet can solve another problem facing architects – can it keep the industry relevant, open and engaged?

The post “Some architects still see a website as a form of vanity publishing” appeared first on Dezeen.

Design is a highly subjective field, wherein the individual’s design sense is a high contributing factor to the final product created by the team. It is important to vet the candidate in a manner that ensures the time spent of the employees in the process is not a waste. The key here is to be focused and decisive – if you are not quite sure about the candidate, then just let them go!

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The first 2 parts of this series (read: Part 1 & Part 2) spoke of the innovative and detailed process that gets a candidate invited to the Buzzfeed office for a personal interview. So in the finale of the series, we walk through the schedule of that grand day and how they interact with a candidate at that stage. Plus the little things they do to ensure that the person who joins them has a seamless experience instead of the usual new job anxiety.

When I first transitioned into management I had less confidence in my own ability to make hard decisions. I’d find myself torn after the screening process. Perhaps the candidate did very well during the portfolio review, but there were several red flags in their screen on collaboration. I was often tempted to invite them to come on-site anyway. I figured that in these situations a second opinion from the hiring panel would help me make the ultimate decision. Unfortunately, more often than not this resulted in more false positives and fewer offers. It was an inefficient use of everyone’s time including the candidate. An on-site interview is not a tie-breaker; it’s purpose is not to help an undecided hiring manager make up their mind.

Today, in order to bring a candidate on-site, the team members involved in the screening process need to feel confident that the candidate would receive an offer after the on-site round. If after two screens and the optional design exercise we still don’t have the evidence we need to inspire confidence, it’s as clear a signal as any that it’s time to move on.

So what is the on-site interview for, if our minds as hiring managers are mostly made up during the screening process?

The on-site loop allows us to get the perspective of adjacent disciplines that designers need to work closely with, like product and engineering, as well as supplemental feedback from additional members of the design team. It’s also an opportunity for the candidate to meet and assess the people they would be collaborating closely with if they were to join the team.

Our interview panels are composed of at least five people in addition to the hiring manager: two designers, one product manager, one engineer, and one front-end engineer. We try to keep our panel size small, not only to be conscious of everyone’s time, but because it facilitates trust within our team. A candidate shouldn’t need to meet every individual designer on the team, nor should every designer need to approve of them. This is the benefit of having consistent, documented hiring criteria. The benchmarks remain the same regardless of which designer is or isn’t on the panel, enabling the designers to trust each other’s best judgement.

What’s In A Loop
Interview loops consist of a portfolio review with the entire hiring panel, followed by 1:1 interviews with individual members. Two of these interviews are design exercises that make use of a whiteboard. For these, as well as our front-end exercise, it’s less about solving the problem or coming up with The Best™ solution in a constrained amount of time, and more about giving us insight into the candidate’s thought process and approach to problem solving.

We also realize how taxing these more performative interviews may be if done in succession. So when scheduling on-site interviews we try to alternate the order of ‘exercise’ interviews with ‘conversational’ interviews to avoid burn out during the already nerve-wrecking interview process.

Here’s what a typical on-site interview loop might look like:

We feel strongly about setting up candidates for success, and we actually want the people we bring in for interviews to do well. Many companies optimize for current employee performance and setting their people up for success. Yet when it comes to hiring, many companies place the burden on the candidate to ‘prove themselves’ against sometimes unrealistic odds. We prefer to start with the assumption that the candidate already meets our expectations, if they’ve made it this far. Our interview loop is less like a series of tests with increasing difficulty and more like a typical day at work: one in which you may work on some design projects, talk to your product and engineering peers, and present your work to stakeholders.

How We Evaluate Designers
I also recently updated the evaluation rubric we use in design interviews to better align with our role expectations, which we use for performance and leveling conversations with existing designers on the team. The previous scorecard reflected eight different categories, some of them redundant and not always applicable to the role, the candidate, or the interviewer. We’ve since narrowed our evaluation criteria to five categories:

Another goal of mine when redesigning our rubric was to make sure the criteria we used to review candidates also reflected the debrief discussion that happens in person. Looking back at historical data, there were some candidates who scored very well against our old rubric but were still not extended an offer. On the other hand, there were candidates with mixed feedback that did receive one. I realized the discrepancy lay in the level of the role (senior vs mid-level vs entry level), which was not well reflected in the previous evaluation criteria.

In Greenhouse (the recruiting software the entire company uses), the default scorecard template forces interviewees to rate candidates on this perplexing scale of iconography:

This translates to strong no, no, neutral/not applicable, yes, and strong yes.

I felt strongly that we shouldn’t ever need to select “neutral” or undecided. The argument for it being there is that there are times when an interviewer may not have enough information to form a conclusion. I believe this is symptomatic of how deliberate an interviewer is during their time with a candidate. To address this I always direct people to Hubspot’s excellent write-up about their hiring process, which I think succinctly sums up the goals of an interview:

Decide if the candidate should work at your company.
Make the candidate want to work at your company.
You should try to make every question and statement work to accomplish one of those goals.
“Strong No” also seemed unnecessary for us, because our screening process was designed to identify any “strong no’s” before they even make it on-site. That leaves us with a rather binary “yes/no” scale on the scorecard, but what was happening in our debrief discussions was much more nuanced.

Instead of a confident yes or no, most of our conclusions were conditional. For example, “if s/he came in as a mid-level designer I’d say yes, but if we’re expecting a senior designer, I’d say no.”

As a result, we changed the scale on which candidates are evaluated to reflect our design roles: associate, mid-level, senior and staff. Each level is assigned a value between 1 and 4. If we have a role that we believe requires mid-level experience, a candidate should need to score above an average of 2 to receive an offer. While I think this is a more objective way to evaluate candidates than a binary scale, it also provides room for nuance. If a candidate averaged out at a 1.8 but shows the potential to learn and ramp up quickly, it would still be reasonable to extend them an mid-level offer.

Offers
So let’s say we have a candidate that did well during the in-person interview, and we’d like to extend an offer. Our leveling assessment from the interview also informs where the candidate would fall in our established salary bands, which determines their cash compensation offer.

We do not negotiate compensation offers on the Product Design team, nor do we offer signing bonuses. Instead we give candidates our best offer upfront. This is part of an effort to ensure compensation is consistent across the entire design team, and is fair to folks who aren’t comfortable negotiating. The result is fewer discrepancies between people doing the same work at the same skill level.

Onboarding

Onboarding is the connective tissue between the interview process and the candidate’s experience as a full-time member of the team. We recently laid out a roadmap detailing what a product designer’s first week should look like. From personal experience a few of us on the team noted that when we first started at BuzzFeed, we had a lot of downtime that we weren’t quite sure what to do with. We wanted to alleviate this by giving new designers tasks they could complete at their leisure during their first week, such as simple exercises to introduce them to Solid (our CSS style guide) or the task of writing a BuzzFeed post in order to become familiar with our CMS. We also created an interactive checklist for managers detailing tasks that need to be completed leading up to the new designer’s first day.

Ah, another spreadsheet to add to my design manager portfolio.

Another important part of the onboarding experience is social opportunities for the new designer to meet the team, particularly team members who weren’t involved in the interview. Aside from welcome events, a small thing we’ve recently started doing is putting together a collaborative Spotify playlist for the new designer to listen to during their first week. Obviously, “Gather the Crowd” is a required opening title to the soundtrack.

We’ve done a lot over the past two years but there are still many opportunities for improvement. Some areas we’re working on next include how to best train and educate our interview panelists. Interviewing well is an exercise in good judgement and decision making?—?and those are skills that extend their value beyond recruiting.

It goes without saying that what works for us may not work for every company. Larger design teams hiring at scale may understandably need to offload more of this process to their recruiting and HR partners. Maybe one day we’ll be in that boat too. But for now, taking responsibility for the end-to -end hiring process has allowed us to quickly grow our team, stay connected to our industry at large, and keep ourselves accountable for our process being 100%. By being so involved in hiring I’ve gotten to meet so many talented designers. Whether or not they end up at BuzzFeed, they’ve helped us shape and improve our process and I hope we’ve been able to make the typically intimidating process of interviewing a rewarding experience for them as well.

The original write-up by the Buzzfeed office can be found here.

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