Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, founder and chairman of Grimshaw Architects, has gained recognition worldwide for his seamless integration of complex technological systems into striking, modernist structures.
Had Peter Cook’s career ended in the early 1970s, this founding member of the über-influential Archigram group would still be considered one of the most important architects of our time. As RECORD has written, “As the Beatles of architecture, Archigram broke down the dreary conformity of the 1950s, sweeping aside sclerotic convention with their antics.” Image courtesy Kunsthaus Graz; photography by Nicolas Lackner. Kunsthaus Graz in Graz, Austria, designed by Peter Cook and Colin Fournier. This slideshow includes images of some of Peter Cook’s Archigram proposals; Kunsthaus Graz; and the London Olympic Stadium. When asked to describe the inspiration for
Bryant Rousseau: You’ve said that from the age of eight you wanted to be an architect. What sparked this early attraction to the profession? Sir Peter Cook: I was a tiny child in the Second World War, and my dad, who had been an army officer in the First World War, had a home job as the quartering commandment for the middle bit of England, and I used to go with him from the age of three or four in the car to look at buildings he was requisitioning. He was looking at buildings, and I was looking at buildings
Beverly Willis, FAIA, began her own architectural practice and an impressive career in San Francisco during the 1960s, when a woman more likely was found matching upholstery to wall hangings than wielding blueprints at a construction site.
Gary van Deursen knows a thing or two about innovation. Before starting his own consulting business last year, he was the head of product design for General Electric, Black & Decker, and The Stanley Works.
Charles Linn, FAIA The editors of Architectural Record start planning our Innovation Conference more than a year in advance. We attend conferences, exhibitions and lectures; read everything in sight; and visit offices across the country and world to get a firsthand look at the kind of work people are doing. Through our research, we’ve come to understand that environmental pressures and rapid technological advancements are changing the way we design and build. Because of this, it would have been a mistake to tie the conference to a single subject. So instead, we gave it a name that describes this
After landing at the dock and walking through the parklike serenity of this walled island, you finally catch a view of the cinema, a pavilion with the same oval rondeur, says the artist, as the great Fenice Theater. Though it functions as a theater showing documentary films and holds an audience of 35 to 40 on its stepped rows of square seats, the pavilion retains a special intimacy and scale that make viewers feel they are entering an architectural model itself. On the outside, Putrih assembled a seemingly random (though actually precise) criss-cross installation of rusted trusswork bolted into place.