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CERSAIE - Bologna's International Exhibition of Ceramic Tile and Bathroom Furnishings, 28 September - 2 October 2010
From 28 September to 2 October 2010 one of the major international trade fairs for ceramic tiles and bathrooms will be taking place in Bologna. However, Cersaie is much more than a simple trade fair. It has now become an important forum for planners and architects, offering a comprehensive accompanying programme which includes a range of symposia and lectures...
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Viaducts: new urban encounters
An intelligent approach to repurposing disused viaducts is providing a number of cities with new public spaces that delight users with fresh and intriguing perspectives of familiar urban landscapes. Architonic examines how such projects, in turning us into contemporary flaneurs, make us rethink our relationship with the city.
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Over Site: how Caracas's new cable-car system is making the city's favelas more visible
Once so disenfranchised that they didn't even appear on maps of the city, Caracas's favelas are, thanks to projects such as the technically and politically remarkable MetroCable transport system in San Agustín, acquiring a social legitimacy. Here, we talk to architect Alfredo Brillembourg, co-founder of the multidisciplinary practice Urban Think Tank, about the development of the cable-car system and how it works to fill in those cartographic blanks.
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Design Israel
The completion of Ron Arad's small-scale masterpiece that is Israel's new Design Museum Holon signals a kind of design coming-of-age for the country. With its current design scene set to grow even further, Architonic talks to a number of established and emerging designers, curators and educators about the significance of Israeli design and where it's heading.
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Look Who's Talking: architecture in the global-communication era
If architecture is the accumulation of centuries of knowledge, then what of its existence in an era of perpetual and instantaneous updates that the Internet and social networking brings? For a technology-driven industry, it seems slow to embrace the possibilities of continuous information exchange. A number of young studios appear to have some answers, which in the process of challenging dusty perceptions are 'Twittering' and marketing their names to the forefront of architecture today ahead of the starchitects of yesterday.
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Extension for Nya Nordiska planned by Staab Architekten
On the 03 September 2010, a ceremony was held to mark the completion of the 4,000-square-metre extension to the premises of textile editors, Nya Nordiska, in Dannenberg in Lower Saxony. Berlin architect Volker Staab was responsible for the design of the new premises.
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Right on So Many Levels: innovative car-park design
When Joni Mitchell sang that 'they paved paradise and put up a parking lot', she neatly expressed our none-too-positive relationship with that most modern of building types, the car park. Architonic invites you to pull up to the bumper and take a look at a number of recent parking-garage projects that attempt to put a bit of love back into it all.
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Route Master: the 2010 London Festival of Architecture
With the 2012 Olympics coming round that last bend and into view, this year's geographic-route-fixated London Festival of Architecture decided on 'The Welcoming City' as its theme. But just how welcome was that as an idea...
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DMY 2010: Architonic reports from the Berlin design festival
Ernst Sagebiel's architectural matsterpiece Tempelhof Airport was the venue for this year's DMY design festival in Berlin. Architonic was needless to say there, ready for take-off.
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Own Goal: Who's really paying the price for South Africa's shiny new 2010 World Cup stadia?
All sporting eyes are on South Africa as the World Cup kicks off. But what kind of architectural legacy will the event leave behind and, perhaps more importantly, what will be its economic one?
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The Presence of Absence: Detroit's haunting architectural relics
There's faded grandeur. And then there's Detroit. Once the fourth-largest city in the US, its spectacular economic and social decline is writ large in the disintegration of its architectural fabric. With its former manufacturing industries decimated and parts of downtown Detroit becoming a depopulated wasteland, leading American photographer Sean Hemmerle has created 'Rust Belt' a series of compelling images – at times poetic, at others unnverving – of the city's former urban glory, both industrial and residential. His striking work serves as both architectural record and effective social commentary.
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'It's hard, hard, hard work': One Year On at New Designers 2010
Left brain. Right brain. If we're to believe all that pop-neurology, you're either a creative type or someone who just loves solving maths problems. Design manufacturer and retailer Thorsten van Elten, curator of One Year On, the show for entrepreneurial designers, explains how it's all about firing on both cerebral cylinders...
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Fancy a Joint?: innovative joinery in new furniture design
Screws? Glue? Who needs them? With a number of designers developing intriguing new ways of constructing furniture, Architonic takes a look at some examples of recent innovative joinery methods.
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Medium Rare: Architonic at Design Miami Basel 2010
Described by its organisers as 'the pre-eminent global forum for collecting, exhibiting, discussing and creating design', Design Miami Basel, the annual European get-together for those who like their design a touch on the exclusive side, put on a robust show this year. With the love-it-or-hate-it market for limited-edition design and one-off pieces clearly here to stay, Architonic spent some serious fair time with three of the scene's leading international design gallerists...
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Camouflage Architecture: underground buildings
If you're familiar with the Wombles, then you probably encountered underground architecture at any early age.
It's unlikely that the following projects were inspired by the Wombles, but that doesn't mean they're any less successful in terms of their functionality and singularity...
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California Calls You!: Californian Design
California, and in particular Los Angeles, has been home to numerous Hollywood stars and other glamorous figures of the burgeoning jet-set since the 1930s. The City of Angels was the ideal place for many architects to develop their ideas. The spectacular landscape, the sophisticated clientele, the climate, the wealth of the film industry, and, above all, the free-thinking that transcended all con-
vention offered architects then, as well as now, the opportunity to realise their visionary projects.
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A Size Issue
Architonic reviews '1:1 – Architects Build Small Spaces', the latest exhibition at London's Victoria & Albert Museum
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Exhibition: Richard Neutra in Europe (1960–1970)
Between 1960 and 1970, so in just ten years, the American architect Richard Neutra (*1892 in Vienna, †1970 in Wuppertal) had eight villas constructed in Europe; four in Switzerland (one of which was the only one to be built without a flat roof), three in Germany and one in France. ...
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From Start to Finnish: Architonic surveys Scandinavian design hero Tapio Wirkkala's remarkable oeuvre
With leading Finnish design brand Artek reissuing two of its fellow countryman Tapio Wirkkala's striking designs from the late 1960s and early 70s, as well as first-time-round, 'vintage' pieces of his being shown at international design fairs such as Design Miami Basel, now is the time to look back at the work of this highly productive designer, whose contribution to postwar Scandinavian design was as major as it was diverse.
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Slovenian Design
The "ISKRA: NON-ALIGNED DESIGN 1946–1990" exhibition held at the Architecture Museum Ljubljana (AML) came to an end in February. The exhibition provided an insight into the golden age of Slovenian product design, which lasted from the 1960s to the 1990s. Recently, a new generation of young Slovenian designers is creating a stir...
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