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Will building boffins knock the Freedom Tower down to size?

Fri, 11 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

At a symbolic 1,776 feet high (1776 being the year the Declaration of Independence was issued) above the New York skyline, 1 World Trade Center, also known as the Freedom Tower, was to be the ultimate symbol of America's fightback from the 9/11 attacks – stood in the place of the Twin Towers, the tallest building in America, nay, the western hemisphere would emerge. Except that, oh...

A perfect home for making an exhibition of yourself

Thu, 10 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

If only there were a well-worn idiom about people living in glass houses. Perhaps "people who live in glass houses... really shouldn't live in glass houses"? Or at least not this one.

Live the high life: the penthouse apartment with the best view in town

Thu, 10 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

A vast £50m penthouse as large a seven-bedroom house has been planned for the top of the Shard, Europe's tallest skyscraper, it has been reported.

The listed buildings certain to fuel discussion

Wed, 09 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Petrol stations are not known for fuelling aesthetic enlightenment (think more financial ruin, as we watch our money flow away in a blur of digits) but there was a time when filling up required a sophisticated setting.

Renzo Piano: 'The Shard is my dream building'

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Come and see this", Renzo Piano says, and the 74-year-old Italian architect beckons me out of his office, through the front door, and on to the pavement. We're in the Marais district of Paris, and it's buzzing with early-evening life – shoppers, café denizens, office workers heading for the Métro. Piano – tall, slender and bearded, with a ducal air about him – walks a few yards and then stops and points towards something that's up a side street. "Look! Look!" he says, his eyes sparkling.

What do North Korea's buildings and landmarks tell us about the totalitarian state?

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

When Kim Jong-Il died in December 2011, a window was fleetingly opened on to the notoriously insular North Korea. Now, a new book kicks open the back door of the country's capital, Pyongyang. German architect and publisher Philipp Meuser's two-volume Architectural and Cultural Guide: Pyongyang is ostensibly an overview of the city's buildings, but it reveals much more of the world's most closed society, not to mention the hypocrisy of its ruling dynasty. Pyongyang's streets, writes Meuser, are lined with "seemingly well-kept residential buildings that conceal primitive, single-storey huts in their back yards". Monuments are "illuminated by perfectly designed lighting systems after dark while private dwellings show barely a light". And public buildings "flaunt lavish facades of quarried stone while the precast concrete of the pavements is riddled with cracks". The city was almost completely destroyed during the Korean War and reconstructed in its aftermath. Le Corbusier and his contemporaries might have approved of the regime's superficially rigid adherence to modernist, socialist design. But it comes at a cost. "It's such a negative country," says Meuser, who visited North Korea five times to research the book. "My first visit was very interesting, like being back in the Soviet Union 50 years ago. But I always felt lucky to leave."

Heads up: The bridge that suspends belief

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 13:22:38 +0100

After five years in the making, the highest and longest valley suspension bridge in the world opened in southern China's Hunan Province on Saturday.

Shard stands tall at full height

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 12:54:51 +0100

London may now boast the tallest skyscraper in Europe thanks to the highest part of The Shard's structure being placed on Friday, but the tower is still by no means complete.

The Shard draws itself up to its full height

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Pedestrians walk near The Shard building at London Bridge as the final section of steel was lifted into place on Europe's tallest building yesterday, bringing it to its full height of 310 metres (1,017ft).

Will Dean's Ideas Factory: A social network for buildings isn't as daft as it might sound

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

As a species, we don't really need any more social networking. But do our buildings?

Unstoppable! The rise and rise of Britain's green buildings

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Orlando Bloom has an eco-house; Prince Charles has built a sustainable home, and now even Damien Hirst is turning to green development with plans to build 500 eco-homes in Devon. Despite the economic gloom, the green way of building has never been more popular. And soon, it seems, all building work could be green. The Government is consulting on tightening building regulations so that homeowners undertaking major improvements would have to carry out energy-saving measures at the same time.

In pictures: New King's Cross Western Concourse

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 12:42:43 +0000

Next Monday passengers at London’s King’s Cross station will see the fruits of a five-year programme of building works which cost £550 million and includes a brand new Western Concourse.

What will the arts centre of the future look like?

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

In the years after the war it was a utopian vision of what an arts centre could be: theatres, galleries, halls and cinemas, not cut off from life, but placed at the heart of a residential estate.

Liverpool city council approves redevelopment plan

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

A £5.5bn redevelopment plan which threatens to see Liverpool's historic waterfront stripped of its world heritage status has been awarded planning permission by the city council.

Trending: Turn left at Peel and upstairs to Schwarzenegger

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

On Friday, the BBC director-general Mark Thompson revealed that part of Radio 1's new home in Broadcasting House is to be renamed The John Peel Wing.

Liverpool could lose favour if it messes with the Three Graces

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

For a century, mariners sailing into the Mersey port have been greeted by the majestic Three Graces. The Royal Liver Building and its less famous sisters, the Cunard and Port of Liverpool buildings, have dominated the skyline and earned the waterfront international recognition in the form of Unesco World Heritage Site status, along with the Acropolis, the Pyramids, Cambodia's Angkor Wat temple, the Taj Mahal, Stonehenge and the Great Barrier Reef.

The ultimate loo with a view

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Some might feel that the world's bankers have been metaphorically wazzing on us from a great height for years.

'Cathedral' barn is saved

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Britain's greatest surviving ancient wooden building, a huge medieval barn dubbed "the Cathedral of Middlesex" by John Betjeman, has been rescued for the nation after years of neglect at the hands of an off-shore property developer who bought it for £1.

Arrested development: Super-tower cut down to size

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Construction of the City of London's tallest skyscraper has been stopped at just the seventh floor amid funding concerns, with serious doubts that the 63-storey office block will ever be finished.