Category Archives: Art and design

SHORTLISTED: LIGHT EMITTING CONCRETE FOR DESIGNBOOM’s LED COMPETITION & SELECTION FOR GWANGJU’s INTERNATIONAL DESIGN BIENNALE

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Delighted to announce our LED lighting innovation ‘Light Emitting Concrete‘ has been shortlisted for DESIGNBOOM’s ‘Happy LED Life’ competition and it has been selected for the prestigous exhibition at Gwangju’s 2015 International Design Biennale, where the winner will be selected.

This competition was about discovering new ways of experiencing the familiar and realising the potential of design on a social, cultural and environmental level through LED lighting.

The brief was to explore smart lighting ideas and products for public and private spaces seeking to improve our lit environment through LED technology, while raising awareness around low-energy consumption, developing sustainable and imaginative LED lighting solutions for production by Korean technology companies, supporting the local design community and the greater Asian economy.

The theme of the 2015 Biennale is ‘Conviviality with Design’.
It seeks to portray the way in which good design is not only functionally outstanding, but how it accompanies our lives in a way that improves our existence; adding energy and pleasure to our daily activities through tangible and intangible values.

Gwangju International Design Biennale 2015 aims at getting the public to rediscover the essence of design, and the power it can bring to individuals and corporations in contemporary times, particularly in relationship to the growing presence of standardized technology.

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Park-Bridge-Esplanade-Quarter-St-Helier-waterfront-Jersey-architects

PARK-BRIDGE SELECTED FOR AJ’S ARCHITECTURE TOMORROW GALLERY AT MIPIM

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We have been selected to appear in The Architects Journal (AJ) ‘The Architecture Tomorrow Gallery’ for our project Park Bridge in the Bridges category at MIPIM UK this year (2015). The AJ had a huge volume of entries this year, the quality of which were of a very high standard so being curated is a superb achievement. This is Fantastic news!

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Barry Water Sports Activity Centre - Barry Quary Marina Developments - cardiff

SHORTLISTED DESIGN: £2M WATER ACTIVITY CENTRE AWARDED SECOND PLACE

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Shortlisted design for the Barry Community Water Activity Centre

Our design for a water activity centre located in Barry Marina, South Wales was shortlisted and then finally came in at second place.

Find our more about it on the BCWAC (Barry Community Water Activity Centre) website at; http://www.bcwac.org.uk/ and see some of our featured design entry images at http://socratesarchitects.com/portfolio/bcwac-competition-entry/

London's Gherkin skyscraper put on the market

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Foreign buyer expected to purchase the 40-storey office building, with agents hoping for offers of around £650m

One of London’s most recognisable landmarks, the Gherkin, has been put up for sale and is expected to be snapped up by an overseas buyer.

The 40-storey City of London skyscraper was put into receivership in April, and the agents appointed to sell it are hoping for offers in the region of £600m to £650m. Savills and Deloitte Real Estate have been jointly instructed to sell the 505,000 sq ft (46,900 sq m) office building, which was designed by Lord Foster and opened in 2004. The two firms said marketing of the Gherkin including an advertising campaign and a dedicated website was about to begin, "with interest expected to come from all corners of the globe".

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China town: meet the architecture giant with Asian designs on London

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Aedas’s mixed-use malls and elevated walkways might work in China, but will these mammoth towers blot Britain’s capital?

Their buildings dot the globe, but you probably couldn’t name one, nor would you ever guess they had come from the same practice. They have built a gargantuan conference centre in China that looks like a teetering stack of mirror-clad Jenga blocks, an enormous concert hall in Singapore in the shape of a crumpled beetle, and over 9.3m sq metres (100m sq ft) of shops, offices and hotels in variously sculpted towers across Asia and the Middle East. Now Aedas, one of the largest architecture practices in the world, plans to bring its flashy brand of mixed-use huge projects to London. And there is very little to stand in their way.

Our Chinese clients have their sights set on London, and they know what they want, says Keith Griffiths, the Welsh-born chairman of Aedas, who presides over the 1,400-strong practice from its Hong Kong headquarters. They are used to high rise, high density, truly mixed-use developments having everything on one site, so you can live, work and play without ever leaving the building. We think that’s the way London needs to densify.

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Inside the Shard, floor by floor – interactive

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Over the coming days the skyscraper’s owners will attempt to persuade the property industry that it is finally more than just a nice view. But even with all of the support coming from Doha for one of the country’s highest profile investments, the office complex will only be around a third full. Roll over the graphic to find out how much of each section of the building is currently occupied … Continue reading…

Tenants shun Shard leaving Europe's first vertical city up in the air

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London skyline’s £1.5bn addition remains all but empty year on from opening, with flats designed to pull in super-rich unsold

Soaring 310 metres (1,016ft) high and with 72 storeys, everything about the Shard is dramatic.

The London Bridge skyscraper the capital’s newest landmark, with views stretching 40 miles and which is visible to drivers crawling around the M25 bills itself as "Europe’s first vertical city".

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Galleries are forced out of their historic London home

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Cork Street dealers say property development is a threat to character of St James and Mayfair

London’s reputation as a romantic destination for lovers of art and style will hang in the balance this Valentine’s Day, as the deadline passes for public responses to a scheme to safeguard the look and traditions of Mayfair and St James’s against the influx of rich foreign residents.

The two grand, chiefly Georgian-built areas of the capital are a big draw for tourists and daytrippers, fanning out around Cork Street, renowned for its art galleries and salesrooms, and around Savile Row, for many years the heart of Britain’s bespoke tailoring industry.

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Architecture in 2014: singing bins, talking pavements and skygardens

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From crime-fighting lampposts to Zaha Hadid’s Olympic pool opening for business and a rise in social housing (finally), Oliver Wainwright charts the trends that will dominate 2014

It may sound like a prediction made while still high on brandy butter, drunk with New Year optimism, but 2014 will see an increase in the volume and quality of social housing built by local authorities for the first time in decades. After a rule change that allows councils to spend housing rental income on building new homes, and a relaxation of local authority borrowing caps, up to 25,000 council homes could be built over the next five years. East London borough Newham is leading the way, with a pilot project of modular homes designed by Richard Rogers, along with opportunities for younger architects to get involved. Let’s hope we see more initiatives like Peabody’s recent competition, allowing smaller practices to bypass cumbersome EU procurement rules.

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