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  • Socrates Architects, Jersey, C.I.
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Category Archives: Planning policy

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

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July 15, 2014

/ Oliver Wainwright

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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architecture, Art and design, Asia Pacific, Business, China, Cities, Commercial Property, Culture, Design, Planning policy, Real estate, Retail industry, Society

Architecture in 2014: singing bins, talking pavements and skygardens

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January 7, 2014

/ Oliver Wainwright

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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architecture, Art and design, Commercial Property, Communities, Design, Education, Environment, Green building, Housing, Olympic legacy, Planning policy, Privatisation, Regeneration, Richard Rogers, Social housing, Society, Technology

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