Archive for April, 2010

Interiors: From crack house to modern house

Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on April 30, 2010

The architects who turned a derelict one-time crack den into an award-winning family home

Back in 2005, when the market was booming, architect Patrick Michell and his partner, Claire McKeown, bought a three-bed house in Hackney, east London. The area boasts handsome terraces, but this house, a boarded-up former crack den, was in a sorry state. Fires had ripped through two rooms and there was a shabbily psychedelic paint scheme. Bailiffs had removed any character features that were left.

But to an architect wanting to make a property his own, it was perfect. "If there had been period features, we'd have worked more sensitively with them, but because it had all gone, we were free to give it a modernist slant," says Michell, 32.

He opened up the two front receptions, and transformed and expanded the narrow kitchen space at the back with a glass roof across the side return. The glass is one huge single piece, appearing to balance unaided on a wall of stone. The back wall is largely glass, too, with a ceiling-high, pivoting glass door to the garden and a glass box punched into the wall to create an appealing window seat. In summer, sunlight streams in, while at night trees tower in silhouette above your head. With a concrete floor inside extending out to the patio, the design aims to merge the two spaces. "I've made it fairly obvious what's new and what's original," Michell says, "and it's given the house a new character." Sightlines from the front door and bay are designed to run through to the garden, and the stairs have been opened up with a glass wall. Doesn't all the glass compromise their privacy? "You can't get away from it in London," McKeown says. "You have to accept that you'll have neighbours and sometimes they'll see what you're doing."

The extension was allowed under "permitted development" planning law, and the building work took nine months, during which time they moved into McKeown's rented flat. "I'd muscled in by this stage," says McKeown, 31, who trained as an architect. Between them, they took the tough decisions essential to any project – where to spend money and where to cut back. Michell's initial £125,000 budget finally came in at £190,000 – all part of the learning process, he says. (The house cost £378,000 at auction.) And though they cut back on the kitchen and joinery budgets, they spent money where it counted, on striking elements such as the glass.

They moved in before the work was finished, and tackled the tiling and painting themselves. "We had hot water, but nothing to cook on," Michell says. "It wasn't really the right thing to do." But for McKeown the excitement was worth it. Her tip for surviving? Build a wardrobe. "If I can get up in the morning and get dressed, I can cope with anything."

Almost finished, the house won an award earlier this year for the best London extension of the last five years. There are still jobs to do – shelves to put up, a front garden to complete – but they are happy to find every weekend is no longer dominated by DIY. They spend most of their time in the kitchen, and take particular pride in the window seat. Their only worry is that, having created a bespoke home, there can be no going back. As McKeown says, "We couldn't imagine living somewhere someone else has designed."

Hannah Booth

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Architecture, Design, DIY, Features, Homes, Life and style, The Guardian

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Shanghai Expo 2010: Tight security as city prepares for opening

Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on April 30, 2010

World leaders to attend launch of $50bn event which, say human rights groups, has also brought crackdown on dissent

After eight years preparing, Shanghai is launching the biggest Expo so far with a lavish show of lights and fireworks.

Hu Jintao, China's president, is hosting leaders including the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the European commission president, José Manuel Barroso, amid intense security in the eastern Chinese city. The South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, and North Korea's top official, Kim Yong-nam, are also attending.

Almost 200 countries are participating in the multibillion-pound Expo, which opens its doors to the public today. An estimated 70 million people – mainly Chinese – are expected to visit in the next six months.

The Shanghai Expo 2010 features everything from palm trees from Saudi Arabia to Rodin sculptures from France – perhaps a bid by Paris to rival Denmark, which has brought its Little Mermaid statue from Copenhagen harbour. Tourists will ride up to the roof of Switzerland's pavilion on a chairlift, while the Netherlands' "Happy Street" has miniature buildings set on what appears to be a helter-skelter.

The British pavilion – a cube pierced with 7-metre (23ft) Perspex spikes – proved so popular at trial openings that at one stage it had to be closed when too many people rushed to see it.

"Shanghai's hosting of the World Expo is the pride of all Chinese people," Hu told a delegation from Taiwan, according to China's state media. Earlier he described the event as "yet another important international gathering following the 2008 Beijing Olympic games".

Celebrities expected to perform at the opening include actor Jackie Chan – ubiquitous at big Chinese events – as well as pianist Lang Lang and tenor Andrea Bocelli, who also sang at the opening for the Beijing Olympics.

The tradition of Expos and World Fairs began with Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, but has lost much of its lustre in recent years.

China is hoping to breathe new life into it. It is spending $4.2bn (£2.7bn) to host the Expo. A reported $45bn has been spent overhauling Shanghai for the event – more than Beijing spent for the Olympics – with new airport terminals, hundreds of miles of subway line and a revamp of its historic waterfront, the Bund.

With security precautions at their height tonight, thousands of police are on duty, guards have been stationed at thousands of bus stops and 8,000 firefighters are on alert.

But campaigners say the event has also brought a crackdown on dissent. The Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) network said officials have detained, harassed or placed under surveillance activists, intellectuals and petitioners across Shanghai and surrounding areas. One target has been those who have protested over the forced demolition of their homes to make way for the Expo site. According to official estimates, 18,000 households have been knocked down.

In a statement the CHRD urged: "The government must stop the practice of placing 'troublemaking' individuals under surveillance and restricting their movements on 'sensitive' occasions. These individuals should not be punished for exercising their freedom of expression or their right to defend human rights."

Similar pressure was put on activists ahead of the Olympics.

Last month 6,000 people were detained in Shanghai in what officials described as a drive against "theft, gambling, prostitution and selling pornographic materials". In the runup to the event officials have also cleared many vendors off the streets and even ordered residents not to wear their pyjamas outside their homes, as some have become used to doing.

The Expo site, which spans both banks of the Huangpu river, is more than twice the size of Monaco at 5.3 sq km (1,310 acres). Shanghai residents have begun thronging areas nearby in the hope of catching the best of the fireworks display.

Tania Branigan

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Architecture, Art and design, China, Culture, Freedom of speech, guardian.co.uk, Human rights, News, World news

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