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Tall orders: the best film skyscrapers – in pictures

The Sheet — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 10:19:17 +0000

Hollywood is drawn to multi-storey architecture like … well, like a colossal prehistoric gorilla is drawn to multi-storey architecture. From the caped crusader posing on rooftops in The Dark Knight to Phillipe Petit's death-defying walk between the twin towers in Man on Wire, here's a selection of the greatest movie moments involving everyone's favourite phallic symbol

A Room for London – in pictures

The Sheet — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:00:26 +0000

A small vessel perched on top of the Southbank Centre has become London's most coveted hotel room

A Room for London: a new installation and hotel on the South Bank

The Sheet — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:42:37 +0000

Liz Bird was one of the first guests to spend the night at A Room for London, a 'holiday houseboat' architectural installation on top of the Queen Elizabeth Hall overlooking the Thames. It will be open for bookings to the rest of us this Thursday

Ship's log, Roi des Belges: Sunday 15 January, 2012. Time: 4pm. Weather: fine. Wind: south-westerly.

Crew safely on board and feeling very pleased with themselves, standing on the top deck sipping prosecco and waving at promenaders on the South Bank as they admire the Thames river views from Big Ben round to St Paul's. It has been an unusual embarkation, via a backstage door at the Queen Elizabeth Hall and up a specially installed lift to the roof.

Resembling a 1920s steamer and designed by architect David Kohn and artist Fiona Banner, the Roi des Belges interior is red-stained plywood with not a nautical blue and white stripe in sight. The spacious main deck's bow is lined with windows and a wraparound wool banquette. There's a massive bed, which cleverly converts into twin beds by sliding on runners built into the floor.

Behind is a table and chairs next to a kitchenette. A shower room and toilet – with portholes giving views of St Paul's or the London Eye – straddle the entrance hall at the back of the boat, or "stern".

The pièce de resistance is the snug upper deck, filled with London-themed books, which we quickly rename "The Bridge" and where we write up the ship's log. This weighty tome is where guests who managed to secure a night's stay when bookings went live last September (six months' worth of bookings snapped up in 12 minutes) are expected to chart their experience. Fountain pen provided.

Alain de Botton is the philosopher behind Living Architecture, the foundation which rents out unusual holiday homes and came up with the idea for the project. He put "demons", as his 3am log entry under the heading "sightings" when he stayed earlier this month. Our entry for the same hour reads: "Man, singing loudly, zig-zags across Waterloo Bridge".

Later this month, the boat will host its first "artist in residence", the multi-instrumentalist Andrew Bird who will play a one-off gig via live webcast (28 January). Other musicians such as David Byrne and Laurie Anderson will also perform, and writers including Michael Ondaatje and Jeanette Winterson will take part in A London Address there, a series of monthly writings and recordings .

We use our binoculars to study the faces of those beneath us on the South Bank: lovers, strollers, joggers. We are constantly drawn to the "vessel" opposite. As night falls, the opulent Savoy hotel lights up like a jewelled beacon, its crystal interiors shining out over the inky Thames.

Ship's log: 5pm. A police launch, its sirens blaring, speeds along the water, dodging the packed tourist boats. Trains rattle over Hungerford Bridge, snatches of conversation drift upwards, a saxophone wails plaintively.

Ship's log: 11.26pm. Crew retires for the night. Blinds are left untouched, but sleep doesn't come quickly. We keep sitting up and looking out at London's multi-coloured riverside.

Monday, 16 January. Ship's log: 7am. the sun has just risen. On the starboard side, The Shard pierces a pinky red sky.

Ship's log: 11am. Binoculars stowed, log up to date, crew disembarks, wishing their "trip" could have been longer.

• Be warned, the first sale of nights in the boat, for between January and June, sold out in just 12 minutes. Bookings for July to December will go on sale online this Thursday, 19 January, at midday GMT. A Room for London (aroomforlondon.co.uk, living–architecture.co.uk) sleeps two and costs £300 for a night, one night maximum

London Olympic Village – in pictures

The Sheet — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 00:05:58 +0000

When it opens this summer it will house 17,000 athletes, and after the Games become 2,800 homes

‘I can see the Shard from here’ – your pictures

The Sheet — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 13:07:21 +0000

As the tallest building in Western Europe the iconic Shard can be seen from all sorts of high rises and walkways in London. Inspired by a Flickr group of the same name, here's a selection of some of the best and most interesting images of the Shard as viewed by Flickr users. If you want to add your view of the Shard, send an email to community.coordinators@guardian.co.uk

The arts in 2012: architecture

The Sheet — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 00:07:25 +0000

Jonathan Glancey picks his highlights of the year ahead

Tate oil tanks

The cavernous old underground oil tanks beneath Tate Modern, the former Bankside power station, are due to reopen as performance and installation spaces in time for the Olympics. Connected to three new galleries, the tanks are the first phase of a £215m extension by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron. July. tate.org.uk

Shard London Bridge

Designed by Renzo Piano for property developer Irvine Sellar, the Shard, towering over the capital at 310 metres, is now the tallest building in western Europe. Rising from London Bridge station, this steel and glass-clad spire houses offices, restaurants, hotel, flats and four floors of public viewing galleries: on a clear day you will be able to see for 40 miles. May. the-shard.com

ArcelorMittal Orbit

Britain's tallest and biggest sculpture, the bright red Orbit – designed by Anish Kapoor and Cecil Balmond, with engineers Arup and architect Katherine Findlay – is made of complex, calligraphic loops and whirls writ in steel. As a public viewing gallery overlooking the 2012 Olympics site, this is London's 21st-century answer to the Eiffel Tower. May. london.gov.uk

Caro goes to Chatsworth

In a move that will no doubt provoke widely differing reactions, 15 steel sculptures by Anthony Caro will be set against the restored south front of Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, as well as gathered beside its sensational Emperor Fountain, designed by the great Joseph Paxton (creator of the Crystal Palace). Caro has often been inspired by powerful architecture, and there's no denying William Talman's baroque Chatsworth is a supremely confident building. 28 March to 1 July. chatsworth.org

Room for London

Imagine spending the night in an intriguing and isolated temporary house, designed by artist Fiona Banner and architect David Kohn, sitting atop the brutalist Queen Elizabeth Hall on London's South Bank. The tugboat-like building's first six months are already taken; bookings for July to December will be available in January for this project by Artangel and Alain de Botton's Living Architecture. January 2012. Details: living-architecture.co.uk

National 9/11 Museum, New York

A lofty, glazed atrium, sheltering two of the trident columns that once supported one of the twin towers, marks the entrance to the museum at the site of Manhattan's ground zero. Designed by Oslo-based Snohetta with local firm Davis Brody Bond, much of this long-awaited museum is underground. September. 911memorial.org/museum

Jonathan Glancey

Battersea Power Station: the power of dreams

The Sheet — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 15:49:28 +0000

Battersea Power Station will go on the market early in the new year after its latest redesign collapsed into administration. There have been many false starts over the years …

Readers’ cultural review of 2011: What, no Katy B?

The Sheet — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 13:28:13 +0000

Last week our critics picked their highlights of 2011. Did they get it right? Readers respond with their own highs (and lows)

MattB75

One Man, Two Guvnors was the most fun I've had in a theatre for years – easily the best play of 2011, and James Corden best performer. The National theatre largely misfired for me: A Woman Killed with Kindness, Cherry Orchard, 13, The Kitchen, Frankenstein and Greenland were all largely disappointing.

The RSC's Homecoming was the best revival. Rupert Goold's Merchant of Venice was great fun, even if the inconsistency in Portia's characterisation (from ditzy blond Glee fan to brilliant prosecutor, hm) took the edge off it.

Tom Brooke was my favourite actor of the year – in The Kitchen, and I Am the Wind.

oogin

Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid are still two of my least-admired starchitects. However, credit where it's due. I had the pleasure of wandering Toronto's AGO (Art Gallery of Ontario), redesigned by Gehry [a few years ago], and apart from his usual frivolous facade, the interior had been quite brilliantly done. So restrained and sophisticated: words I never never thought I'd use for the old showboater.

daveportivo

Katy B owned pop in 2011, or temporarily leased the lower sections of the charts from Adele at least. Seven singles off one album and a successful B-side, bridging the gap between cool, intriguing dance and charming, relatable 2000s-style British pop-star writing. Loved it.

Kleistphile

The programme of the year has been Mark Cousins' superb history of the cinema, The Story of Film: An Odyssey, on More4. Incredibly wide-ranging, informative and inspiring, with extremely intelligent analysis of how film developed and how the great directors innovated.

drdownunder

Artist Christian Marclay's awesome 24-hour film-montage The Clock, shown as part of the British Art Show in Plymouth. Mesmeric, fascinating, witty editing and marvellous film-buffery content.

SlimJim888

The Inbetweeners Movie. The snobs may scoff but this film says more about Britain and its youth than 20 Ken Loach films ever could.

OldFriar

Two of the greatest musical evenings were the appearances of the Budapest Festival Orchestra and Ivan Fischer in Mahler's First symphony, and the zany late-night Prom with audience requests including Bartók, Kodály and Stravinsky. A month before that, the magic combination of Andris Nelsons and the CBSO in Richard Strauss and Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky.

At the Royal Opera, the three most memorable performances were Madama Butterfly with Kristine Opolais in the title role and her husband Andris Nelsons in the pit; Werther with Sophie Koch and Rolando Villazón doing his best (still short of what Jonas Kaufmann can do); and the recent revival of Faust, with Vittorio Grigolo, René Pape, Angela Gheorghiu and Dmitri Hvorostovsky.

digit

The release by the BFI on DVD and Blu-Ray of Barney Platts-Mills's 1971 film Private Road, starring Bruce Robinson (who later wrote Withnail and I). I first saw this in about 1987 on TV and I've been wanting to see it again ever since. Even better than I thought.

Mark42

Gruff Rhys's Hotel Shampoo was my favourite album of the year; Cashier No 9 was not given the recognition it deserved. Enjoyed Kate Bush, Tinie Tempah, Noel Gallagher and Will Young's offerings, but very disappointed with Coldplay. Adele: lovely voice but too many songs sound the same on her album.

Still, it wasn't all bad: the end of Westlife and hopefully the beginning of the end for X Factor.

dbeecee

Right Here Right Now; Format international photography festival in Derby. Thousands of photographers took part from all over the world, including Joel Meyerowitz and Bruce Gilden. An exciting and eclectic mix showing the best in street photography.

davidabsalom

Best resurrection: Rab C Nesbitt. Comedy of the year for me. Now that the Tories are back in, he seems to have found his mojo again.

zibibbo

Leonardo da Vinci at the National Gallery. I think the major problem with this absurdly hyped show is that, apart from the two versions of the Virgin of the Rocks and the unfinished St Jerome, the other six "Leonardo" paintings on display are either too unattractively gauche, stiff and mannered to be considered good or significant. Or they're too implausibly naturalistic to be an autograph work (La Belle Ferronière is too lifelike to be by Leonardo). Or just too plain weird and damaged to take seriously (step forward, the newly discovered Salvator Mundi).

Thank you, Adrian Searle, for having the integrity to give your honest opinion about this insanely promoted but hugely disappointing show.

andglove

The High Country, an album by Portland band Richmond Fontaine, demands your attention from first song to last. It's one of the only albums that will give you the same sense of satisfaction that finishing a novel does.

LDTBFJ

Bridesmaids was a great and genuinely funny film. Comedies (and female comedians) are too frequently dismissed, especially by the Oscars board.

Snarlygog

British Art Show 7: In the Days of the Comet in Plymouth. It was good to see [Christian Marclay's] The Clock and Sarah Lucas's work up close and personal. At least there is an emphasis on craft skills in video art: good focus, framing and timing are back in fashion.

alphabetbands

Nicola Roberts, the good one from Girls Aloud. In her album Cinderella's Eyes she lays out her inner demons and anguish on a platter of sumptuous dance pop hooks and beats. The album is so simple that my two-year-old can sing along, and layered enough that we slightly elder statesmen can appreciate it as well.

juliendonkeyboy

In no particular order: Sufjan Stevens live at Southbank: ambitious, experimental, joyous, exciting, sad. Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle: the sixth episode, Democracy, was quite simply awesome. Senna is my film pick: made in 2010, but didn't get released on these shores until 2011. Wonderfully moving.

habsfan0303

Propeller's Comedy of Errors was riotous. I mean, how often does a naked grown man run past you with a sparkler wedged into his buttocks?

glynluke

Archipelago is the worst film I have ever seen in 50-odd years of cinema-going. How Peter Bradshaw and Philip French can find a single redeeming quality in this dreadful two-hour river of bathetic, emotionless, drama-free drivel baffles me.

Shatillion

I loved Attack the Block. I got mugged the week before it was released and actually found watching it quite cathartic. I was rooting for the little shits by the end. That's good screenwriting.

JimTheFish

A really disappointing year for British TV, which has been on a downward slide. Doctor Who was probably still the best thing domestically. The Crimson Petal and the White and The Hour were underwhelming misfires; The Shadow Line was about the only really promising new kid on the block.

The basic problem is that there's just not enough TV drama being produced. We need more one-offs, more Plays for Today to allow TV to find new voices and take more chances. Everything seems to be market-researched and focus-grouped into mediocrity.

LocalBird

We went to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park this summer and were blown away by the incredible Jaume Plensa exhibition; the alabaster heads took my breath away. Beautiful, mesmerising and enchanting.

Carefree

Memorable plays: Flare Path, Frankenstein (Jonny Lee Miller as the Creature was brilliant), and Much Ado at the Globe (Eve Best and Charles Edwards were good enough to almost match my memories of Janet McTeer and Mark Rylance as Beatrice and Benedick).

Damper squibs were Chicken Soup with Barley (far too long). Conor Macpherson's The Veil at the National started brilliantly but didn't deliver the beautiful, haunting, elegiac power of The Weir – a great shame.

Alarming

There were aspects of Grayson Perry's Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman that drove me round the bend. But he wrote well about his theme and chose some absolutely lovely objects from the British Museum's collection.

uptomost

85A collective from Glasgow's brilliant mechanical opera Idimov and the Dancing Girl at the Secret Garden Party. Spooky, funny, ingenious.

AdminGuru

The Tree of Life: a vast expansive film with multiple interpretations, and little in the way of film convention for the casual viewer to latch on to. Viewers fall into two camps I think: those who want simply to be entertained and led, and those who want to explore and participate. Tree of Life is about participation.

Wrighthanes

I just couldn't get The Tree of Life. I tried. I wanted to like it. Admittedly I was on a Singapore Airlines flight, which is not the ideal way to appreciate its cinematic beauty.

DeunanKnute

The Tree of Life is quite possibly the most overrated movie of all time. The sheer brilliance of every single actor isn't in dispute, nor is the superb cinematography. The movie itself is the problem, because it's a real clunker. It's also one of the few films I've seen at the cinema where people were either (vociferously) walking out in disgust or staying behind just to boo.

GorillaPie

The [designs for the] new US Embassy in London. I realise these buildings have to be more fortresses than offices, but really. I'm disappointed that such an important new commission isn't going to be more iconic. Especially since I live opposite the site.

Gundmundsdottir

Possibly the biggest disappointment was the final track on Bon Iver's second album: it never fails to surprise me with just how cheesy and plain bad it is.

CurlyScot

Some of my favourite moments have been in otherwise unremarkable shows. I was slowly won over by Susan Hiller at Tate Modern, and Nancy Spero's works Azur and Hours of the Night II [at the Serpentine] were so incredible I forgot all the meh stuff that surrounded them. The only exhibition I have been unreservedly knocked over by was Mike Nelson's Coral Reef at Tate Britain – an old piece so I'm not sure it counts. Not a superlative year; let's hope 2012 is better and isn't overwhelmed by a spurious Cultural Olympiad.

Centro Niemeyer closes but row over arts complex continues

The Sheet — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 13:02:05 +0000

Architect's name to be removed from centre in Avilés, northern Spain, as a result of legal action from the outgoing board

For the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer this should have been a week for champagne and his trademark Cuban cigars.

But celebrations of Niemeyer's 104th birthday on Thursday have been overshadowed by a very public feud over one of his most recent creations; a spectacular €44m (£37m) arts complex in Spain that is set to close this week, just nine months after its inauguration.

Following an acrimonious power struggle between local authorities and the administrators of the Oscar Niemeyer International Cultural Centre, it emerged this week that the architect's name would be removed from the complex as a result of legal action from the outgoing board.

When the centre opened in March in the northern Spanish city of Avilés, the local press billed it, with a strong dose of hyperbole, as Spain's answer to Brasilia.

Arts fans and locals hoped the centre, dreamed up by the architecture giant behind Brazil's curvaceous, space-age capital, could help revitalise the city just as the Guggenheim museum had breathed new life into Bilbao.

Global celebrities such as Brad Pitt, Woody Allen and Kevin Spacey put in appearances at the arts complex, which had taken three years to build and was paid for with public money.

But the election of a conservative regional government in May this year, after 12 years of socialist rule, reportedly brought the festivities to an abrupt end.

The incoming government accused the centre's board, which is called the Centro Niemeyer, but is not directly connected to the Brazilian architect, of misspending public money. The government vowed to close the arts complex, after an audit of its finances.

The centre's directors, who rejected those charges, and instead blamed the closure on sweeping cuts to the arts – the result of Spain's ongoing financial crisis.

Speaking to US National Public Radio earlier this month the centre's deputy director, Joan Picanyol, said: "The arts are always in danger. It's the first thing any public budget will cut."

Picanyol argued the city's newly elected government was scapegoating the centre for years of careless government spending. "They are using it as a symbol of what has really happened in Spain. Spending a lot of money, glamorous experiments, or this craziness about having a cultural centre in any town, or high-speed trains everywhere, any small town has an airport, and so on," Picanyol claimed.

What ensued were weeks of crossed words and strongly worded accusations between the new government and the centre's administrators. At one point Niemeyer himself joined the fray, penning an open letter from his home in Brazil in defence of the centre which he had designed in 2006.

"I am still hopeful that the decision about its closure or temporary suspension can be reversed," he wrote, describing the project as "something I carried out with the utmost care and which … helped put … a Spanish city … on Europe's touristic and cultural map."

Niemeyer said the centre's closure would represent "the loss of a fantastic space for promoting major cultural events and for constantly fertile dialogue between different sectors of the arts".

Avilés' regional government has said it hopes to reopen the centre early next year, although it will now need to find a new name.

"The name was registered and belongs to the foundation," Luis Rivas, a representative of the Niemeyer centre, told Brazil's O Globo newspaper.

As Niemeyer prepared to celebrate his 104th birthday, the festive spirit was lost on the centre's outgoing president, Natalio Grueso. "I will not rest until those who have slandered the people responsible for the Niemeyer [centre] are held to account in court," he told Spain's El Mundo.

Tom Phillips

The best architecture of 2011: Rowan Moore’s choice

The Sheet — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 00:08:07 +0000

It was the year of pop-ups and postmodernism – and the playful Frank Gehry went sky high

In New York they managed to complete the vast 9/11 memorial fountains in time for the 10th anniversary of the events of 2001, while around them rises the strange spectacle of commercial skyscrapers sponsored at huge expense from the public purse. Also in New York, Frank Gehry completed his tower of flats in Spruce Street with a playful beauty that has not been seen in skyscraper design for a while. These days, it's fashionable to knock Gehry for being the father of iconic building, but this tower, and his New World Symphony in Miami, shows that he is what has always been: a proper architect who likes to enjoy himself.

Last year the Serpentine Gallery got the turkey award in this space with its pavilion by Jean Nouvel; now it gets into the top 10 with Peter Zumthor's version of its annual commission. Pop-ups, identified as craze of the year in 2010, are still popping up, with Assemble's Folly for a Flyover leading the field. Olympic projects, such as the stadium and the aquatic centre, are getting their final buff and polish. Both are looking good, if you overlook the temporary add-ons on the latter, and the pointless plastic wrapper planned for the former, supplied courtesy of the Bhopal-implicated Dow Chemical Company.

In other news, postmodernism continued its inevitable revival. The magnificent James Stirling was honoured with a show at Tate Britain, and the V&A is currently revisiting the age of Grace Jones and leopard-skin Formica.

In a strong field of turkeys, the catastrophic Museum of Liverpool breasts the tape ahead of Rafael Viñoly's Firstsite in Colchester, the underwhelming new home of the BBC in Salford Quays and the anti-urban Westfield Stratford City.

TOP 10

8 Spruce Street, New York

Dazzling, elegant fun from Frank Gehry.

The Hepworth Wakefield

David Chipperfield completed two of his sober, considered, light-filled art galleries in 2011, in Margate and Wakefield. The one in Wakefield is the more convincing of the two.

New Court, London

Financial prestige meets cultural super-sophistication in Rem Koolhaas's headquarters for Rothschild.

Brockholes Visitor Village, Preston

A very nice place for looking at nature, on the edge of Preston, by Adam Khan. It floats.

Folly for a Flyover, London

Assemble, maker of the 2010 hit Cineroleum, maintained its form with this temporary cinema/bar/performance space under an elevated section of the A12.

Aquatic Centre, London

Breathtaking inside. Will look good outside, after the Olympics, when they have removed the giant water-wings that contain temporary seating.

Olympic Stadium, London

Handsome in its simplicity, until they wreck it with a festive wrapper for the Games.

Lyric theatre, Belfast

Just plain good, by the Dublin practice O'Donnell and Tuomey.

Maggie's Centres

Three more in the series of high-design cancer centres. The one in Glasgow, by OMA, and the one in Nottingham, by Piers Gough and Paul Smith, stand out.

Serpentine Gallery pavilion, London

An arena for watching plants grow, by Peter Zumthor.

TURKEY

Museum of Liverpool

Confused, expensive, misguided and offensive to the adjoining "Three Graces". Otherwise OK.

Rowan Moore