Miriam Fitzpatrick picks out some exceptional examples of building design - from glamorous public buildings through to sustainable housing schemes home and abroad
Educational
Project: Lavender Sure Start and Children's Centre, Mitcham, Surrey
Client: London Borough of Merton
Designer: John McAslan and Partners
Year: 2003-05
Cost: £1.8 million
This 1,000m² nursery and community building is an example of an elegant design built on a restricted budget and forms part of the government's Sure Start initiative for use by low-income families. Intended to act as a local catalyst for regeneration, it succeeds in creating a hub for people using adjacent facilities such as allotments, tennis courts, paddling pool and playground on grounds that were previously prey to vandals. The new building is modular to allow for off-site fabrication and speedy site assembly and flexible to meet the needs of children, parents and the local community. It uses sustainably sourced building materials, including Douglas fir that will weather naturally to silver and is environmentally responsive in terms of aspect and orientation, daylight penetration and natural ventilation.
Civic
Project: The Scottish Parliament, Holyrood, Edinburgh
Client: The Scottish Parliament, initially the Scottish Office
Designer: EMBT and RMJM
Year: 1998-2004
Cost: £800m approx
The design of the new Scottish Parliament has generated heated debate - and its own Fraser inquiry, but now that it has been opened, it is being hailed as an international landmark akin to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao or the Sydney Opera House, and an example of progressive architecture that become tourist attractions and icons in their own right.
This design was the result of an international design competition won by the Barcelona architect Enric Miralles's practice and its partner Benedetta Tagliabou (EMBT) in collaboration with Edinburgh-based firm RMJM. Miralles died soon after construction began in 2000 and his widow completed the project. The building continues to attract debate - some praising it for its exuberance, others critical of its inward-looking forms. But most cannot fail to be impressed by the creative energy of its committed designers and the rare quality of craftwork in its execution.
Project: Peckham Library, London
Client: Southwark Council
Designer: Will Alsop, Alsop Architects
Year: 1999
Cost: £4.5m
This was a rare example of a public building elevating the spirits of a run-down inner-city neighbourhood by its bold response to the brief. It signalled a new era of public buildings that could be practical, engaging and fun. Winner of the Stirling Prize in 2000, this dramatic design for a library, community and council facilities, has transformed the heart of Peckham.
Clad in patinated copper and coloured glass, the two upper floors hover above a dramatic colonnaded entrance space which forms an extension of Peckham Square. The orange beret and ‘LIBRARY’ lettering playfully animate the roofscape, making the building easily distinguishable from locations beyond the square itself.
Commercial
Project: Selfridges Department Store, Birmingham
Client: Selfridges, as part of redevelopment by the Birmingham Alliance
Designer: Future Systems
Year: 2004
Cost: £40m
This flagship department store is a contemporary interpretation of the windowless retail box and is central to Europe's biggest shopping redesign - a £1billion redevelopment of the Bullring in the heart of Birmingham. Its billowing, blob-like enclosure follows the shape of the site and its concrete sculptural form, clad in 16,000 spun aluminium discs against a deep blue background, gives it a brilliance reminiscent of the glistening fashion statements of a Paco Rabanne sequin dress. The flagship store is part of the redevelopment of the Bullring as a whole, is now better integrated with the city.
Project: St Mary Axe, Swiss Re's London Headquarters
Client: Swiss Reinsurance Company
Designers: Foster and Partners, BDSP, Arup
Year: 2001-4
The winner of 2004 RIBA Stirling Prize, this iconic office development - popularly known as the Gherkin - has added a distinctive landmark to London's skyline. This 40-storey, tapered tower breaks with the conventions of box-like offices. Circular in plan, its column-free floor-plates are punctuated by five-storey, light courts or gardens that rotate for each successive floor to create a spiral of void-space that draws up fresh air through the building and so naturally ventilates the surrounding spaces. The building's shape and fully glazed enclosure maximise natural light throughout. These concepts contribute to the building's laudable environmental credentials: it uses 50% less energy than a traditional office development. The glazed bar at the top has been described as 'one of the very best rooms in 21st century London'.
Housing
Project: Accordia, Brooklands Avenue, Cambridge
Client: Countryside Properties Plc
Designer: Feilden Clegg Bradley Architects with Maccreanor Lavington and Alison Brooks
Year: 2003-07
Cost: £80 million
Housing rarely captures the public imagination but this mixed tenure housing by Hobsons Brook in Cambridge is an exception. Overall winner of the 2006 Housing Design Award, this development strikes a delicate balance in a few key respects. The development is made up of 212 houses and 166 apartments on a 9.5 hectare site achieving a density of 47 dwellings per hectare. The masterplan is sensitive to its setting using, landscape architects, Grant Associates to develop a strong landscape framework that recalls the greens and courts of Cambridge.
Project: BedZed
Client: Peabody Trust
Designer: Bill Dunster Architects, Arup Engineers, BioRegional Development Group
Year: 2002
Value: £12m
BedZed stands for Zero (fossil) energy development and its location, Beddington in South London. This is an acclaimed mixed use development providing 82 homes, 18 live-work units and workspace, which is a good model of sustainable development. The homes, which are mixed tenure, are designed to maximise passive solar energy and are fitted with specially designed photovoltaic (PV) panels, which, along with super-insulation, wind-driven ventilation systems, a combined heat and power (CHP) plant - fuelled by woodchip waste - and water conservation systems, reduce energy demand to 25% of that for a conventional home of similar size.
Public space
Project: New public space at the Tower of London
Client: Historic Royal Parks
Designer: Stanton Williams Architects, Arup, Gardiner and Theobold
Year: 2004
Cost: £14.5m (including visitor facilities)
This is an example of how the setting of a World Heritage site can be enhanced and access significantly improved by the careful design of contemporary facilities and landscaping. Architects Stanton Williams faced the challenge of consulting more than 100 local groups to gain support for adapting a Scheduled Ancient Monument and listed buildings, and closing a traffic through-route to achieve a completely pedestrianised space. The lighting, which is so critical to the feeling of a space at night, has been carefully integrated into the large granite seating and architectural elements and avoids the visual disturbance of an array of lamp-standards. The design also seamlessly integrates disabled access, which is particularly challenging when dealing with historic fabric.
Regeneration
Project: The London Olympics, 2012
Client: The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA)
Designer: Numerous international practices
Year: 2012 and beyond
Although this scheme is in its infancy, its potential to change London and to regenerate east London is extremely significant. Run by the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA), it aims to achieve world-class architecture. The first designer to be chosen to design a venue was the Pritzker Prize winner, Zaha Hadid, who will design London's Olympic Aquatics Centre. One of the biggest new parks in Europe will sit alongside the proposed main site of the Olympics transforming the Lower Lea Valley and creating a lasting legacy of cutting edge sporting venues for the capital and the nation. The main Olympic Park will establish 9,000 new homes, community facilities, retail space and new offices, with close to £100 billion (146 billion Euros) worth of planned investment which is set to change the face of London over the next two decades.
Housing
Project: Borneo/Sporenburg - 2,500 housing units in Amsterdam's East Docks
Client: City of Amsterdam
Designer: Masterplan by West 8; individual units by international and local architects
Year: 1996-2000
Built on the Borneo and Sporenburg peninsulas in Amsterdam's Eastern Harbour Area, this dense residential development is a showcase of urban design. Design codes provide a consistent character and underlie a variety of inventive responses by different architects. The rowhouses poised on canals along Borneo's Scheepstimmermanstraat are an exemplar of good design with each building individually designed, but achieving harmony by adherence to an underlying design code. The dense dwellings make up a development of 8,000 houses and 17,000 apartments.
Health and well-being
Project: The Thermal Baths spa, Vals, Switzerland
Client: The community of Vals
Designer: Peter Zumthor
Year: 1996
Few buildings capture the ephemeral and universal quality of materials and light as well as these unique baths set into steep alpine landscape. The baths' appeal lies in the way the design captures the ritual of bathing while also enhancing the site.
This new hot thermal bath house is a simple rectilinear structure set into the steep valley side at Vals in Switzerland and constructed of gneisis - a stone formed by the same heat that warms the thermal water. The building's drama comes from the intimacy and complexity of the spaces which interlink between indoors and outdoors, as well as from the high quality of craftsmanship in the choice of materials and the treatment of those materials. Zumthor asserts that architecture is a balance of emotion and reason and the baths ably demonstrate this philosophy.