Mar 31

The new Architectural Review

The new edition of the Architectural Review has arrived in the office, in all its redesigned glory!

We’re really happy with the result, the cover looks handsome (thanks to Tham & Videgard Hanssen Architects and the photographer Ake E:son Lindman), and we think we have a beautiful selection of projects for our readers to enjoy.Look out for it in shops soon (depending on where you are in the world).

When we were redesigning the magazine, we asked ourselves many times what we felt the AR should stand for. There’s no single answer to that, but the AR has always had clear directions in its editorial stance.

We share many of those traditional interests and values (context; the city; a broad definition of architecture as a social and cultural praxis; criticality) and have many of our own (cosmopolitanism, an interest in popular culture, excitement about a range of design disciplines). This sensibility has defined our choices on everything from the typography of the magazine to the choices we made about content.

We are very proud of the selection of buildings. From the extraordinary courtyards of Nieto Sobejano’s museum near ancient ruins in Cordoba, Spain, to Ryue Nishizawa’s gallery in Towada, Japan, each of the projects has something to do with the city, an attitude to urbanity and decorum that much architecture so far this century has ignored.

There is also an extraordinary house by by Sou Fujimoto, the young Japanese architect. We feel very attached to Sou, as he won an AR Emerging Architecture award early in his career and seems to be going from strength to strength ever since. Other projects include Diller, Scofidio and Renfro’s remaking of the Alice Tully concert hall in New York, emerging Spanish practice Add+ Arquitectos’ Manresa town hall, a Belgian crematorium by Claus en Kaan and work by Kengo Kuma, Herzog de Meuron and Cao Perrot.

In the View section, we have tried to bring insight from some of the best writers about architecture and the city to global events we feel have relevance to debates about the city. So, the bush fires in Victoria, Australia, the predicted effects of Barack Obama’s stimulus package on American cities, and an interview with RIBA Gold Medal winner Alvaro Siza are amongst the items in the first issue.

We have no plans to release any content online for free. This blog will remain a beautiful addendum to the magazine. To get the content above, you’ll have to subscribe! For those of you who do, please let me know your reaction to the first issue, and keep in touch in the next few months as the AR continues to publish new and exciting things.

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