ArCnlteCture

Best in show The winners of this year's Riba awards range from a primary school in Japan to a butterfly house in Surrey. Jay Merrick reports

ill he or won't he? Lord informed by an interesting structural ar­ The Euro factor seems quite significant But what other eligible Big Foster of Thames Bank, rangement, and more the demonstration of in this year's list of 69 Riba awards; and if might be in 's league? Again, we Britain's most redoubtable a hugely refined structural system with dra· one were able to include the entries from look to Europe, and Behnisch, Behnisch & architectural technocrat, matic architectural connotations. It's a the worldwide award section - which are Partners' extraordinary building for Nord· really must think that 2004 humdinger, whichever way you look at it, not eligible for the ultimate imprimatur of deutsche Landesbank. It really does have Wis his year. Spurned of late for the coveted and whether or not you think that Foster's the - Swiss Re would face the the feel of a giant, slightly dystopic space annual Stirling prize by the Royal Institute palette is getting so reductive as to be pe­ very sternest competition. station that fell to earth in Hanover. Its func· of British Architects - the brilliant but culiarly self-effacing. His buildings are be­ The aerial adventure of 's On­ tional form -like Lego jammed together in bouncy Thames bridge, an elegant but coming objects whose drag coefficients tario College of Art & Design building in a hurry - seems momentarily to recall eerily vacuous Great Court of the. British would interest Formula One streamliners. , featured in these pages last week. Sixties brutalist architecture. Like Swiss Re. Museum - surely there can be no compe­ But could there be a fiy in the ointment would front up to Swiss Re with confidence. this is bold stuff; unlike Swiss Re, the Lan­ tition for ' triumph of of Foster's apparently assured Stirling So would 's "folded" Rosenthal desbank offers up its structure nakedly and structural triangulation, the Swiss Re prize victory later this year? Not a fly, exactly Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati; ruggedly - nothing svelte here. building in the City of , popularly - more of a giant blue grub. And in , ditto Foreign Office Architects, whose Such buildings are statements, brand known as the Gherkin. , at that It is indeed possible that Yokohama Ferry Termitlal has edged them marks. The bulk of the Ribaawards, though, The prospect is hard to argue against, the Swiss Re building will be upstaged by into the inner sanctum of the fluid, post­ go to architecture that's rather less than only days after Riba's announcement of architecture by and Colin millennial architectural discourse domi­ thal Less, and therefore often more sig­ more than 60 award-winning buildings in Fournier that has its roots in Sixties pop art. nated by practice~ such as Herzog & de nificant The "ordinary" newer buildings we the Stirling prize ionglist. Fosler has taken Cook and his anarchic col­ Meuron and Rem Koolhaas's OMA studio. see around us are a better litmus test for structural precepts set out by one of his lective launched a hundred "fab" archi­ Another project - in Japan, by the architectural standards in Britain. It's in our heroes half a century ago and delivered tectural riffs as teachers at London's Partnership, deserves to byways and urban infills that architectural something unequalled in terms of form. Architectural Association, but they never be highlighted. Though not as obviously riv­ creativity, fueUed by less than lavish bud­ When Buckminster FUller invented the actually completed a building: no need to, etmg as the other buildings in Riba's in­ gets, either delivers or stumbles. structural system that produced the for they became famous as architectural ternational award category, it has clearly Toothache or a cracked. filling is certainly geodesic dome, he could not have imagined guenillas. The Kunsthaus in Graz is Cook's been designed to elevate the spirits of route to fine architecture in Chelms· it would be used with such perfect upward first building and, like Swiss Re, it is stun­ Minami-Yamashiro Elementary School, ford. There, Richard Mitzman Architects mobility. Swiss Re is less architecture ning, though in an utterly different way. many of whom won't forget its airy grace. have turned. the Advance Dental Clinic into ·>1' ! .'

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a tour de force on a pretty horrid site. Mitz­ architectural googly for the Stirling prize Eyes on the which genuine architectural avant·gardism exclusive is the organisation's Architecture man, of course, had a signal advantage: he shortlist, the Butterfly House by Laurie prize: Riba's has produced a glitzy souk that looks like Week, which has just started and runs until practised as a dentist for a decade before Chetwood would be the frontrunner. winners include a shinunering blue girdle fighting to keep Sunday. There is a wide variety of events, deciding it would be more interesting to ex­ Chetwood has taken an ex·[deal Home (clockwise from an over·generous midriff under control. some of them linked to the Clerkenwell tract architectural fees than crumbling mo­ demonstration house which was reassem­ above) Butterfly The North and the Architecture Biennale, but the meat of lars. And, in this case, good design clearly bled in a quiet Surrey lane in 1948, and House in Surrey; Graduate Centre of London Metropolitan it is in the "open building" list, which allows pays: since the completion of the dental clin­ wrapped what amounts to an art installa­ Norddeutsche University in Holloway Road. north London, the public access to quite a range of ic, with its skylight views of the sky above tion around its core. Landesbank's both by , are also inter· interesting architecture. the treatment chairs, the practice has in­ The result is almost indescribable. yet offices in esting. The musewn is conceptually ex· The Butterfly House is available for creased its patient roll by more than 500. highly gripping - a mess that is anything Hanover; the cellent and well made. But is it gripping? inspection. So too is the Ercol factory in Other projects are designed not to pay, but a mess. F\J.miture made from glass, Advance Dental The graduate centre is, in a sense, the Princes Risborough, . but to sUlluise. The Riba awards list in­ including a table bung on a mix of elasti­ Clinic in reverse - rather poorly made (budgets, no The latter is a complete surprise: again, fine variably throws up a micro-project so grip­ cated and rigid ties; 2km of bungee rope; Cbelmsford; doubt) and conceptually inscrutable. What architecture has transformed a typical ping that it makes the Stirling prize 50 carbon-fibre fishing rods for handrails; and the Minami· has the constellation, Orion, whose geom· workaday environment into something shortlist. Three on the ionglist will be 100 metres of fibre-optic cable. which Yamashiro school etry informs the building, got to do with humane. And the transformation of St looked at with particular care. Simon Con­ electrifies Chetwood's demesne at night. in Japan London's grungey Holloway Road? Paul and St Mark, Old Ford in St Stephen's der Associates' Vista chalet at Dungeness, A grand experiment, in other words, in Edmund Sumner; The building, it must be said, has three Road in London - quite a concentration of covered in glued-dovm black rubber sheet­ which materials were deliberately put to Roland Hasbe; wonderfully affecting spaces, where Libes­ saints! - is a must Here, an art gallery in ing. is one; Willdnson Eyre's beautifully con­ unexpected uses. The Riba judges were Nicholas Kane; kind is at his best But how did he come up the shape of a wooden hull has been sqs- ... trived twist of geometry, the Bridge of divided on this project: architectural Katsuhisa Kida with such a meanly compressed entrance pended above the pews. The drama of the Aspiration, linking the Royal Opera House fantasias are, after all, soft targets. foyer? And how could the Riba jurists structure, designed by Matthew Lloyd, is in Covent Garden with the Royal Ballet Back in the big league, ' have suggested - even ironicaUy - that from balanced by wonderful detailing - the 19th School, is an even stronger contender. Selfridges department store in one of its jutting-shard balconies, "pre­ century and the third. millennium fused Maggie's Cancer Caring Respite Centre in will be closely considered, not least because sumably heroic philosophical or political together with great charm. Dundee, by . will be in the mix. of the extraordinary level of publicity it statements could be declaimed". But ifpure wonder and strangeness are generated. The case for it has another hook: The Riba awards, and the Stirling prize, For Architecture Week details, go to the issue when it comes to choosing an this is the only major building in Britain in are an essentially exclusive affair. Far less www.architectureweek.org.uk