Featured articles
"We can’t sustain low density suburbs, density isn't a choice, it's a necessity." - Read our interview with the award-winning social housing architect Peter Barber.
Conservation area designation can be crucial, but treatment of individual parks varies considerably.
What is the client's strategic brief for construction projects?
Read the story behind the world's most iconic festival stage, Glastonbury's Pyramid Stage.
Read the story of Ronan Point, another disastrous event which had profound consequences for the construction industry.
BIM and the future of construction
A brief introduction to Building Information Modelling - is it the future of construction?
As the UK enjoys a heat wave, read all about the daylight factor.
Not only is this building shaped like a teapot, it can rotate 360-degrees.
What is ACM cladding, what is it used for, and is it banned?
Read our review of a new guide aimed at helping architects avoid and resolve disputes.
Find out about specifying insulation for inverted roofs.
An article looking at the mass housing provision built after WW2, such as Park Hill and Robin Hood Gardens.
What we know so far about the Grenfell Tower fire - an overview of the facts.
How to make conservation areas work
Historic England, LAs and community organisations are exploring new ways of making conservation areas effective.
An introductory article to performance specifications.
Read the story of the 2009 Lakanal House fire and the findings of the inquest.
Eight ways to win the fight for talent in construction.
An introductory article to theories and practices behind urban design.
Community engagement in conservation
We need to think again about how and why we engage with the public.
What will the impact of the sharing 'gig' economy on construction craft labour and equipment markets be?
Have a look at the tools, techniques and project management issues of sustainable materials.
The truth about what engineers really do for a living.
News
ICE publish new NEC4 Design, Build and Operate contract.
America's failing infrastructure
Report states $2 trillion is needed over the next 10 years to fix American roads.
Jump in number of homeless households in temporary accommodation 'staggering', says CIH.
What does the Queen's Speech mean for construction?
National Audit Office condemns 'risky and expensive' Hinkley Point C.
RIBA announce their National Award Winners 2017.
Councils and local organisations can now apply for Heritage Action Zone status.
Richard Rogers says 'the Garden Bridge can help London retain its global status'.
First ever BREEAM Communities innovation credit is claimed by Temple Farm Development.
CIOB to help conservation specialists gain recognition for their expertise with launch of new Certification Scheme.
Construction firms urged to help the homeless get back into work.
1 in 3 UK construction firms employ migrant workers, according to new report.
Experts write letter calling on PM to 'scrap the Government’s approach to health and safety deregulation and think again.'
Have a look at Francis Kéré's 2017 pavilion, based on the concept of the tree as a place of shelter.
CIOB announce new commission to assess what more it and the industry can do to tackle build quality issues.
7 firms reveal plans for Los Angeles River revitalisation.
BRE say they will work with government to fire test samples of cladding.
Green Construction Board, 21 June
Top tips for embedding circular economy principles in construction.
Construction Enquirer, 21 June
After Grenfell, clients, designers, contractors, suppliers, etc. need to say 'it is time to change'.
Read about the largest transport project in Norway getting underway.
What the UK can learn from Singapore's smart city.
The 'RICS Red Book' receives an essential update.
'A lethal failure of oversight was going to happen sooner or later', says Owen Hatherley.
All tower block landlords told to undergo tests on ACM cladding.
Have a look at the new project being trialled in Modena that 'eats' the equivalent air pollution of 275 urban trees.
BRE publish new document - Green guide to specification, certified environmental profiles and BREEAM.
Research shows how architects can build professional resilience.
Whatever caused Grenfell, trust needs to be rebuilt.
360-degree video lets you walk through Tunnel Engineering exhibition.
Construction site managers told to review carding policies.
CITB confirms levy rate ahead of consensus vote.
Read about ICE's recent site visit to an ambitious underground railway project underway in Calcutta.
Alok Sharma appointed as planning minister.
Drone footage captured of soon-to-be-demolished Robin Hood Gardens estate.
Theresa May orders full public inquiry into Grenfell Tower fire.
Helping shape Scotland's transport future.
Safety review of 4,000 UK tower blocks announced after London fire.
Have a look at this new public plaza in Japan with a design inspired by ancient concentric tombs.
Grenfell Tower fire raises issues about the safety of post-war tower renovations.
Questions raised about cladding systems and retrofitting fire sprinkler systems after Grenfell Tower blaze.
Labour demands answers over Grenfell Tower tragedy.
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In depth
[edit] The hyperreal city
[edit] Introduction
Technological change over the past few decades has been at a pace never experienced before, and its impact has also been unprecedented.
With the shift from the second industrial age to the digital age, the accelerating flows of population, materials and information have fundamentally changed conceptions about ‘permanence’ and ‘transience’.
As a result, cities are transforming dramatically as the emphasis on urbanism is shifting from concrete structures to more complex and flexible organisations as well as ‘soft’ (digital and ecological) infrastructures.
Architects and urban planners need to take into consideration wider networks carrying flows of information that reach every part of the world and create a virtual but unified community, rather than developments relating solely to their immediate context.
This idea is promoted in Collage City, where the notion of total urbanism is rejected in favour of analysing urban form as the fragmented, incomplete result of every attempt to organise it logically.
Georg Simmel’s 'The Metropolis and Mental Life' (written in 1903) explored a similar subject discussed by Jean Baudrillard in 'Simulations' (written in 1983).
These two models are applicable to our contemporary times of Disneyfication and McDonaldisation.
Tokyo and Las Vegas may set the extreme boundaries for these, but understanding the connections between them and issues of simulacra and hyperreality hint at how we produce a mental image of a place and how we discriminate a place from a space.
[edit] Life in the modern metropolis - overstimulation and hyperreality
In his 1903 essay, Simmel provides one of the most incisive snapshots of life in the metropolis.
The modern metropolitan individual is distinguished by a blasé attitude which is itself a product of the ‘intensification of emotional life due to the swift and continuous shift of external and internal stimuli.’
This engenders a certain autonomy, so that the modern individual becomes an intellectualised creature whose own disinterested circulation within the metropolis reflects the circulation of money and commodities.
The blasé attitude is explained by Simmel as an ‘indifference toward the distinction of things. Not in the case that they are not perceived, as in the case of mental dullness, but rather that the value of the distinction between things is experienced as meaningless.’
This is considered to be the reflection of a ‘money economy’ combined with the physiological source caused by the intensification of stimuli.