On Wednesday 11th June associate Adelina Fasan will give a lecture at ECE Architecture Studio in Worthing as part of the 'A piECE of their mind' Lecture Series. Adelina will explore how to design buildings that respond to complex urban and historic contexts, balancing scale, memory and meaning by looking at some of our buildings including the Master's Field Development for Balliol College in Oxford and Maggie's Centre Cambridge.
In the run up to the London Olympics, the Athletes’ Village housing block N15, is now occupied with athletes’ preparing for the games. Niall McLaughlin Architects have designed the external skin of the housing block on a ‘chassis’ designed by Glen Howells. The facade samples fragments of the Elgin Marbles, scanned from the British Museum and converted into 3D pre-cast panels depicting galloping horses from the Parthenon Frieze.
Niall McLaughlin commented on the practice’s approach to the unusual commission in Building Design. ‘I was very interested in the principle of the facade being delaminated from the building’s core form. Usually it’s something one tries to swim against to retain a sense of ‘authenticity’, but here we decided to embrace it….I like the idea of setting Ruskin’s conception of the craftsman against the absolute Taylorism of the construction process. Through digital reproduction, these deracinated stones are now doubly lost.’ (Building Design 27.01.2012)