Adam Williams, Author at World Construction Network

Made in China: the rise of domestic architecture practices

Adam Williams — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 17:30:00 +0000

By 2019 developers want to clone Manhattan in the Yujiapu district of Tianjin, China - but it may never happen. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but the tide seems to be turning against the westernisation of the country's built environment and the subordination of Chinese architecture.

Shine a light: the advent of OLEDs

Adam Williams — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 17:30:00 +0000

It's always the way with technology: you're only just starting to get your head around the newest piece of kit on the market when something comes along and renders everything you've just learnt obsolete.

The regeneration games: Olympic legacy architecture

Adam Williams — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 17:30:00 +0000

The 2012 Olympic Games may be over, but a new-found sense of pride and goodwill lingers within London. Stratford, the epicentre of the event, is in Newham, the UK's most ethnically diverse borough. The improved transport links, affordable housing and new public spaces that the sporting extravaganza have brought might well help to regenerate an area stuck for years in post-industrial torpor. Two of Team GB's medal winners grew up within a mile of the Olympics stadium site, and with the benefit of state-of-the-art sporting facilities, maybe this number will have increased by the next Games in 2016, to be held in Rio de Janeiro.

They live: synthetic biology in architecture

Adam Williams — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 17:30:00 +0000

Listen to Rachel Armstrong for a while, and there's a chance your world view will change. A co-director of AVATAR (Advanced Virtual and Technological Architectural Research) and a galvanising communicator whose interviews, TED talks and ventures into science fiction quickly show the irrelevance of conventional field boundaries, her discourse is a wild ride. It's also a purposeful one, leading toward consequential transformations in the relationship between the built and natural environments.

Architecture of necessity

Adam Williams — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 17:30:00 +0000

In 2008, a small group of architecture students travelled from their home in Norway to a village on the Thai-Burmese border. Their intent was to realise a project far removed from their day-to-day studies - the expansion of an orphanage for Karen refugees.

Sun worshippers: the new solar shading

Adam Williams — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 17:30:00 +0000

Sun-shading, solar gain reduction and the harnessing of natural light have been fundamental principles of intelligent design ever since man first stopped sleeping under the stars and moved indoors. For generations, in fact, such questions of design were considered so rudimentary as to engender little or no discussion.

Instant infrastructure: development in Georgia

Adam Williams — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 17:30:00 +0000

With the Caucasus Mountains standing serenely in the distance, the SOCAR Petroleum station on the outskirts of Gori, eastern Georgia, simultaneously smacks of the impressive and the incongruous.

Matteo Thun on the beauty of ecology and economy

Adam Williams — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 17:30:00 +0000

In 1952, the Milanese architect Ernesto Nathan Rogers uttered the famous phrase dal cucchiaio alla città, which means "from the spoon to the town". In the fertile years of post-war reconstruction, the saying became a keynote of Italian design.

A sense of belonging: the role of green space

Adam Williams — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 17:30:00 +0000

The North Sea oil boom of the 1970s saw the energy sector overshadow many of the traditional businesses of industrial Aberdeen, on Scotland's west coast. Shipbuilding, fishing and paper-making were all slowly squeezed out, but the city never had to face the architectural consequences of rapid deindustrialisation, being fortunate enough to strike oil at about the same time Britain stopped making anything.