One year ago…

One year ago a proposal for 47 lodges carved into the side of a sandstone cliff in Jordan sparked a furious debate about the project’s “ecological” credentials and London designer Dominic Wilcox created a provocative stylus for using a touch-screen phone in the bath.

Architecture projects completed this time last year included David Chipperfield’s Turner Contemporary gallery on the seafront of Margate in England, and a shopping centre on the site of a traditional marketplace in Abu Dhabi by Foster + Partners.

Meanwhile, a mobile art pavilion by Zaha Hadid was a hit with readers, while the design for a Comic and Animation Museum in China by Dutch studio MVRDV was compared by one reader to a “bunch of hemorrhoids”.

In architecture news, a twisting cluster of buildings by BIG won a competition for a mosque, Islamic centre and museum in Albania and Nigel Coates retired from his role as head of architecture at the Royal College of Art in London.

Japanese designers Nendo created a chandelier made from blown glass forms with the pipes still attached and readers discussed the practicalities of a simple set of stamped cutlery by London designer Tomás Alonso.

We published a series of movies filmed in 2009 at the Shenzhen & Hong Kong Architecture Biennale, including architect Benjamin Ball of Ball-Nogues Studio talking about their installation where 10,000 garments were hung on washing lines to create a dragon-like form and Joseph Grima and Jeffrey Johnson explaining their Landgrab City project, which involved creating a farm in an urban square in Shenzhen.

See all our stories from May 2011 »
See our review of last year »