[ News
| Homes
| Life
| Entertainment
| History
| Science
| Community
| Shop ]
| Sport
| Culture
| Cars
| Money
| Broadband
| Learning
| Health
| Dating
| Games ]
[ Text Only: Homepage ]
[ Graphical: Channel4 Homepage ]
Full Site
Home
Programme Summaries
For Love and Money
How Did They Do That?
Style File
Brains Behind the Best
Shaped by Society
Resources
Site Map
Credits
Architectural movers and shakers
Leonardo da Vinci
A pick of the foremost architectural practices at work today includes many which have been shortlisted for the prestigious RIBA Stirling Prize, in association with The Architects' Journal, the winner of which will be broadcast on Channel 4 on Sunday 12 October 2003 at 8pm.
Will Alsop
Bill Dunster
Norman Foster
Zaha Hadid
Herzog & de Meuron
Daniel Libeskind
Rick Mather
Richard Meier
Richard Rogers
Kazuyo Sejima
Presenter of Channel 4's Supercities series, Will Alsop is considered something of a maverick. His striking 'blobby' designs in bright colours are not afraid to stand out from their surroundings, such as his design for Liverpool's Fourth Grace. After early work with Maxwell Fry, Cedric Price and Roderick Ham he set up Alsop & Lyall in 1981 and now forms one half of Alsop & Stormer, operating out of London, Hamburg, Moscow and Rotterdam. Alsop received the Stirling Prize for his design for Peckham library in 2000 and other notable works include the government offices in Marseilles, Hamburg ferry terminal and the North Greenwich underground station in London.
Bill Dunster leads a practice of the same name and the team has been shortlisted for the 2003 Stirling Prize Architects, for its BedZED project in Wallington, Surrey. The site is a contemporary version of the English Garden City. It is a model showing that high density affordable housing can lead to high quality, enjoyable living space. It aims for residents to achieve a near 'carbon-neutral' lifestyle; where possible, materials were locally sourced or recycled, with 90% of the steel used being reclaimed from Brighton railway station. Bill Dunster, specialises in low energy and sustainable development, and Nottingham University New Campus, which he designed while working for Michael Hopkins, was awarded the Stirling Prize, Sustainability Award 2001. He also developed the environmental scheme and frontage for Portcullis House.
Perhaps one of the most accessible and popular of contemporary architects, Norman Foster heads Foster and Partners, with a global staff of 600. He has put his own stamp on cities with projects such as Hong Kong's new airport, Berlin's Reichstag and London's Swiss Re building and Millennium Bridge. He received a 2003 Stirling Prize shortlisting for the design of the Great Court at the British Museum, a RIBA Royal Gold Medal for Architecture in 1983, a Gold Medal of the French Academy of Architecture in 1991 and the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal in 1994. In 1999 he became the 21st Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate. He was knighted in 1990 and in 1999 he was made a life peer, taking the title Lord Foster of Thames Bank. He was also one of the seven finalists tendering for the rebuilding of New York's World Trade Center site.
Bold and visionary, Zaha Hadid is one of the few successful world renowned women architects. Born in Baghdad in 1950, she began her own practice in 1979, designing an apartment in Eaton Place, London. It was awarded the Architectural Design Gold Medal during 1982. Hadid's paintings and drawings have also had international success, having had exhibitions at the Guggenheim Museum, New York (1978) and the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1988), among other places. Her many architectural designs include The Peak, Hong Kong (1983), Kurfürstendamm, Berlin (1986), Düsseldorf Art and Media Centre (1992/93), Cardiff Bay Opera House, Wales (1994), University of North London Holloway Road Bridge (1998), the Bergisel Ski-jump in Innsbruck, Austria (1999), Placa de les Artes in Barcelona (2001) and the temporary Guggenheim Museum in Tokyo (2002).
Perhaps best known for their reworking of the former Bankside power station into London's new gallery, Tate Modern, the Herzog & de Meuron practice is shortlisted for the 2003 Stirling Prize for the Laban Dance Centre in south London. Winning the centre commission in a competition in 1997, the Swiss duo have worked with artist Michael Craig-Martin on the colour scheme and in devising the semi-transparent polycarbonate cladding panels which will allow the activities to be visible from outside. Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron shared the prestigious 2001 Pritzker Architecture Prize while other international commissions include the stadium for the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the extraordinary six-level glass crystal and steel-mesh Prada store in Tokyo.
Daniel Libeskind's 'Shard of Glass' has emerged as the winning design for New York's Twin Towers site. His ethos of incorporating the history of a site into the building's structure continues from his work at the Jewish Museum, Berlin in 1989 and the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester, and are themes which have shaped his life. Libeskind was born in post-war Poland in 1946 to Holocaust survivors and became an American citizen in 1965, studying music in Israel before moving to architecture in the late 1960s. Other work includes the spiral extension to the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; a postgraduate student centre for the London Metropolitan University and the extension to the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. He is a member of the European Academy of Arts and Letters, and has received numerous awards, including the 2001 Hiroshima Art Prize.
Rick Mather Architects have a special interest in culture and education as well as the reinterpretation of existing structures. Founded in 1973, recent projects include London's South Bank Centre masterplans and plans for the world renowned Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. In 2001, the team was contracted to plan and design a major expansion and renovation of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond VA and its design for the £8 million extension and renovation of Dulwich Picture Gallery in south London won an RIBA award. The practice has also designed a RIBA award-winning private house in Hampstead.
New York-based Richard Meier crowned four decades of achievement, receiving the AIA Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects as well as the Praemium Imperiale from the Japanese government, in recognition of a lifetime achievement, in 1997. In 1984 he was the youngest recipient of the Pritzker Prize for Architecture. With his designs he strives for a sympathetic relationship to the context and natural environment, especially with regard to natural light. Within his vast portfolio is the design of the $1 billion Getty Center in Los Angeles, California. He was also one of the seven finalists tendering to design the building for the Ground Zero site.
Richard Rogers is one of Britain's most influential architects. His practice, Richard Rogers Partnership, is responsible for a catalogue of spectacular buildings. Both the Pompidou Centre in Paris and later the Lloyd's building in London broke new ground with their distinctive industrial aesthetic of services and pipes visible on the outside of the building, freeing up space inside. In the 1990s, Rogers, now Lord Rogers of Riverside, turned to city planning, becoming chair of the UK Government Urban Task Force from 1997 to 1999, committed to an improvement in urban living which he felt has failed through bad use of space. He is now the Greater London Authority's Chief Adviser on Architecture and Urbanism and a member of the Mayor of London's Advisory Cabinet. Elsewhere the practice continues its work on high profile projects, which has included the much maligned Millennium Dome in London, with the Lu Jia Zui business district in Shanghai and the development of Terminal 5 at London's Heathrow Airport.
Japanese architect Kazuyo Sejima is regarded as a rising star on the scene. She came to attention when selected for the design competition – MCH House Kajima Prize in 1988 and in 1989 she won the Special Prize for Residential Architecture from Tokyo Architect Association. As principal of the Tokyo firm Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa/SANAA, she won the first international Vincenzo Scamozzi Award in 2002 and her commissions range from the ingeniously engineered 'Small House', in Tokyo, to the 10-storey Kitatakata Apartments public housing tower. Other significant projects include the Multimedia Workshop, Villa in the Forest and Park Cafe, all in Japan.