2016

Best buildings of 2016

December 2016

The Oberver architecture critic Rowan Moore lists Cowan Court in top 5 buildings of 2016. Oliver Wainwright includes it in his top 10 in The Guardian

Stephanie Macdonald in conversation with Gabriel Orozco at Frieze

October 2016

Writer & critic Kirsty Bell joins Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco and 6a architects’ director Stephanie Macdonald to talk about their new project for the South London Gallery. 


4 Oct 2016, 10:00am - 4:00pm
Royal College of Physicians, 11 St Andrews Place, NW1 4LE London

 

 

Gabriel Orozco Garden

October 2016

The South London Gallery’s new permanent garden has been created over the past two years by the artist Gabriel Orozco, with support from 6a architects and horticulturists at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Gabriel Orozco, who was born in Mexico and currently lives in Tokyo, is one of the leading artists of his generation. He has exhibited extensively internationally and periodically in London including a major mid-career retrospective at Tate Modern in 2011. He has never before designed a garden, but embraced the challenge of transforming a largely inaccessible paved area of land at the back of the SLG’s main building into a unique sculptural work as part of his artistic practice.   

6a architects have a history of working with the South London Gallery, having designed its award-winning 2010 expansion into a neighbouring house and new Clore education space. The practice is also  working on the renovation of the former Peckham Road Fire Station, donated to the South London Gallery by an anonymous benefactor and due to open in 2018. 

 

Churchill College

September 2016

HRH The Duke of Gloucester and Dame Professor Athene Donald opened Cowan Court, the new halls of residence designed by 6a architects at Churchill College, University of Cambridge. The ceremony was attended by 130 guests comprising Fellows and staff, benefactors and alumni. The 68 room building will welcome students for the start of term in October 2016. It was made possible thanks to a generous donation made by Churchill College alumnus Michael Cowan.

 

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MK Gallery

September 2016

6a's expansion to mk Gallery and its impact on the city published in Blueprint 348, September 2016

Victoria Morton

June 2016

Spoken Yeahs From A Distance by Victoria Morton at Sadie Coles hq1 Davies Street, London W1, 7 June - 9 July 2016.

Art Review editor Mark Rappolt and Sadie Coles invite you to a conversation between painter Victoria Morton and architect Stephanie Macdonald on 8 June at 7pm at Sadie Coles hq.


Art Review

June 2016

From word to image: Tom Emerson talks to French poet and novelist Michel Houellebecq in Art Review (Vol 68 no5, Summer 2016)about about space, landscape and transitioning from the page to the spaces of Palais de Tokyo, where his exhibition opens on 23 June and Manifesta 11 in Zurich. 

Pavilion of Reflections, Manifesta 11

May 2016

Students from Studio Tom Emerson, Department of Architecture at eth Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of technology) have design and constructed the Pavilion of Reflections for Manifesta 11, floating on Lake Zurich for 100 days opening on 11 June 2016.

 

Manifesta, the nomadic, European biennial of contemporary art will hold its eleventh iteration in Zurich in summer 2016. Floating in the lake by the city centre, Manifesta 11’s Pavillon of Reflections will serve as its public forum for the hundred days of the biennial. It will offer space for dialogue and reflection on the artworks created as part of the biennial, and serve as a gathering place for participants and visitors. The pavilion project is being led by a team of over thirty architecture students and teaching staff from Studio Tom Emerson at eth Zurich who are collectively responsible for the conception, development and construction of the Pavilion.

 

The students developed a collective working process and the coordination and communication required. The greatest challenge is also the project's greatest potential: to translate the shared design into a built work. After an initial ideas competition between smaller groups of students, teams worked at different scales — from its setting in the city and the lake basin, through to 1:1 scale prototypes — to bring the many design-related, technical and organisational dimensions of the project together to in a multi-layered and ultimately buildable architectural project. Apart from the design process, the construction techniques in particular will influence the final design of the Pavilion. The Pavilion of Reflections is made entirely of wood; the way the material is dealt with is an essential part of the design and construction process. Following the detailed design phase, from January 2016 onwards the Pavilion was prefabricated and assembled by the students in a production hall in Zurich. 

 

Studio Tom Emerson based at eth Zurich is the research and teaching arm of 6a architects.

Glasgow Atlas

April 2016

Date: 08 Apr 2016 – 24 Apr 2016

Type: Exhibition
Location: Unit 22, 100 Borron Street, Glagow, G4 9XG

 

Last weekend to see the exhibition by Studio Tom Emerson from ETH Zurich, part of Glasgow International festival of contemporary art.

 

Students from Studio Tom Emerson at the Department of Architecture, ETH Zurich, have produced a collective survey of Glasgow followed by architectural proposals, collectively known as the Atlas. “Learning from the existing landscape is a way of being revolutionary for an architect” wrote Venturi and Scott-Brown in Learning From Las Vegas in 1972.  The sentiment is even more important today as Glasgow accommodates a new post-industrial landscape. 

The survey is a radical act. From Piranesi’s Antichite Romane to Rem Koolhaas’ record of the Berlin Wall, the survey has been instrumental in not only recording, but transforming a vision of the past into the future. The projects developed by the students range from rethinking great tracts of city and landscape, to tiny, almost unnoticeable adjustments to boundaries and thresholds, from the fantastical to the plausible. They have suggested new parks, walks, baths, playing fields and viaduct housing woven into Glasgow’s fabric. The Atlas makes no distinction between the used and the abandoned, between the well-known and the forgotten. All surveys are incomplete, subjective, and bear all the naiveté of the outsider’s gaze. They are an attempt to see and retain something, to look more carefully for a future in what is there.

The project was initiated by Glasgow International in 2014, and supported by Stephanie Macdonald of 6a architects.

A catalogue will be published alongside the exhibition with contributions from Arno Brandlhuber.