Art – SpecNews

Tributes after leading architect Gareth Hoskins dies aged 48

TRIBUTES have been paid to the Scottish architect Gareth Hoskins, who died at the weekend aged 48.
Scottish architecture is much the lesser with his parting.”
Fiona Hyslop, Cabinet Secretary for Culture, Europe and External Affairs, said: “Gareth Hoskins was an outstanding architect.
She tweeted: “Very sad to hear of the death of Gareth Hoskins, one of Scotland’s finest architects.
Hoskins trained as an architect at the Glasgow School of Art and at Florence University.
Hoskins Architects issued a statement confirming his death, adding: “It is with great sadness that we confirm that Gareth Hoskins OBE, the founder and Managing Director of Hoskins Architects, has died.
“Gareth, who was 48, took ill at an event in Edinburgh on Sunday 3rd January and, despite receiving the best care possible in Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, he passed away on Saturday.

“Everyone at Hoskins Architects is deeply shocked and saddened by this untimely loss.

2016: A year of grand designs

The branding of 2016 as the Year of Innovation, Architecture and Design, follows this 2015’s Year of Food and Drink status, and 2014’s Year of Homecoming.
VisitScotland’s involvement signals the belief that there’s a tourism buck to be made out of selling Scotland’s architecture – both historic and new – as an attraction.
WHEN fire tore through Glasgow School of Art’s Mackintosh building on 23 May, 2014, the shockwaves spread far beyond the confines of the creative community.
Turning the festival – and the entire Year of Innovation, Architecture and Design – into a financial success is the responsibility, ultimately, of the quango.
Contemporary structures add a new layer to our built environment, taking inspiration from and sometimes reacting against past achievements in design.

London Met’ Protests Intensify

The protesters are campaigning against the sale of London Metropolitan University’s Cass Faculty of Art, Architecture and Design which, is expected to gain the London University a minimum of £50m.
It followed a night of visual protests, which saw hundreds of students standing as silhouettes in the university windows as sunlight left London.
With the university seeming under increasing fire in recent years, the board of Directors has decided that a single, Holloway Campus in 2017 is a decision that best suits the university, however, many students of London Met staunchly oppose that opinion.
“We believe this will benefit our students, who will enjoy an enhanced student experience, and our staff, who will have more opportunities to collaborate”
The student protests have been led by protest group Occupy The Cass, and Turner prize-winner Jeremy Deller, who is a visiting professor at the Cass, has been seen on Twitter showing his support for the cause.

ArandaLasch adds pleated concrete facade to Tom Ford store

US firm Aranda\Lasch has completed a store for fashion designer Tom Ford in the Miami Design District, featuring an angular facade that references bold Art Deco motifs (+ slideshow).
Robins, co-founder of the Design Miami fair, is turning the area into a neighbourhood dedicated to fashion, design, architecture and dining spaces.
Inside the Tom Ford store, menswear and womenswear are split up over the two floors.
The architecture studio – which recently designed looping Railing chairs made of metal pipes for Design Miami – referenced patterns and shapes typical on the Art Deco-period architecture around Miami in its design for building’s facade.
“Inspired by the pleated Art Deco patterns found in architecture and fashion, the facade is given a texture that revives the exuberance and ornament of Miami’s golden era,” the studio told Dezeen.

Don’t destroy the Sir John Cass Faculty – a wonderful part of creative learning and life

The Cass is named after Sir John Cass, who established one of London’s oldest education charities with a historical mandate to found a polytechnic institute at Aldgate to serve the population of east London.
As Jonathan Ive, Apple’s chief design officer, has said, it is essential to develop the skills of making through hands-on learning.
We should know by now that learning is not restricted to the purely academic: making is also learning.
We, the undersigned, call on London Metropolitan University to review its current strategic plan, One Campus, One Community, in light of its consequences for the Sir John Cass Faculty of Art, Architecture and Design.
We call on London Metropolitan to pursue a two-site solution that keeps the education of art, making and design alive and kicking where The Cass began – in London’s East End.

Instagram users offer a preview of LA’s Broad Museum

It will house over 200,000 pieces of postwar and contemporary art from the collections of Eli and Edythe Broad, who also backed the Zaha Hadid-designed Edythe and Eli Broad Art Museum in Michigan, which opened in 2012.
Instagram users and officials from the Broad have been posting images of the building, including glimpses of the interior, as it readies to open.
The images offer a preview of the structure designed by the New York architecture firm, well ahead of the publication of official photography.
Frank Gehry’s new headquarters for Facebook debuted on Instagram, with visitors posting images during the building’s preview before pictures were issued for publication.
The building will also become the new home for the Broad Foundation, which is currently based in Santa Monica.