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Stanton Williams Architects
Central Saint Martins is flying the flag for art and design education in the UK, despite short-sighted government policies. Monocle meets the principals at Stanton Williams, the architects...

By: Monocle Magazine

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By KNA

Two people died and 40 others were injured after a building collapsed in Huruma

The Board of Registration of Architects and Quantity Surveyors (BORAQS) has issued a stern warning against landlords who prevent professionals from inspecting and supervising their buildings.

Speaking Tuesday in Nairobi , the chairman of Board of Registration of Architects and Quantity Surveyors Kenya Cosmas Maweu warned the landlord should they continue defying the law.

Maweu said that the enforcement of building laws and regulations has been hampered by lack of technical and supervisory staff and as a result there is a serious lack of proper trained artisans and inspectors.

The board decried poorly trained artisans who carry out constructions in the country leading to collapse of most buildings.

The board urged the stakeholders and artisans to register on their website, http://www.boraqs.go.ke for further trainings as it is committed to instill professionalism in the building sector.

Nairobi city county government has a statutory power to regulate and manage all the building developments within its jurisdiction pursuant to part 11 of the 4th schedule, County Government Act 2012, Urban Areas and Cities Act 2011, Physical Planning Act Cap 286 and other related statutes, said Maweu.

Maweus remark comes after the recent building which collapsed in Nairobi in Huruma which led to loss of lives and many injured.

According to the register of BORAQS Kenya, Patrick Githinji who designed the building is not an architect.

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Architects board warns defiant landlords

Los Angelesbased Morphosis Architects has been selected to design a new 100-suite hotel adjacent the Therme Vals spa in Switzerland designed by Peter Zumthor. The spa, which was completed in 1996, features walls of locally sourced Valser quartzite slabs and a grass roof.

The new hotel design by Morphosis was selected from designs by eight firms including New Yorkbased Steven Holl Architects and London-based Studio 6a Architectsvia a juried competition led by Sauerbruch Hutton co-founder Louisa Hutton. The client for the project, 7132, already operates a hotel near the spa.

Morphosis founder Thom Mayne, who was awarded the Pritzker Prize for architecture four years before Zumthor, said in a statement: "We are thrilled about the jury's decision and look forward to working with a visionary client to create a unique design that resonates with this incredible destination in the Alps."

Morphosiss winning design will be revealed later this month at an event in New York.

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Morphosis to Design Hotel Adjacent to Zumthors Therme Vals Spa

Political unrest and sporadic violence on highways and roads in Bangladesh provided the backdrop to a three-day architectural conference in the countrys capital, Dhaka, in mid-January. Organized by the Bengal Foundation, a private trust dedicated to promoting the arts in Bangladesh, the event brought together speakers such as Fumihiko Maki, William J.R. Curtis, and Ken Yeang to examine how notions of place and presence shape the built environment. Other participants included architects Hctor Fernndez Elorza from Spain, John Lin from Hong Kong, Anupama Kundoo from India, and Palinda Kannangara from Sri Lanka, and landscape architect Kongjian Yu from China, among others.

Photo Architectural Record

Crowded street in the old city Dhaka.

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Although the conference was not affected by the political turmoil, it took place while Bangladeshs top opposition leader was being held in virtual house arrest and opposition activists were trying to impose an embargo on deliveries to the capital city. In the first two weeks since the call for an embargo was made on January 5, at least 23 people had been killed, mostly by fire bombings of buses and vehicles on highways leading to Dhaka.

Undeterred, nearly 2,400 people each daymostly architects and studentsattended the free conference, called EngageDhaka. Architect Kashef Mahboob Chowdhury, who runs the Dhaka firm Urbana, served as director of the event, which was the Bengal Foundations first major foray into architecture. The organization, which is headed by businessman and art collector Abul Khair, publishes magazines and books on the arts and runs an annual Indian classical music festival that draws up to 60,000 people. It hopes to mount the architecture conference on an annual basis too.

At EngageDhaka, Khair announced the establishment of the Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscapes, and Settlements, a multidisciplinary program that will start in August and be directed by architect and educator Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, who comes from Bangladesh and is currently teaching at the University of Hawaii. We need a new kind of urbanism, said Ashraf about Dhaka, a mega-city of 15 million people that sits at the mouth of an enormous delta fed by the countrys 700 rivers. The challenge for designers will be to accommodate urban growth without harming the citys landscape and hydrology, said Ashraf. Form follows flow, he noted. Emphasizing the connection between the city and the countryside, Khair told the audience, As an architect, you must go out to the villages and be a villager.

In addition to the official topic of place and presence, a recurring theme of many of the 14 presentations was the impact of climate change, a critical issue in a country of nearly 160 million people living mostly at sea level and threatened by rising oceans. Kongjian Yu, who heads the Chinese landscape architecture firm Turenscape and will serve on the faculty of the new Bengal Institute, stated, Landscape architecture is about survival. Its about infrastructure, planning, food, water, and cultural identity. His point was underlined by a freak hailstorm the night before the last day of the conference, an almost unheard of weather event for Dhaka in the usually dry month of January.

Likening the built environment to a prosthetic attached to a host organismin this case, Earths biospherearchitect and ecologist Ken Yeang said architects job was to successfully integrate their projects with the natural systems that support the planet. He described the various strategies he has used in his buildings and planning projects to make this bio-integration happen. Good design must be functional and livable, but ultimately, it must make people happy, he said.

Anupama Kundoo, who practices in India and teaches in Madrid and Ithaca, NY, gave the most personal talk at the conference, which she titled Uprootedness and the Sense of Place. Though she was born in India, her family comes from Dhaka and moved to India before with the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. The morning before her talk, Kundoo visited for the first time the house her grandparents had left seven decades ago. She showed an old black-and-white photograph of the imposing mansion in the 1930s and then a color shot of the ruined building today.

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Architects Take the Stage in Bangladesh

Throughovergrown shrubs and brush, Richard Stone could see the outline of what was once a beautiful Italianate-style house with a tower on top. Walking throughDavenport's historic Gold Coast neighborhood during a home tour in September, Stone remarked to his wife, Linda, that there didn't seem to be anyone taking care of the property behind the brush.

Stone later learnedthat the city of Davenport was buying the abandoned house through condemnation proceedings and would put out "requests for proposals" from people interested in rehabilitating it and making it their home.

The Stones, ofMuscatine, have always been interested in old homes, so they submitted a proposal the only one, as it turned out. On Friday they became theowners ofthe Lambrite-Iles-Petersen house at 510 W. 6th St.

The building is consideredone of the mostsignificantin the historic Gold Coast neighborhood because ofitsassociation with prominent citizens, its architectural style and the architect who designed it.

The Stones paid$38,000, which allows the city to recoup the cost of acquisitionandinitial clean-up.

The couple expects to spend an additional$310,000 restoring the home to its1850-1860 appearance by September 2017. And although they've only seen the inside once, the Stones believe they have the experience and knowledge to see the project through.

Stonerecently retired as the engineering manager for H.J. Heinz Co. in Muscatine, a job thatincluded the management of capital and maintenance projects in addition to engineering. In that capacity, he workedwith regulatory organizations, contractors, equipment vendors, and local, state and federal governments.

Before that, he worked for Nestl, Gerber and the state of Minnesota in the engineering or research fields. He has a master's degree in engineering from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

His previous building work has included doing more than 80 percent of the labor in constructing athree-bedroom house in Michigan, the rehabilitation of a flood-damaged home in Illinois and the restoration and conversion back to single-family use of an1890s Victorian home in Waverly, Iowa, that had been made into three apartments.

"I have always had an interest in historical buildings and (have been) an advocate for restoration rather than tearing them down or letting them deteriorate," he said in his written proposal to the city.

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Muscatine couple are new owners of historic Gold Coast home

DAVENPORT, Iowa Through overgrown shrubs and brush, Richard Stone could see the outline of what was once a beautiful Italianate-style house with a tower on top.

Walking through Davenport's historic Gold Coast neighborhood for a "home tour" in September, Stone remarked to his wife Linda that there didn't seem to be anyone taking care of the property behind the brush.

Stone later learned that the city of Davenport was buying the abandoned house through condemnation proceedings and would put out "requests for proposals" from people interested in rehabilitating it and making it their home.

The Stones, of Muscatine, have always been interested in old homes, so they submitted a proposal (the only one, as it turned out), and on Friday they became the new owners of the Lambrite-Iles-Petersen house at 510 W. 6th St.

The building is considered one of the most significant in the historic Gold Coast neighborhood because of its association with prominent citizens, its architectural style and the architect who designed it.

The Stones paid $38,000, which allows the city to recoup the cost of acquisition and initial clean-up.

The couple expects to spend an additional $310,000 restoring the home to its 1850-1860 appearance by September 2017. And although they've only seen the inside once, the Stones believe they have the experience and knowledge to see the project through.

Stone recently retired as the engineering manager for H.J. Heinz Co. in Muscatine, a job that included the management of capital and maintenance projects in addition to engineering. In that capacity, he worked with regulatory organizations, contractors, equipment vendors, and local, state and federal governments.

Before that, he worked for Nestle, Gerber and the State of Minnesota in the engineering or research fields. He has a master's degree in engineering from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

His previous building work has included doing more than 80 percent of the labor in constructing a three-bedroom house in Michigan, the rehabilitation of a flood-damaged home in Illinois and the restoration and conversion back to single-family use of an 1890s Victorian home in Waverly, Iowa, that had been made into three apartments.

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Historic home goes to Muscatine couple

REUTERS: East Timor's independence hero and out-going prime minister Xanana Gusmao will stay in the cabinet as investment minister, the government said on Wednesday, raising questions about the independence of the new prime minister.

Gusmao, 68, a guerrilla leader who helped end Indonesian rule over the poor half island in 2002, resigned last week as prime minister. Former health minister Rui Araujo was appointed as his replacement on Tuesday.

The president approved the new prime minister's cabinet list that includes Gusmao as head of a newly created investment ministry, which is believed to oversee planning, infrastructure and the statistics department.

"He knows where the money is. The parts that he has got seems to be the agencies that have the most control over the country's money," Charles Scheiner, researcher at Dili-based think-tank Lao Hamutuk, said of Gusmao.

"No one knows yet how much independence Dr Rui is going to have as prime minister and how much Xanana is going to try pull puppet strings."

Gusmao, who was prime minister for nearly eight years after serving as the first post-independence president, said he stepped down to allow a younger generation to lead.

Araujo, East Timor's fifth post-independence prime minister, said the new cabinet represented unity and consensus.

Former president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Jose Ramos-Horta was not on the list of ministers who will be sworn in on Monday.

After decades under Indonesian rule, East Timor has struggled to develop economically since independence. Despite gas production worth billions of dollars, about of its 1.2 million people in poverty, the World Bank says.

Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975, after Portugal abruptly pulled out of a colony it had ruled for three centuries, and annexed the territory later that year, maintaining a heavy and at times brutal military presence.

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East Timor's Gusmao to stay in government as investment minister

Sierra Medical Center is closing its front entrance and front parking lot for about seven months as part of a construction project at the West Central El Paso hospital, 1700 Murchison.

The construction is part of a $120 million remodeling and expansion project, which began last year, for Sierra, Providence Memorial Hospital, and Providence Children's Hospital, Sierra officials reported. The hospitals are owned and operated by Tenet Healthcare Corp., of Dallas.

Sierra's exterior will be revamped, the emergency room redesigned, and improvements made to waiting areas. All rooms will be made private, and a new neuro intensive care unit and new cardiac intensive care unit will be added. Operating rooms have already been revamped.

The front parking lot will close Friday, and the front entrance will close Monday, and reopen in September. People can enter the hospital through the emergency room and admitting department entrances.

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Sierra Medical Center closing front entrance for remodeling project

Siding installation cost per square Roxbury NJ, Rockaway Twp NJ, Rockaway NJ Borough NJ, Riverdale
Call 973-795-1627/862-226-9288%^

By: Bill Phillips

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Siding installation cost per square Roxbury NJ, Rockaway Twp NJ, Rockaway NJ Borough NJ, Riverdale - Video

Customer Testimonial on HardiePlank Lap Siding Installation
Denise Newhard of Smithfield, NC testimonial on the installation of HardiePlank ColorPlus siding by the craftsmen of the Aluminum Company of NC.

By: Aluminum Company of NC

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Customer Testimonial on HardiePlank Lap Siding Installation - Video