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From: Architexturez-IN <admin-in@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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Date: Sat, 22 Dec 2007 13:10:55 +0530
From Times Online
December 19, 2007
Tom Dyckhoff
The depressing thing about the AR Awards for Emerging Architecture every
year is how good the winning schemes are. Because the even more
depressing thing about them is how rarely they’re in Britain. The Awards
have a global reach which makes them far more indicative of the state of
architecture than the British-based Stirling Prize, or the Pritzker
Prize — which only really goes to the stars. By contrast the AR Awards
each year are the biggest (£15,000), and most truly international awards
for young (for which read, under 45) architects. They’ve been going for
years, but in the age of unquestioning devotion to icon architecture,
their winners — usually unstarry, un-gargantuan, but always damned
clever buildings, addressing very human, social, environmental needs —
have long seemed simply perverse, fogeyish, almost betraying the
enlightened, but once rather unzeitgeisty proclivities of their sponsor,
Architectural Review magazine. When there’s a fashionable rising
superstar’s computer generated, megabucks art gallery to lavish awards
on? Who’d pick a willowy community project or a tea house in Japan?
cont'd....
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/architecture_and_design/article3075611.ece