USk Symposium - Manchester

The 7th International Urban Sketchers Symposium was held in Manchester, UK this year. A city that holds a special place in my heart and where I spent 7 years of my life. I was not fortunate enough to take part of this event that was held recently in July. Hopefully will be part of next year's symposium to be held at Chicago, USA.

My first sketch for my first assignment at my first day in my first year of architecture school in Manchester was Victoria Baths, a Grade II listed building. Sketch dated September 27, 2003.

Rubber House

This Kaaba-like building is the University of Sheffield's new music studio designed by Carey Jones architects and delivered by Jefferson Sheard Architects.

The studio is enveloped in black rubber, the first of its kind in the UK, as a reflection of its acoustic requirements. The 450sqm building is 3 stories in height, rubber sheets are stretched and fixed over the top 2 levels then decorated with stainless-steel studs creating a quilt effect.

More info can be found here

Festival of Speed Art Displays

The Goodwood Festival of Speed is an annual festival featuring a variety of historic motor racing vehicles. The festival started in 1993 in order to bring motor racing back to the Goodwood estate, a location steeped in British motor racing history. Since 1997, the festival honors a car manufacturer company each year.


Audi Art Display '99


Ford Art Display '03

Each year a different artistic display is installed in front of the Goodwood House. And just like Tilke's monopoly over designing new F1 circuits, Gerry Judah have been commissioned each year to design a new jaw-breaking sculpture starting with Ferraris in 1997.


Mercedes Art Display '01


Renault Art Display '02

This year's art display is an incredible artistic piece dedicated to Land Rover, celebrating the company's 60th anniversary. The naturally-rusted steel sculpture is 34m high, weighs 120 tonnes, and features five different Land Rover models. The form of the sculpture seems to be inspired by the rough mountainous landscape that these five cars are designed to endure.



Land Rover Art Display '08

Tate 2

Early design proposal for London's Tate Museum


Revised design proposal

When I first saw the images of the proposed extension for the Tate museum in London by Herzog & de Meuron, like many others I was not convinced, which seems to be the main reaction of many people as well, based on most of the articles I've read about it. However, the proposal was granted planning permission with conditions and the main one is to change the facade material.

The revised proposal in my opinion is way better than the first and looks very intriguing. The new brick extension design fits the area more appropriately than the earlier glazed design; it maintains its twisted shape and got rid of the cantilevering boxes that distort the twist. This twist, in my opinion, is the attracting point of the design since the existing Tate museum is a long rectangular building that needs a new twist to revitalize the area, which the architects took literary.

Dairy House

Following the last post regarding the revival of traditional old crafts, here is a great example of how "sustainability" can be achieved by the integration of such crafts.

Project: Dairy House
Architect: SCDLP
Location: Somerset, UK
Completion Date: 2006

This small 186 square meter house within this 850 acre estate, almost £500k, 2007 RIBA Design Award Winner is a conversion of a former Dairy to a retreat house. Originally the client wanted to rent the house, but as the project progressed the client decided to keep the house as a retreat. The design was to combine privacy and seclusion with openness to the wider landscape. The result is a similar concept of the Arabia Mashrabiya, in the form of layered oak and laminated glass which produce an eerie, filtered light.

Sustainability, which is integral to the design, is not only in the choice of materials and technology, but comes in the form of social sustainability as well. The oak is stored in sheds in front of the Dairy House. Catling regional hired workers who live within 20 miles of the site: a carpenter who built the extension, a glass laminator responsible for adherence to the expansion of layers of glass, and a stonecutter who restored the brick walls and walkways and fashion pool of slate mined locally. All of which reduced the transportation costs greatly.

In addition, Pilkington donated the glass for the extension as the technique used has not been tested before, and the project would have been unaffordable without this. The glass blocks sit on rubber gaskets which in turn sit directly on the timber. A foam seal sits on the surface of the blocks to form a weatherproof movement joint, clear silicon forms a final weather seal. The oak retains the waney edge on the outside; the inside is finely sanded. Similarly, the blocks of laminated glass are left rough on the exterior, and are polished on the interior. The structure was built up of the prefabricated pieces on site.

More info here and here and here

Mimetic House

Project: Private House
Location: Dromahair, Ireland
Architect: Dominic Stevens
Completed: 2007

Sitting in the middle of a richly textured, marshy field, just outside the town of Dromahair, this house in fact literally evolved from the ground up. It has two parts: a cast-concrete, part-buried series of sleeping, working and washing chambers below ground, and a glass-clad, open-plan living space on top. The glass room is a pavilion in the round, and a loose, informal rockroad brings you to the house and down into the landscape, the grass allowed to grow up to, around and under the house itself. The glass room tilts out and up in varying ways, so the ground but not the sky is reflected. In some lights and locations, the form disappears. The house dissolves and recedes back into the landscape, in a dynamic and delicate way, shifting minute by minute, depending on the light, the rain, the time of day. You can see right through the house, the landscape uninterrupted by its presence. The tilted, planted roof is even happily growing a little wild in places.

More info here and here

Rolling Bridge

Designed by Heatherwick Studio, this rolling bridge (2005 British Structural Steel Award Winner)is located within a new residential, office and retail quarter set around part of the Grand Union Canal in Paddington Basin, London.

12 meters long, the bridge is made in 8 steel and timber sections, and is made to curl by hydraulic rams set into the handrail between each section.

Wembley Stadium

It was the most boring match I saw in my life... the first FA cup final that took place at the new renovated Wembley Stadium. It was a match between the best team in the world, Manchester United, and the most boring team in the universe, Chelsea. And what do you know... the boring team managed to kill the game and steal a late goal in extra time... well good for them.

The stadium looks amazing though with its retractable ceiling and all the other accessories. Although I've heard from friends who went to the stadium that approaching the stadium at a high profile match like this was like judgement day... the streets were too narrow to take in all the spectators... the underground station was too crowded... cars were not moving at all... It sort of reminded me of all the sort of thing we expect from Bahrain with all the new developments going on yet the roads, sewerage system and the infrastructure are as old as my grandma... I guess the Saudi old saying fits here: Ma induhum ma ind jaddity (They havn't got what my grandma have).