1: Buildings

摘要

Make do and mend: that's the motto of noughties austerity that echoed around studios' empty desks as reuse and refurbishment gradually became the architect's bread and butter. Making projects stack up might have been harder, but this way of working has a powerful impetus: a critique of the existing building and its presence. And how to mend the problems. Slice it here, chop it there, new openings, patched colours. At London's airy Euston Station even slapping plasticky wood (or woody plastic) around the sides doesn't destroy the life that a confident reuse of its forecourt would bring. In Norwich a revitalised Westlegate Tower (p18) sits in a tiny new slice of city. And the thinking behind those contextual stitchings is working its way back into architectural thinking with the fissures and forms of a human city. More liveable than game of urban Tetris (p24).