Browser - View - web sites for architecture

Architectural Review, The, Feb, 2002

Sutherland Lyall heroically surfs the architectural cyberwaves.

Artless art gallery

For some time exotically haired Bamber Gascoigne hasn't been seen presenting BBC's University Challenge. He's apparently been building the newly opened History World website at www.historyworld.net - which is worth a look. More interesting for us is one of his favourite sites. It is a brilliant amateur art gallery by Denmark-based Carol Gerten-Jackson at www.hol.gr/cjackson/index.html. The type and design is a bit mimsy and the paintings tend to be dated before the end of the nineteenth century. But there are lots and lots of them, the scans are of high quality and the searching is wonderfully plain and simple using the well-tested clickable thumbnail approach. You imagine that the respected and ferocious web-usability guru, Jakob Nielsen, would approve.

Ictinus at last - and Callicrates too

Some sites we have looked at during the last few years have disappeared into the black hole of Cyberspace. But not the Digital Imaging Project at www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/. It's one of those sites initiated and run by real enthusiasts, in this case by Mary Ann Sullivan who teaches art history at Bluffton College, a Mennonite liberal arts college in Ohio. She says, 'I have received a number of e-mails from persons asking me why I am doing this'. And although she lets that hang unanswered you know it's because it's possible and because she feels she should. The project is a big and growing collection of images of architecture, art and sculpture from prehistory to now. Back in January 2000 we tried the Ictinus test and failed to find any reference to him or to Greek architecture. Now, happily, Iktinos and Kallikrates are at the head of the two pages to do with the Parthenon and its sculpture. So that's all right then. Except that for the lay visitor there is not necessarily a causal link between artists and b uilding, there being no explanatory text. It's also still true that the heavy bias is in favour of US modern architects but, hey, it's an American site. Valuable in a different way is the link to http://www.links2go.com/topic/Picture_Collect ions which is a really comprehensive list of urls for digital image collections to which we'll surely come back.

All's Will without Stormer

Will Alsop's site is still called http://www.alsopandstormer.com/ though the home page is titled the more up-to-date Alsop Architects and leads directly to a page featuring a shiny orangy amoeba shape. After a bit of experimenting with the mouse you click on one of the pseudopods and up pops a bit more orange blob surrounded by the names of projects relevant to the pseudopod's special theme: Working, BIG architecture, Moving and so on. One of several even smaller blobs adjacent leads to a bunch of thumbnail movies and another to an A to Z section illustrating projects. Then the tricksy bit. You run the cursor across the top edge of the amoeba and it suddenly serrates and when you click on the newly formed word 'practice' there is a black screen and a random array of ostensibly meaningless shapes - icons, I guess. You click on the elephant and there is a series of pensees - most of them originally published in our sister. weekly magazine, The Architects' Journal.

Other icons lead to photos of the Alsop studio, the staff, the master at work on an action painting involving thrown paint and somebody's wall, management procedures and the office design approach which is called just that and not, praise the lord, 'practice philosophy'. Alsop, who models himself on Cedric Price (there are hints too of the clipped, understated delivery of the late, great engineer Frank Newby) actually has something interesting to say - bit like his architecture. Despite the apparent visual randomness, this site is simple, easily navigated and un-tricksy - and eschews the self-important pomp of rather too many contemporary architectural sites.

All hands to the pocket

One of the best newish sites for design and architecture and related topics has to be that of Creativebase: www.creativebase.com/newswires/. Fresh, wide ranging and well written, the bad news is that it has just converted into a paid subscription service. What you get every three weeks is a 'wire' edited by Steve Hare to do with architecture and design. The 16 issues - or wires - in each year cost [pounds sterling]75. On the evidence of a recent sample, it could just be reasonable value for money though I've got a feeling that using the price of print magazines as a basis won't necessarily wash - especially when there plainly aren't any printing and distribution costs. Still there is a cumulative archive - although everybody has these nowadays - including us at www.arplus.com.

Virtual 3D

One of the most interesting links in Hare s wire was to Simon Greenwold's Installation, research work he is doing at the Aesthetics and Computation Group at the MIT Media Lab run by the legendary John Maeda, 'Installation is a system consisting of a viewing window and a stylus with which users can create virtual forms and install them permanently into a real space'. See the full story and a movie at http://acg.media.mit.edu/people/simong/and don't miss the whole site at http://acg.media.mit.edu/. You only wish Britain's Royal College of Art at www.rca.ac.uk/bothered to do something even a tenth as good.