Articles by Rory Stott

This article was originally published by Common Edge as “Letter From Mexico City: An Insidious Memorial to a Still-Unfolding Tragedy.”

A skyscraper in Guiyang, China, has attracted headlines thanks to a daring water feature built into its facade. On one side, the 121-meter (397-foot) tall Liebian Building in Guiyang, China, features a spectacular waterfall, providing a dramatic spectacle from the plaza below. At 108-meters (350-feet), the waterfall is among the tallest artificial waterfalls in the world—and easily the largest artificial waterfall located in an urban area, with other record breakers being artificial additions to river and canal networks.

As one of the leading architects of the British High-Tech movement, Pritzker Prize-winner Richard Rogers stands out as one of the most innovative and distinctive architects of a generation. Rogers made his name in the 1970s and ’80s, with buildings such as the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Headquarters for Lloyd’s Bank in London. To this day his work plays with similar motifs, utilizing bright colors and structural elements to create a style that is recognizable, yet also highly adaptable.

At the Moscow Urban Forum, Rem Koolhaas speaks to Vladimir Pozner about his life and work, including how he has been influenced by Russian architecture. The pair aim to also discuss how the city of Moscow has evolved and the role that it currently has in the world. Watch the live stream above.

The Lakhta Center, a 400,000-square-meter complex which includes Europe’s tallest skyscraper, is approaching completion in St Petersburg. Designed by RMJM in collaboration with Kettle Collective, the complex provides a new landmark in the northwest of the city—an area on the coastline of the Gulf of Finland which has seen significant development in recent years with the completion of the St Petersburg Stadium, a passenger seaport, and a number of park spaces including the Park of the 300th Anniversary of Saint Petersburg.

VTN Architects has released their design for the Chic-Land Hotel currently under construction in Da Nang, Vietnam. Located opposite the beach, the site offers excellent views to the east—but is constrained by the fact that it is only 15 meters wide. With this in mind, the designers opted for a 21-story building, offering 129 rooms with balconies shaded by a cascade of plants.

This morning, planning permission was awarded for the construction of 100 Leadenhall Street, an SOM-designed skyscraper in the eastern cluster of skyscrapers in the City of London. At 263.4 meters tall, the building will be the third tallest in the cluster, trailing only 1 Undershaft (305 meters), which is approved but yet to begin construction, and 22 Bishopsgate (278 meters), which is currently under construction. The Shard, at 310 meters, is also nearby on the south of the river.

Architecture can give you a headache. That sentence probably doesn’t sound surprising for anyone who has dealt with the stress of practicing or studying architecture but, increasingly, psychologists are beginning to understand that you don’t need to work on architectural designs for buildings to cause you pain. In an interesting article published by The Conversation, Arnold J Wilkins, a Professor of Psychology at the University of Essex, discusses how discomfort, headaches, and even migraines can be caused or exacerbated by simply looking at certain visual stimuli—with the straight lines and repetitive patterns of urban environments singled out as the main culprit.

In what has to be one of the most spectacular collisions of high fashion and architecture, fashion designer Guo Pei has tapped into the “immutable” qualities of Gothic buildings with a series of outfits inspired by vaults, spires, flying buttresses, and elaborate window tracery. According to Vogue, the Chinese designer described her work as “a dialogue between the human body and spatial dimension,” while Pei’s own Facebook post explained her Fall 2018 collection with just a short phrase: “Time flows unhurriedly, while architecture stands immutably.”

When learning about architecture, there is no replacement for practical experience: seeing how materials can be joined together, how structural elements respond to the stresses placed upon them, or how construction techniques can alter the finished project. For this reason, it is a good idea to give students a chance for some hands-on experience building real structures—something that, due to budgetary constraints and the academic culture of many architecture schools, has sadly been uncommon in the past.