B3 Designers. The 25 hours Hotel Hafencity, a harbour city hotel that draws inspiration from maritime culture, was designed by a multidisciplinary team headed by architect Stephen Williams. The architects worked together with a storyteller, an events agency and an illustrator to give the project meaning at all levels. The hotel forms part of one of Europe’s most ambitious urban construction projects and aims to form part of a lively new city quarter.
Stephen Williams says: “We wanted to create a web of meaning with interrelating signs and symbols referring to seafaring and harbour life. A place where old and new stories come to life. It all began from the poems of Joachim Ringelnatz with the fictitious sailor Kuttel Daddeldu, a good soul who’s deeply rooted in the seafaring life, but also coarse and a little cheeky.” The design team drew a parallel between the guests of the hotel (‘nomads’) and sailors (‘maritime nomads’). (Images via Dezeen) Super Colossal. Pruned. BLDGBLOG. Green design will save the world | Inhabitat. Strangeharvest. Cityofsound. The primary interface between the UK’s planning system and the people and places it serves is a piece of A4 paper tied to a lamppost in the rain. OK, not always rain.
But rain often enough. The paper is a public notice describing a planning application for some kind of ‘development’ somewhere in the vicinity. If it’s a significant development, and very close to your property, you may also get a notification in the post. For something as fundamental as this—how your actual, physical neighbourhood may change—it seems little more than a token gesture. The paper notices are ubiquitous, tied at eye level in well-trafficked places. If one did notice the notice, you’d find language which is often alarmist (Camden lead with HOW DOES THIS AFFECT YOU? For the last year, I’ve been collecting examples of planning notices in the wild, most of them collated into the accompanying video.
I seem to be the only person even looking at the notices, never mind filming them. This is a456. A Daily Dose of Architecture. Interactive Architecture. Archinect - Making Architecture More Connected (since 1997) Architecture Competitions, Events & News. Archimatects. AnArchitecture.