Ravensbourne College by Foreign Office Architects. Foreign Office Architects have completed the new tile-covered campus for Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication, located on the Greenwich Peninsula in London. The façade is composed of 28,000 anodised aluminium tiles in three different shapes and colours. Above photographs are copyright Morley von Sternberg The tiled façade is perforated with round windows of varying sizes, with two rows of windows per floor to provide views of the surrounding city. The pattern of the tiles is determined by the size and positioning of window openings, while the size of windows depends on the corresponding interior function. Perforations on the north side are larger and more frequent than those in the south side to regulate light levels.
The college has an area of 17,000m2 and will house 1,400 students in inter-disciplinary, open-plan work spaces over four interconnected storeys. The ground floor incorporates 1,700m2 of public retail space. Here's some text from the Architects: Ravensbourne, London UK. ICON MAGAZINE ONLINE | FOA: John Lewis. Words William Wiles “It’s the place you go to buy a bedspread,” says Foreign Office Architects partner Farshid Moussavi, explaining why this John Lewis department store in Leicester is wrapped in patterned fabric. The decorative facade, which is a double layer of glass with a mirrored frit, acts like a net curtain. Inside, the pattern on the two layers lines up exactly, so customers can see out, but when viewed at an oblique angle from the pavement, the pattern becomes almost opaque.
This transparency was not needed for the second element of the scheme, a multiplex cinema. But the cinema is still clad in a curtain, of shining stainless steel. “We were looking for some sort of strategy that related John Lewis and the cinema, but allowed them to be different,” says Moussavi. Thin sheets of steel were used so that they would buckle slightly, creating a quilted effect. This was FOA’s first department store and has whetted its appetite for more. Images Hélène Binet. Landscape urbanism. Landscape Urbanism is a theory of urban planning arguing that the best way to organize cities is through the design of the city's landscape, rather than the design of its buildings. The phrase 'Landscape Urbanism' first appeared in the mid 1990s. Since this time, the phrase 'Landscape Urbanism' has taken on many different uses, but is most often cited as a Postmodernist or Post-postmodernist response to the failings of New Urbanism and the shift away from the comprehensive visions, and demands, for Modern architecture and Urban planning.
The phrase 'Landscape Urbanism' first appeared in the work of Peter Connolly, a Masters of Urban Design student from RMIT Melbourne. In 1994, Connolly used the phrase in the title for his Masters of Urban Design proposal at RMIT Melbourne. Here, he suggested that 'a language of "landscape urbanism" barely exists and needs articulating', and that 'existing urbanisms [...] are limited in the exploration of the landscape'. History[edit] Themes[edit] Landscape Urbanism | a site for landscape + design + cities.