There’s little doubt that the late 1950s and early 1960 was boom time for public art. No gleaming ’shop modern’ office building or department store or apartment complex was complete without some sort of sculpture or water feature or chunky mural at street level to give warmth to their austere angles. If you look at modern development today there is sparse attention given to anything as frivolous as decoration apart from a few deliberately unimaginative slabs of commissioned work stashed away in the foyer.

So it is that The Twentieth Century Society has launched a campaign to save some of the dwindling number of public murals from that era [c20society.org.uk/murals], like the series pictured here in Holborn by Dorothy Annan which is due for demolition soon. You can seen more pictures of it [via flickr].

Gosh, it’s been a while since I got round to doing one of these. Not that reading matter hasn’t been stacking up in massive piles around the flat (still haven’t found a decent bookcase). A lot of it has been old faithfuls like Wired, Little White Lies, Grafik, Dwell etc. This time around though we have the first editions of a couple of brand new British publications, something in gold, something good and lashings of sex (well a lash… maybe two). Here goes…

Buck [buckstyle.com]
Buck arrives out of the blue. A product of one of the youngest and most ambitious (but still fun) magazine production teams ever. Buck is an independent magazine about ‘Fashion, Furniture & Food’ aimed at young men alienated by the more ‘Dad’ than ‘Lad’-ish culture of trashy rags like Nuts and Zoo, yet too young for the likes of the more sedate monoliths like Monocle and Esquire. This issue was art directed and designed in record time by Jasmine Raznahan [jasmineraznahan.com] and the team at Buck and is a mag that’s worth keeping an eye on.

10 Men [10magazine.com]
10 Men (and indeed, the same goes for sister publication, 10 Women) is a surprising magazine, in that it’s actually been around for a while although you may not have noticed. I originally picked it up cause they seem to be using a bizarre slightly serifed version of Futura and stayed for the rare (for a Men’s fashion magazine) combination of humour and intelligence they employ when discussing all things fashion. There seems to be a really solid group of editorial bods behind this one all reading from the same page… as it were. Here’s hoping they keep it up.

Good [good.is]
Forgetting an earlier faux pas [see 132] (let’s never speak of it again), Good is actually pretty great. It’s premise is a little hard to describe as people often seem incredulous that something as frivolous and wasteful as a magazine could actually want to do good, never-the-less I’ll have a go… Good is a magazine that raises and supports ethical concerns. It practises what it preaches by donating subscriptions to non-profit organisations seeking to make the world a better place. It does this with style, substance and a cheeky grin. The latest edition includes the new Good Business supplement. They also love Infographics and Graphic Designers in general. See… Good est good.

Kasino A4 [wearekasino.com]
Kasino’s last issue had the wholesome theme of Family. This issue it’s all about Sex which I guess leads to families so… it doesn’t feel like there’s as much to read in this one, probably because of the boob and willy count, but expect new angles (figuratively and literally) on the age old subject and what turns human beings on and those ace little quote thingies they like to sprinkle throughout.

Palais [palaismagazine.com]
I recently took a whirlwind two day trip to Paris just to get out of town and didn’t get to see even half the things I wanted to check out. I did manage to get to the Palais de Tokyo [palaisdetokyo.com], now a regular stopping place on any visit, to see an exhibition that may have been shown, in part, at the Barbican earlier this year on (amongst other things) Modern English folk art. Not exactly my idea of getting away from it all, still the regular magazine they publish is always worth picking up for a more leisurely and insightful way to re-engage with the subject at hand.

Pin-up [pinupmagazine.org]
Pin-up is my current fave architecture magazine and this issue is gold. Most of the magazine inside and out has been printed in gold ink. The contrast between the ink and the cheapo cheapo typefaces they use is ace. There’s not enough pictures in this one though and the slightly rejigged typesetting seems less enticing somehow, still a mag to look out for though. I wonder how you top gold though…

Art Vandelay [artvandelay.com]
Art Vandelay is a curious title for a ‘concept’ driven enterprise brought together by Lee Turner and his crew as part of The Russian Club Design Studio [therussianclub.co.uk]. The idea is to take a step back from editing and/or curating the magazine/events space and let the creatives take charge. So in the inaugural issue of the magazine you get designers and image makers interviewing each other and collaborating on various projects. Which is what also happens in their gallery space. Confused? I was a bit until I visited their space and it all started to make sense. Look out for the first in the Art Vandelay series of creative’s monographs to be released around the same time as the mag. Exciting stuff.

I’m currently on assignment at Nick Bell Design [nickbelldesign.co.uk] where Mr Bell has the most awesome collection of The Architectural Review [arplus.com] magazines I’ve ever seen. They stretch as far back as the late 50s and were inherited by Nick from an architect looking to rehouse his collection. I took the opportunity to photograph a handful of covers which you can see over on [flickr]. Enjoy.

It’s taking far too long for London’s architectural decision makers to recognise this fact. You can see a number of smaller scale developments (usually mixed-use or residential) around East and East Central London where random architectural elements are just stuck on to the exterior of the building with little thought for their purpose or look and feel. You get the over all impression that English Architects and developers need to rediscover ‘decoration’.

Architects in Melbourne realised this in the late 90s and have been experimenting with embellishing the shell of their buildings with various patterns and different types of cladding and materials ever since. The most notable early examples include RMIT’s Building 8, completed in 1993, by Edmond and Corrigan and Ashton Raggatt McDougall’s renovation of Storey Hall in 1996 [a-r-m.com.au]. Lyon’s Architects have picked up the baton in recent years with a breakthrough design for Victoria University’s Online Training Facility [lyonsarch.com.au] and similar experiments such as BHP Billiton Global Headquarters [lyonsarch.com.au] with it’s deceptively straight forward glass cladding that buckles and warps at street level.

This trend has continued, although many of these Architects and their contemporaries now use the buildings exterior shell to boast about it’s environmental credentials by using natural, sustainable materials such as wood and brick. We’ve talked about wooden buildings such as DesignInc’s CH2 building for the Melbourne City Council [architectureaustralia.com] and Ashton Raggatt McDougall’s 2004 revamp for Melbourne Central’s Swanston & Latrobe street entrance on Boicozine before. Lyons have just completed the build on a Nursing House in Mornington that puts a new twist on the wooden facade by creating bricks that mimic patterns found in wood [via dezeen].

While lamenting the obnoxious, developer-led ‘Dallas in the 80s’ style of architecture that’s sweeping through London it’s comforting to note architectural firm, F.A.T. [fashionarchitecturetaste.com] seem to be gaining recognition for their well crafted, community driven and, well, ‘jolly’ building designs with a raft of new commissions and proposals underway. After their New Islington development in Manchester [newislington.co.uk] they seem to be on the cusp of becoming a household name. Some work on the interior’s of KesselKramer’s new London branch is shown above [kkoutlet.com]. Pay attention City of London, these are the buildings people will still be talking about in 20–50 years time not the city-worker glass and steel ghettos that can only be described as ‘tall’ [heroninternational.co.uk]. We’ll try to showcase a selection of London’s recent wonders and blunders in the coming weeks (weather permitting). Any suggestions, let us know.

Australia may not be as ‘world-renowned’ for it’s innovative architecture as some countries, yet it is in it’s capital cities, like Melbourne and Sydney, where you find rare examples of architectural prowess and derring-do unseen anywhere else on the globe. Not to mention innovations being made in the name of green and sustainable architecture. One Melbourne-based practise that worth watching is mARch Studio [marchstudio.com.au]. Their jigsaw puzzle interior for a bar called Dusk using ‘found objects’ as it’s main theme, has already started winning awards. Other projects that are equally exciting include a full scale traditional Chinese Pavilion constructed entirely out of cardboard for children to scribbble on, following on from similar project involving a Parisian Apartment (shown above) launched late 2006 [marchstudio.com.au/penplanparis] and an a-typical Australian homestead that has been stripped back to it’s bare necessities with the addition of a new wing that snakes around the building, creating a sheltered courtyard between the two. Radical.

So, with my interest peeked, I sought out the latest edition of said magazine. No wonder I hadn’t noticed it before. What happened? I guess almost half a decade had passed but today’s The Architectural Review feels like a magazine on the edge of extinction (and coming under Emap’s current remit they should be very weary of this). Gone are the crazy fold outs and different types of paper stock, special colours and lush blueprints (in black, natch). I’ve never seen Gill Sans looking so tired and unloved. Maybe it’s punishment for helping push the social housing agenda of the 60s. I dunno, but with the recent glut of ace architectural magazines at the moment AR needs to step up or go the way of Mondial House [lightstraw.co.uk/mondial].