Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art

Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art at the British Library:

"Maps can be works of art, propaganda pieces, expressions of local pride, tools of indoctrination… Magnificent Maps brings together 80 of the largest, most impressive and beautiful maps ever made, from 200 AD to the present day."

The exhibition includes the following maps, featured on British Library's website:

Psalter World Map c.1265

Fra Mauro World Map c. 1450

Guttierez, the Americas, 1562

Stephen Walter, The Island, 2008 - an idiosyncratic map of London that satirises the London-centric view of the city and its commuter towns as being separate to the rest of the country.

German Half-Timbered House Road

The German Framework Road or German Half-Timbered House Road (known as Deutsche Fachwerkstraße in German) is a tourist route in Germany that runs from the river Elbe in the north to Lake Constance in the south, covering nearly 3000 km and 100 towns and cities.

The route was devised in 1990 to highlight Germany's unique timber-framed houses and to help preserve its vernacular heritage.

Favela Art Project, London

Brixton meets Brazil: art project brings favela spirit to London Art and design guardian.co.uk

"To help celebrate Festival Brazil, young Londoners are building a model favela outside the Southbank Centre. Combining visions of Rio with personal experiences of living in London, the model city is an imaginative fusion of ideas about identity and place"

Watch the audio slideshow

Squatting - a solution to Britain's housing crisis?

Video: Sustainable squatting in Bonnington Square

Michele Hanson meets Anna Odrich, the driving force behind the famous Bonnington Squat in London. Could squatting be the solution to Britain's housing crisis? guardian.co.uk, 6 July 2010

Squatting is a contentious issue, but some interesting points are made in this video:

Britain supposedly has a housing crisis, yet there are about 1 million empty homes in the UK, and about 82,000 of those are in London.

Councils who own properties but can't afford to restore them to a liveable standard will often deliberately wreck properties to deter squatters from moving in.

Squatting can involve the re-use and restoration of empty dwellings using reclaimed materials that would otherwise end up in landfill sites.

The restoration and retro-fitting of existing buildings can be far more sustainable as it conserves the planet's resources and preserves historic buildings that are often better designed than new-builds and already part of an existing community.

Unfortunately, VAT has to be paid on building materials to restore an existing property, while no VAT is paid on new-builds, which means new-builds are often the more profitable option.

Viewers' comments are posted here

The Advisory Service for Squatters (ASS), based in London, offers legal and practical advice to squatters and homeless people, and has published The Squatters Handbook, now in its 13th edition with over 150,000 copies sold. The legal advice it contains applies only to England and Wales, where squatting is legal, but not to Scotland and Northern Ireland where laws are different.

As the ASS points out:

"ASS does not promote lawlessness, as squatting is still legal. We help disadvantaged people to find housing, to help themselves when no-one else will. We often recommend that people who are eligible for Priority Need Housing apply to their local Council. ...

The real issue is the difficulty of getting housed, due to profiteering through privitisation and gentrification, which leads to unaffordable rents and the need to take personal action."

The Oikos Project, London

The Oikos Project (pronounced ee-kos) is a live build project in Southwark to create a temporary theatre space on a public playground, made from recycled and reclaimed materials, including a wall made from watercooler bottles.

The project is a collaboration between The Architecture Foundation, The Red Room theatre company and the Berlin-based architects Kobberling & Kaltwasser as part of the London Festival of Architecture. The space, called The Jellyfish Theatre, will be used for workshops, exhibitions and theatre performances until the beginning of October, when it will be dismantled.

Visitors to the festival were asked to donate materials and take part in the construction process: Photos and architects' drawings here

Videos - Natural disasters: how can we improve?

Videos of a talk at the Royal Geographical Society, London, 25 May 2010; part of a series on 21st Century Challenges:

Cameron Sinclair, co-founder of Architecture for Humanity, discusses the role of NGOs in post-disaster reconstruction, along with Barbara Stocking, Chief Executive of Oxfam GB, and Martin Bell, UNICEF Ambassador for Humanitarian Emergencies, and questions from members of the audience.

Architecture for Humanity is a nonprofit design firm founded in 1999 to provide sustainable architectural solutions to communities that are most in need and who would otherwise not be able to afford their services. In particular they specialise in designs for areas hit by natural or manmade disasters and those facing humanitarian crises, such as Haiti, Sri Lanka and even the USA, following Hurricane Katrina.

The organisation is supported by a network of more than 40,000 professionals who lend their time and expertise to create designs that can be replicated for free by communities around the world, democratising a sometimes elitist service.

Banlieue regeneration

One of the more positive responses by the French government to the riots that spread across French cities in Autumn 2005, was to suggest the much-needed regeneration of the banlieues in urban centres, and the tackling of high unemployment and a shortage of affordable housing.

When this article was published in 2006, there were 4 million social units with 1.3 million on the waiting list for HLM residences.

In 2000, the socialist government of the time, passed a law called 'Solidarite et Renouveau Urbain', requiring 20% of all new housing to be social housing by 2020, in towns of more than 3500 residents, and Chirac's centre-right majority subsequently also reinforced this policy.

To avoid demolition, the architect Chartier-Corbasson proposed the refurbishment of a derelict HLM in the Marais district of Paris (above left), while Jean Nouvel designed this HLM (top right) as a low-rise alternative in Mulhouse, eastern France.