WIDN blog
Snøhetta Bucks Recession Trends
August 18, 2009
By Vicky Richardson
A model of the King Abdulaziz Centre wrapped in steel wire to represent steel pipes that capture heat from the sun
Snøhetta has obviously not heard that icons are out of fashion. Speaking at the Royal Academy’s Annual Architecture Lecture in July, practice directors Craig Dykers and Kjetil Thorsen, described how they ‘look for similarities in different places’, and think the term ‘context’ is overrated. A map of their current projects, shows the globe with coloured dots scattered all over it. One of the most dramatic is located in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.
The King Abdulaziz Centre for Knowledge and Culture is a public building of 45,000sq m that will house an auditorium for 1,000 people, an exhibition hall, cinema, museum and archive. The project bears the hallmarks of a star architect-designed icon: it was won via an invited competition; and its physical form resembles objects outside of the realm of conventional architecture – in this case a cluster of mercury blobs.
To read more of this post please visit Blueprint Magazine.
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