Tate Britain features prominently in the BBC's trailer for the 2023 series of its Saturday night dance show, Strictly Come Dancing.
Peter St John is joined by Dirk Sommers of Bovenbouw Architectuur for a talk on the practices' newly completed renovation of the Royale Belge insurance headquarters. The event is organised by Urban Brussels as part of the Urban Lunch series and features presentations of three milestone projects that have recently been undertaken in the city.
Construction has started on a new office building on Stampfenbachstrasse in central Zurich. The building, for multinational insurance company AXA, houses around 4,000 square meters of office space over seven floors.
The project for the renovation of the Royale Belge in Brussels has now completed. An opening event was held on 28th June, hosted by Mix – a new venue encompassing a hotel, restaurant, gym and co-working space. The food hall and terrace on the ground floor has also opened, creating a new destination for the Watermaal-Bosvoorde area of Brussels. The project’s diverse functions are brought together by the new hall and staircase which creates a new centrepiece for the iconic building.
This year Unit 12, led by Peter St John, investigated the theme of Second Life, in the context of the design of buildings. Based on the belief that almost everything can have a second life, the project intends to address London's pressing need for more housing and the complex solutions for the shortage of land. The proposals for the reuse and densification of existing post-war housing stock in South London show how this can be a better solution than redevelopment.
The Swiss Life Arena features in Swiss Performance 2023, Archithese's round-up of the best Swiss architectural projects from the past 12 months.
The Swiss Life Arena is reviewed in the March edition of Werk, Bauen Wohnen. Benjamin Muschg takes in the atmosphere at a sold-out game, as the ZSC Lions triumph over HC Davos, and describes the building's unconventional organisation and approach to minimizing energy consumption in use.
Caruso St John has submitted a planning application for the conversion of a 19th century fertilizer factory at a former industrial site in Uetikon am See on the banks of Lake Zurich.
Published by Mack Books, The Triple Folly presents an account of the collaboration between Thomas Demand, Caruso St John, and textile manufacturers Kvadrat, which led to the construction of the new pavilion at Kvadrat's headquarters in Ebeltoft, Denmark.
The Swiss Life Arena is featured in Casabella 944. Federico Tranfa introduces the project and discusses its key references – the ruins of an ancient mosque in Syria and the 18th century Guards Tent in the gardens of the summer palace at Drottingholm in Stockholm.
Project review
Building in Hamburg
In a talk for the Architecture Foundation, Associate Ben Speltz presents Caruso St John's work in Hamburg over the past decade, focusing on the practice's approach to working within the urban fabric of the city centre and introducing two recently completed projects, the Gortz Palais and Grosser Burstah Office Building.
Adam Caruso will be speaking on the theme of ‘Semper and Material Culture’, as part of the book launch for A New Agenda for Gottfried Semper. Alongside Elena Chestnova, Murray Fraser, Michael Gnehm, and Sonja Hildebrand, Adam will discuss the mid-nineteenth century’s emphatic interest in material history against the backdrop of the precariousness of a life in exile confronted with a globalised world.
Caruso St John has received the building permit for the AXA Office building, located on Stampfenbachstrasse in central Zurich. The building for multinational insurance company AXA houses around 4,000 square meters of office space over seven floors.
Construction is scheduled to begin in spring 2023, with a façade mock-up already completed for quality control of the materials and joints.
Lecture
Casabella Lectures
Adam Caruso in conversation with Federico Tranfa
Milan, Italy
8th May 2023
Adam Caruso will be in conversation with Casabella’s editor Federico Tranfa at the Theatro Milano for the magazine’s annual lecture series. The discussion will focus on the design process, exploring projects like the recently completed Swiss Life Arena.
A publication charting the 14 year process of designing and building the Swiss Life Arena has been published by Park Books.
The book is by CCTM Real Estate & Infrastructure AG, with contributions by Ariana Pradal, Marco Keller, and Claudia Kaufmann-Morf, as well as photographs by and Philip Heckhausen.
Sofie De Caigny, director of the Flanders Architecture Institute, reviewed Caruso St John's Collected Works: Volume I for Drawing Matter. She discusses the book's choice to submerge the reader into the cultural sphere of the end of the 20th century, through contemporary texts, lectures and references.
Adam Caruso and fellow guests Jan De Vylder, Elke Krasny and Astrid Staufer will attend a 'Supercrit' and panel discussion on conversion in architecture, to mark the end of an exhibition of student work at TU Wien.
Peter St John will give a lecture entitled, Transformation and Resources, at the University of Nottingham's Department of Architecture and Built Environment, on the 21st of February. The talk will explore the recent work of the office that focuses on the transformation of existing buildings.
Planning application
Twentieth Century Theatre
Caruso St John have submitted a planning application for a new venue for classical music in west London. The project is to revive the Twentieth Century Theatre, a Grade II listed former music hall on Westbourne Grove in Notting Hill.
Marco Biagi explores the approach of international practices to decommissioned industrial buildings. Citing a range of recently completed projects, including Caruso St John's Veemgebouw, he discusses the rise of adaptive reuse. Biagi explains through our urgent environmental crisis, the reuse of industrial plants and depots is more necessary than ever, offering a new challenging creative outlet for contemporary architects.
Matthew Blunderfield interviewed Thomas Demand in his Berlin Studio for Scaffold Podcast. Alongside discussing his practice in reference to trauma, fiction and chance, they explore his relationship with architecture. When talking about his collaborations with Caruso St John on Nagelhaus and The Triple Folly, Demand explains his position as both close to and separate from the role of architects.
Casabella issue 940 features a review Caruso St John's Complete Works, Volume I, published by Mack Books. Federico Tranfa commends the book's thematic collation of projects, found texts and commentaries, stating it is a 'courageous way to come to terms with the past, because it is not analysed a posteriori, but instead with the cultural context of the epoch of pertinence'.
Lecture
Design by Thinking of
Resources, Material and Transformation
Amsterdam, the Netherlands
25th January 2023
Peter St John will give a lecture at the Tolhuistuin, Amsterdam, discussing several of the practice's recent projects with a focus on the themes of Resources, Material and Transformation.
Profile
Der Standard
A visit to the pioneers of adaptation in Zurich
Vienna, Austria
17th December 2022
Maik Novotny visits Caruso St John's Zurich office to discuss the new arena for the ZSC Lions ice-hockey team and, despite the scale of its most recently completed project, discovers the practice's long-term interest and growing commitment to projects that prioritise renovation and adaptive re-use over new construction.