Cover photography and photo feature from Sinziana Velicescu‘s journey around Iceland
Icon 187 is out now! Inside the new issue: architecture in extreme climates, space-age dystopias, the towering task of social housing, David Rockwell’s Manhattan school, interviews with Shigeru Ban and Stefano Boeri, and more.
This month, Icon drags designers out their comfort zone. Our cover story reports architects working on the frontline of the climate crisis: in the Arctic and Antarctic, at the equator, and in the tropical zones where mega-storms are striking. What lessons do these designers have for the likes of London or New York, as historically temperate climates become more extreme, and for human survival?
Also pondering our uncertain future, Riya Patel, curator of the Aram Gallery, meets an artist who explains why he drowned Le Corbusier’s baby. ‘I first saw the sunken Villa Savoye as a bit of a stunt,’ Patel says, ‘but what became clear is its potential as a wake-up call for architects to adjust to a rapidly changing world.’
From artists toying with architecture, to architects invading the gallery: the work of Turner Prize-nominees Forensic Architecture holds lessons for more conventional designers, says Owen Hopkins.
Heading further out into the unknown are MIT Architecture thinkers Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy, who teleport to the distant reaches of the universe to explore planets in ruins.
At home, Imogen Adams celebrates IKEA’s much-maligned Klippan, where many evenings were spent watching Sex and the City with five housemates, ‘four of us along the seat and one perched on either armrest.’
And Rory Hyde, curator of architecture at the V&A, introduces a new generation of architects, planners and politicians poised to lead a social housing renaissance. In doing so, Hyde has been reporting from the capital’s existing council estates – with a little help: ‘I’ve dragged my three-year-old daughter around some of London’s concrete relics. As an outsider, a child is a good icebreaker in a housing estate. And she’s a good judge of playgrounds.’
