Sutherland Lyall fearlessly hacks his way through the cyber thicket.

Sites of the south

Art4D is South East Asia's answer to Blueprint. It's interesting in throwing up one of the problems faced by print magazines in this era of compulsory websites and web-only webzines. Actually Art4D is published in Bangkok and, as is mostly the case with magazines, its website at www.art4d.com is not all that revelatory about the current issue's content beyond a list of the main stories plus brief elaborations. You imagine the site might at least be a bit more forthcoming about earlier months' contents on the grounds that the stories are by now a bit stale. But no, here too the site is tight-lipped. I checked to make a comparison with our own website at www.arplus.com (with which, honest, I'm quite unconnected) and there were terrific images of the ar+d winners and runners-up to be seen in last month's issue and ditto for all the years back to 1999. Our website also carries at least three complete articles per back number in pdf format. I mention this not to emphasize how cool the AR site is, but to hint that since it doesn't seem to affect our subscription figures Art4D might follow suit. And turn a slightly anal-retentive site into an interesting one.

New building typology emerges

The AR is not a travel magazine, but since the ice hotel represents a new typology and an extreme form of construction, I can't refrain from reporting on the phenomenon. The latest is outside the main railway station in Bruges, Belgium. Actually it's in a big insulated tent outside the main railway station. Bruges not being the coldest place on earth. Movie-goers will remember that Bond movie ice hotel, based on the original in Jukkasjarvi in Swedish Lapland. There is also one, the Hotel de Glace, at Duchesnay on the outskirts of Quebec, Canada www.glasssteelandstone.com/CA/PQ/QuebecCityIceHotel.html, and one at Kangerlussuarq, Greenland (www.greenland.com/Adventures/Ice_ and_Snow/Ice_Hotel/. The latter is in the form of five igloos radiating out from a central dome, four of them rooms, one an entrance and bar. The Canadian version is not exactly cutting edge architecture and the Bruges version is quite modest in scale: there are only two suites. For your 500 Euros a night you get, in addition to an extremely cold and uncomfortable bed (albeit with furs), a room in a nearby proper hotel for ablutions. No word about facilities relating to getting up in the icy night. For quite a lot less your alternative accommodation could be a converted canal barge. Another down-side is that it is part of an ice sculpture festival. So lots of ice swans, fairies and gnomes then. But these isolated examples pale into insignificance when you look at the central Manchurian rustbelt town of Harbin. In winter Harbin becomes an ice city of pagodas, spaceships, statues, with an ice reproduction of bits of St Petersburg, an orthodox onion-domed church, rows of Doric columns, the Great Wall and a lot more. For a taste try http://community.webshots.com/album/59936963DbcfUr/.

Talking of rust

First there was that workaday stuff used as the skin for thousands of Outback shearing sheds. Then Glenn Murcutt turned this low net worth material into something soaring and poetic. And now we have delicious photographs of corrugated iron in England by designer Bob Humm at www.bobhumm.com. It opens with a home page close-up of the eaves of a building at Birds Kitchen Farm, Romney Marsh which looks as edible as crumbling chocolate shards. Charmingly Bob announces, 'This website is about corrugated iron simply because I like it'. Examples include Shuhei Endo's ar+d 2000 winner, the lavatories and apartment for Hyogo Prefecture, and Rural Studio, some shacks on the shingle ridge at Dungeness, the corrugated iron St Michael's Church, Hythe and more. A little history section by AA conservation course student Paul Dadson explains why corrugated iron fell out of fashion in Britain--although it seems to have been invented and developed here. The answer was that in the British climate it rusted too readily.

Out in public

Architecture has to be the most public of arts, so one is naturally drawn to a site with a name like www.publicartonline.org.uk. It turns out to be the site of a British organization Public Art South West which is run from Exeter which is towards the bottom left-hand side of England. It is a site about which you feel quite comfortable from the beginning. This is a working site full of information for people, artists, administrators and architects working in the field of public art. So there are case studies, policy statements, collaborations, practical advice under such headings as garden festivals, temporary works, storage, strategies and the like. It is nice to see that the RIBA is an enthusiastic no-punches-pulled supporter: 'The Artist is our ally in championing aesthetic values over those of time and cost in our constant battle against the philistines who make up the majority of the construction industry.' So, despite the prejudicial deployment of capital letters, there.

Public service

LINE at www.linemag.org is the website of the San Francisco chapter of the AIA which has been running an interesting campaign in favour of a Californian non-profit organization called Public Architecture. It is currently promoting 'The 1% Solution'. At first I thought this might be a variant on the Percentage for Art theme which argues that a small percentage of the cost of all commercial buildings should be devoted to art works. But no. This is about architects providing hours in the service of the public, more accurately an 'initiative to have 1% of all architects' working hours devoted to the public service.' Here in the UK we used to call that local authority and government architecture. No sorry, that was really unfair. The rest of the website has a nice long list of articles, many of them to do with architecture and social responsibility, an area of discussion of which we hear rather too little in these comfortable times.

The archive has themes ranging from Structure, Public Dialogue to Sustainable Design. Unlike too many archives, you can click your way through to the actual text and read it there. There are illustrated design awards, book reviews, interviews and a portfolio of Bay Area architecture which illustrates the month's broad theme. And there is a direct link into the AIA Chapter's events programme. The images have a curiously furry quality and the overall feeling is a tad homely. But who cares when otherwise this is pretty much an exemplary site?

The Miller/Hull Partnership is an AIA Architecture Firm Award-winning Seattle practice which has this amusing home page. There are two columns, the left on text detailing their current awards and starting with the memorably enthusiastic words 'We're thrilled to announce ...' OK it's only about the office moving but you feel you could work with a practice which can get thrilled about anything in public. Down the right-hand column are two rows of photographs one of which you at first mistake for a movie. Cheeky chappies, the only moving thing is the lines and scratch marks you get on old movie stock. Interestingly there is a page about ftp (file transfer protocol) but because you need a password to get in, exactly what the practice does with it must remain veiled to the rest of us. There are several pages of current and completed works most of which you would probably be happy to have on your own practice cv.

Sutherland Lyall is at [e-mail]