Architecture and commerce, materials and technologies, philosophy and politics, art and engineering, the launch issue of BE: the journal of the Built Environment Trust explores the ideas, people and projects that are going to matter.
The elegantly-designed format, with changes in paper-stock that echo the first issue's concern with materials, features exclusive interviews and profiles of Circular Economy pioneers William McDonough (“Material Revolutionary”) and Walter Stahel (“Innovation in the Weeds”), and a discussion between Arup’s Stuart Smith (“How to Make a Circular Building”) and the Built Environment Trust’s Director of Strategy Lewis Blackwell on the construction of London’s Circular Building for the London Design Festival.
The first issue also contains “An Incomplete Primer on SuperMaterial” an information rich and visual feast to the new materials which change how we think about, design and construct buildings.
Rachel Armstrong’s “10 Visions of Bioarchitecture” is a guide to the pioneers pushing the boundaries of material science and architecture, and an exclusive feature from William McDonough himself, “Changing the Carbon Conversation”, a radical proposal on re-arranging the chemistry of the city.
BE also provides exclusive extracts from work that gives a different perspective on the built environment: “De-Shopping Centres” from Paul Hawken’s classic work Ecology of Commerce; a section from Jussi Parikka’s Insect Media examining the self-organizing architecture of bees; and an angle on materials and architecture that only novelists can deliver, in an extract from Simon Mawer’s Booker Prize shortlisted The Glass Room.
The first issue also covers the politics of space in Georgia White’s “Politics, Design and the New Plug-In City”, in which she lays out her architecture project in Manila and in “Re-inventing Ambridge”, young architects Alex Dickie and Christopher Kelly reflect on their building project in Buckinghamshire that redesigns the relationship between landscape, materials and digita culture.
BE is also a visual journey of landscapes and buildings. “Rebuilding the World” is a survey of award winning environmental photography. There is exploratory illustration from Leah Fusco of a deserted medieval village; graphite interpretations of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonia (“Velvet Modernism”) by Jemma Appleby.
And a playful compendium of culinary materials (“Ingredients”) as Architects, Landscape Artists and gifted illustrators specialising in architecture picture their favourite dishes.
A cerebral, visual and emotional engagement on the built environment, BE celebrates the passion and curiosity of architects, engineers and designers in expanding the boundaries of their fields, addressing the key concerns of the built environment in the 21st Century.
You can purchase BE: the journal of the Built Environment Trust at variety of shops and museums across the UK, including Artwords, Charlotte Street News, Magculture, Magazine Brighton, The Serpentine Gallery, Wardour News, Selfridges.
