Synopsis: Values in Architecture

Ian Ritchie CBE RA, the Royal Academy’s Professor of Architecture and Director of Ian Ritchie Architects explores and challenges the meanings of some of the complex and contradictory issues that confront designers today such as progress, consumerism and sustainability. He will include examples of how his architecture and ideas attempt to focus these issues through the physical and ephemeral materials with which his architecture is made.

The RSC Courtyard Theatre was commended in the Client Satisfaction category at the Building Performance Awards at MIPIM 2008.

Ian Ritchie Architects have been selected to compete for the design of Transport for London’s new generation of bus shelters. Designs will be submitted by nine teams - two are architectural firms, and the other six industrial design companies.

Ian Ritchie Architects will be creating an exhibition of their work at Liverpool University. It will run during October and November 2008 while Liverpool is European City of Culture. Professor Neil Jackson will be helping to facilitate the exhibition.

We have been selected by Bovis Lend Lease to prepare designs for an urban block of approximately 300 homes for the Olympic Village and subsequently to be part of the urban development of Stratford, London.

We have received a commission to prepare a residential development of approximately 400 homes in Bromley, London. The last project that we completed in Bromley was the Crystal Palace Concert Platform in 1997.

Jan, who graduated from TU Berlin in 1997 and has been with us since 1998, is returning at the end of January to his home town of Hamburg to become a partner with two friends in a young practice. He will continue to help us on some projects from his new base, and having seen him mature here we are sure that he will be successful in his new adventure. We wish him well.

Ian Ritchie Architects have recently completed the concept design for a new sports complex - 40,000 seat FIFA standard football stadium, Olympic swimming and diving pool and indoor arena. It is anticipated that the complex will be completed in 2010. We have also been commissioned to prepare designs for a landmark residential development in Istanbul of 1,500 units, working alongside Arup, Turkey.

Ian Ritchie presided over the jury of the Compasso Volante competition which was judged in Palermo, Sicily on October 5th 2007. This is an annual Diploma design competition between students from the following schools of architecture - Politecnico di Milano, Paris-La Villette, Tsinghua University Beijing, Hanyang University Seoul, Technical University Malaysia, and the University of Palermo.

The 2007 site for this competition was in Malacca, Malaysia and the brief demanded high quality housing. The members of the jury were professors: Ettore Zambelli (Milan), Eric Dubosc (La Villette), Li Dexiang (Beijing), Lee Kang Up (Seoul), Antonio de Vecci (Palermo) and Paulo Cucci (Malay), and the process chaired by Professor Marco Imperiadori (Milan).