Suddenly, ahead, a monument appears which confirms the true power of North America.  On a plinth, a sculpture rises up, almost entirely of metal, some painted and some rusting, some circular and some pointed, some twisted and some straight, with the addition of a glass and rubber tyres.  The monument is a pick-up truck, the symbol of modern America, a gas-guzzling vehicle that has been taken apart and reassembled as a monument for the 21t century by the American artist Virginia Overton.

At the White Cube Gallery in Bermondsey. Overton shows her dexterity.  Autumn is coming; so in one gallery she has a log-stove burning, the crackling fire fuelled from a huge pile of logs (where on earth do they come from in the middle of London?), while adjacent are mirrored sculptures – the glass mirrors being both reflective and translucent, taken from a library in Columbus Ohio, held on marble supports, reflecting back the 1970’s green wallpaper from her own kitchen.

Overton takes different elements and combines them into new experiences, with which she draws in the viewer to interact and question perceptions of space, culture and the modern world.

The photograph of the “Muscovite Eiffel Tower” by Pavel Golovkin is one of twelve of the best photographs selected from “Aperture” in New Scientist which has, for five years, published challenging, news-worthy and beautiful photographs of nature, space and technology here on Earth.

The ambition to explore and control space and to develop nuclear technology is reflected in Edgar Martin’s photograph of the dressing room at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre with empty gloves and space suits awaiting their occupants and Danila Tkachenko’s photographs which reflect back to the Cold War, including the Bartini Beriev VVA-14 aircraft designed to take off from water and destroy US submarines, of which only two were ever built in the 1970’s, while Enrico Sacchetti has recorded the two mirrors of the Large Binocular Telescope on the top of Mount Graham in Arizona as two eyes looking out into space – two 8.4 metre wide mirrors which collect and combine light as if a single 11.8 metre mirror, making it the largest optical telescope in the world, used to examine dust particles around far-distant stars and planets to understand their atmosphere.

Going up into space and looking back at Earth, the European Space Agency’s Sentinels have taken stunning photographs of different landscapes arising from farming and other activities and of climate change, often unconsciously creating unique artistic images.

In the USA, grids are created by land divisions of modern farming while, in an entirely different environment and climate, agriculture clusters surround the Liwa Oasis in United Arab Emirates with use of drip irrigation and greenhouses and, in Saudi Arabia, a landscape of circles is created by the central-pivot irrigation system around wells, while the sand seas of the Namid Desert, a popular tourist area, create a sculptural landscape around the dry riverbed of the Tsauchab.

In colder environments, there is a different agricultural landscape in the snowy environment of Kazakhstan ploughed in the 1960’s while Antarctic Peninsula has become one of the key research areas on climate change as the ice shelves shrink and break up into icebergs. 

Meanwhile, up in space, ESA astronaut Tim Peake gives a quick wave to NASA astronaut Steve Kelly carrying out electric maintenance and DIWATA 1 – the first Filipino micro-satellite launched from the International Space Station in April 2016, one of its roles being to monitor climate change. 

Not here for long as it is a “pop-up” bar, Havana Club rum (which, unlike Bacardi, is still based in Cuba) has partnered with “Street Feast” founder Dom Cools-Lartigue and chef Marcus Bean to “immerse visitors in a sensory celebration of fragrant Cuba”.  

Fully booked and sold out, Casa Havana provides a five course gourmet menu which includes pork crackling crisps with spiced black beans, cheese and parsley rolled tacos with lobster, the Cuban sandwich, seabass ceviche with mint and lime and shredded beef with twice-fried plantain, all paired with cocktails – Shaquiri, Saoco Spritz, Life on the Gulf, Smokey Joe and Mouse’s Ear.

During your visit, you are taken away to a room full of personal mementoes of a Cuban resident who never throws anything away, for a virtually-reality experience which takes you through his recent life with astonishing technology that sits you in his home as it changes and you can see around in 360 degrees including the clear blue skies and the city of Havana through the window, ending with another cocktail – the signature “Silver Pineapple” of your host and guide.

All in all, a great experience that raises the profile both of Havana Club rum and of Cuba and suggests ways in which the island can combine its culinary heritage with a 21st century contemporary edge to create something new and unique  – it will be interesting if the Cubans accept the challenge.

Perhaps I’ll find out later in the year on my trip to Cuba.

Across the city, the modern-classical Neue Nationalgalerie by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe is being restored to designs by David Chipperfield Architects (also the architects for the reconstruction of the Neues Museum and for the James-Simon-Galerie).

Opposite Museum Island, the new Humboldt Forum, with a budget of 590 million euros plus additional privately-funded options of 28.5 million euros, is one of the largest projects in the city, being developed in the shell of the former Berlin Palace adjacent to Humboldt University of Berlin which is a partner in the project, along with the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and the Berlin State, to create a new international multi-discipline centre for art, culture, science, and learning, a place for debate and discussion on past, current and future world issues and how to enable different cultures and nations of the world to live and develop together in harmony.

Designed by Italian architect Franco Stella, following an international architectural competition, three of the original baroque facades and the dome are being reconstructed while the riverside facade has a modern classical rhythm. The interiors will be modern, with perhaps a few of the historic rooms recreated if private donors can be found, and a public arcade running through the building, thus providing an interplay between historic and modern and connectivity back out to the city itself.

Immediately adjacent to the building site is the Humboldt Box, a taster for the new project with rooftop café and meeting and exhibition spaces designed by Berlin architects Krüger Schuberth Vandreike. Spread across five floors, the striking geometric structure provides a testing ground for the collaborative interaction between the partners as they develop programmes for the Forum itself, including the National Museums in Berlin whose non-European collections will go on display at the Forum, the Association Berliner Schloss, which has campaigned for the reconstruction of the palace for twenty years, the Berlin Palace – Humboldtforum Foundation, the official commissioning body of the Forum building, and Humboldt University itself, founded more than 200 years ago (just before University College and King’s College in London) and one of the most prestigious universities in Germany, being in the top 50 of the THES world university rankings 2016, with a reputation for pioneering the close relationship between research and teaching that is followed across the world,and with 29 Nobel prizewinners.

The Humboldt Forum will open in 2019, around the same time as the masterplan work on Museum Island and the refurbishment of the Neues Museum will be complete, three projects that will further enhance Berlin’s position as a world centre for culture, research, learning and debate, the city’s equivalent to London “Olympicopolis” at Stratford.

The ongoing expansion of the sector needs new buildings and, if one city shows that it maintains the tradition for high quality architecture, it is Oxford with the most higher education projects recognised in the awards of any one city including the Blavatnik School of Government (Herzog & de Meuron), the Investcorp Building at St Andrew’s College (Zaha Hadid), the Ruskin School of Art (Stratley Studios), the Weston Library at the Bodleian Library (Wilkinson Eyre) and the new Academic Wing at Wolfson College (Berman Guedes Stretton).

Research buildings include the Bob Champion Research and Education Building at the University of East Anglia (Hawkins Brown) which continues the university’s policy of highly sustainable projects, the National Graphine Institute at the University of Manchester (Jestico and Whiles) and the Maurice Wohl Institute for Neurological Sciences at King’s College London (Allies and Morrison and PM Devereux).

It is not just the large institutions that are achieving recognition with good design.  The Arts University Bournemouth has two projects in Poole – its Drawing Studio (CRAB Studio) and the Student Services Building (Design Engine Architects) while the Royal College of Arts has created high quality new facilities in Battersea which are contemporary and fit well into the local environment (Haworth Tomkins).

The RIBA has established a new International Prize, the winner of which will be announced in December 2016, for “the most significant and inspirational of the year demonstrating visionary, innovative thinking and excellence of execution while making a generous contribution to society and its physical context”.  Two universities are included in the shortlist of 30 projects across the world – Zaha Hadid’s Innovation Tower in Hong Kong and the Universidad de Ingenieria y Technologia (UTEC) in Lima, Peru, two projects which also introduce the contribution of the international design competition through which the architects  were selected.

The Jockey Club Innovation Tower for Hong Kong Polytechnic University was designed by Zaha Hadid following an international design competition which asked for “a beacon structure symbolising and driving the development of Hong Kong as a design hub in Asia” to which Zaha and her team added the guiding principle of “collateral flexibility” between the departments to be housed in the building, while in Lima in Peru, Grafton Architects and Shell Arquitectos, again following a competition, have designed a new campus for UTEC as a new cliff which continues the sea edge on one side and creates an identity for the university on the other, while encouraging cultural interaction with the public.

The sector has achieved an impressive array of projects in which stakeholder engagement both within the institutions and outside would have been key to success, providing well-designed facilities for staff and students that also contribute positively to the external and public environment, helping to strengthen a sense of “place”.

(Photographs from RIBA and Grafton Architects)

Madrid’s first railway station, inaugurated in 1851 in the Atocha area, was largely destroyed by fire and a new station built in 1892 to designs of Alerto de Palacio Elissagne in collaboration with the engineer Gustave Eiffel, with a simple cast iron and glass structure in the form of an upturned hull 27 metres high and 157 metres long within brick facades.  Unable to cope with the increased number of tracks, it was taken out of use in 1992 and converted by Rafael Moneo, who also designed the new station behind it, into a concourse with shops, cafés and a splendid 4,000 sq m tropical garden at its heart, including a pool that has been taken over by an expanding number of turtles.

A green haven in the centre of Madrid, the Buen Retiro Park (Parque del Buen Retiro) started life as a royal park, primarily laid out in the 1630’s, and came under the Municipality of Madrid in 1868. Subsequent additions include many monuments, statues and fountains, the most splendid of which is the Monument to Alfonso XII of Spain designed by the architect José Grases Riera and the creation of a large rose garden named after the Chief Gardener Cecilio Rodriguez who designed it.

Just as Hyde Park in London was used for exhibitions such as the Great Exhibition of 1851, the Buen Retiro Park played a similar role, with two buildings remaining from the decade before the Atocha railway station: the Palacio de Cristal and the Palacio de Velázquez, both designed by Ricardo Velázquez Bosco and both now used as contemporary art galleries by the Museuo National Centro de Art Reina Sofia.

The Palacio de Cristal with its 22m high cast iron frame manufactured in Bilbao was built in 1887 to exhibit flora and fauna from the Philippines. Influenced by the Crystal Palace in London and the Palm House in Kew Gardens, it now provides large daylit spaces for art installion and sculpural work, the current exhibition “The Rocket and the Abyss” by the Mexican artist Damian Ortego (born 1967) exploring the transitory nature of man-made monuments through his model of the Titanic, an upside down architectural tower which is a swinging hourglass and an installation of everyday items from the 1960’s and 1970’s which might have been used by the occupants of the Pruitt-Igoe housing development, hailed as one of the most significant housing developments in North America until the 33 buildings were demolished due to their poor condition – a comment on late 20^th century mass housing.

The nearby Palacio de Velázquez was built a few years earlier in 1881-3 for the Exposición Nacional de Minería (and named after the architect) to display achievements in the field of mining, metallurgy, ceramics, glass-making and mineral water industries. It’s high volume spaces have now been converted to a new art gallery use, here more flexibly due to the amount of solid walls able to keep light out and on which to hang artwork, the current exhibition being “Questions of Perception” by the Swiss artist Remy Zaugg (1943 – 2005) who enjoys playing with colour, graphics and language.

Three projects which show the versatility of these nineteeth century buildings, as seen also in the conversion of the Musee de Orsay in Paris and St Pancras in London.   It is a pity that such imagination was not used when Euston station in London was demolished a few years ago, to be replaced by an uninspiring modern terminus which has itself come to the end of its life. 

The auction house Christies is 250 years old this year which makes the Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, at only 100 years old, a relative youngster.  Expanding on the exhibition held at King’s College London last year,  Christies in South Kensington is hosting the exhibition auction house Christies is 250 years old this year which makes the Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, at only 100 years old, a relative youngster.  Expanding on the exhibition held at King’s College London last year,  Christies in South Kensington is hosting the exhibition “100 for 100” which not only shows older works from the Collection by established artists such as Frank Auerbach, David Bomberg, Jacob Epstein, Mark Gertler and Leon Kossoff alongside international contemporaries including Marc Chagall, Chaïm Soutine and Georg Grosz but moves into the twenty-first century from its Jewish roots to a focus on those displaced through immigration from cultures and countries all across the world and the cultural contrasts and complexities that they can create.

The Scottish-Asian artist Jasleen Kaur’s work draws parallels between different cultures as they collide, for example Indian devotional sculpture and traditional western portrait busts, as in the bust of her grandfather who was the first family member to emigrate from India to Glasgow and Guller Ates, a Turkish artist now living in London, whose figure of someone pulling their carpet-clad house behind them is linked to displacement and the notion that we carry our mental “house” everywhere we go.

Immigration is difficult. Edith Kiss was born into a Jewish family in Budapest in 1905. She had a successful career a sculptress but in 1944 was deported to Germany, then returned to Budapest before moving to Morocco, France and England then, tragically, committed suicide in 1966.

Politicians are making the issue of immigration highly emotive, but the realities are much more complex.  We need to both respond to the desperate situations in some countries and also celebrate the cultural richness that the collision of cultures can bring.

In the furthermost arches, skateboarders are honing their skills on skater-designed ramps and courses in London’s only indoor skatepark, with parents of the youngest watching alongside.  Other arches of this 30,000 sq ft space, designed by Hellicar and Lewis, support art incubation, cinema, live music, café and bars, with Vans branding, artwork and memorabilia throughout as an “European edition” of the House of Vans while respecting the industrial qualities of the old brick railway arches.

Sponsored by the US clothing company House of Vans as “the physical manifestation of the culture and creativity that have defined the Vans brand since 1966”, Waterloo is home to the second House of Vans, the other being in Brooklyn, New York.

Celebrating 50 years of “Off The Wall” is the current exhibition of memorabilia including loans from the Skateboard Museum Berlin and The Other Side of the Pillow alongside 3D sets from the new brand campaign, 

As retail brands increase their identification with lifestyles, the Waterloo House of Vans links its 50 year old heritage to its ongoing position as a youthful brand for the 21^st century, sitting alongside one of London’s centres for street art.   Go and visit!

My dad’s whole philosophy was to make shoes like Sherman Tanks, they were really built tough and you’d have to tell your friends about it. (Steve Van Doren).

 In the same way, thin delicate lines, like pen drawings, are translated into three dimensions by Knopp Ferro, or perhaps four if movement is added, with another layer behind from the shadows that dance with the lines.

Alexander Calder used slender metal wires to connect his bold shapes together; in the work of Knopp Ferro it is the thin wires themselves that define the sculptural forms, defy gravity and create the interactions and movements with the delicacy of pen-strokes, floating in air as mobiles or projecting, quivering, from the walls and, sometimes, within simple deep boxes which frame them just like the stage of a theatre frames the dancers.  

The Austrian artist Knopp (born 1953), who lives and works in Munich, combines his background in sculpture and in performance, having set up the artist collective Jet Ferro and worked with the performance theatre Bumper to Bumper, in his elegant and unelaborate sculptures, allowing the wires to create their own three dimensional forms, with an occasional splash of colour in the background, as simple and as beautiful in their own way as the two dancers.

In Bilbao, the Euskalduna engineering works occupied a major part of the river from 1900.  A major Spanish centre for shipbuilding and, latterly,rail and road vehicles, it closed in 1987 with the loss of 1297 jobs, a reduction from the 3700 people employed there in 1920.  The changing industrial situation galvanised the regeneration of Bilbao with the new Guggenheim Museum and, on the site of the old shipyards, the Bilbao Maritime Museum and the Euskalduna Conference Centre and Conference Hall, separated by the vast curve of the Euskalduna Bridge designed by the engineer Javier Manterola,

The new conference centre and concert hall, designed by Frederic and Dolores Palacio, opened in 1999.  The rusting cladding and exterior shape links back to the history of the site by recreating the form of the last vessel built in the old shipyard.  The new building provides a variety of spaces to enable it to work as a conference center, opera house and concert hall, with Europe’s second largest stage, and in 2003 it was declared the world’s best congress centre by the International Congress Palace Association.

The building is Brutalist in style, but no doubt an improvement on the industrial buildings on the site and has been softened with a variety of public artworks inside and out.

Meanwhile, just over an hour’s drive away, a similar problem existed in the traditional summer resort of San Sebastian, once the holiday home of the Spanish Royal Family, with fine beaches and spectacular views of the Bay of Biscay

Here, opposite the historic classical theatre, was a sensitive site that had been left vacant after an old casino building had been demolished.  Something better was needed and San Sebastian, reflecting on the needs of its new international festivals sought an architect and design for a new cultural centre through architectural competition.  Spanish architect Rafael Moneo’s winning design was chosen “due to the rotundity, courage, and originality of the proposal” which aimed to root itself in the geology of the site by taking the form of two rocks – enlarged representations of those that protect the promenade from the stormy seas.

The Kursaal Convention Center and Auditorium is two angular and asymmetrical cubes with double translucent glass panels that glow when they are lit in the evening, sitting on top of walls that are cast like stone strata and fossils.  It houses several multi-use spaces, including a 1,800-seat concert hall, which host many annual international events including the San Sebastian International Film Festival, the largest film festival in Spain.

Given that San Sebastian is the 2016 European City of Culture, it needs to learn from other centres like the South Bank Centre in London.  The main criticism of this building is that, when shut during the day, it is dull and lifeless, just like two rocks.  Cultural Centres should have a variety of activities that draw people in and create activity throughout the day, not just when there is an event on.  The Kursaal doesn’t seem to have yet become established as part of the life of the city, at least in the month of March.  Perhaps this changes in summer?