AUGUST 2010, 1362. VOLUME CCXXIII

A momentous month as the AR strides into new territory - both digital and domestic

This issue is notable in two important respects. Firstly, it is devoted the winners of AR House, our new award for the design of the best one-off house. Two hundred entries were distilled to the 14 projects shown here. The standard was extremely high, reaffirming the historic role of the house as a conduit for often radical ideas about architecture and domesticity. Congratulations to the winner, Gurjit Singh Matharoo, whose House with Balls is a lyrical meditation on concrete, light and water.

Secondly, the AR has launched a new website: www.architectural-review.com. Redesigned, restocked and reinvigorated, the new site takes advantage of the awesome capacity of digital technology to connect the AR more immediately, more widely and more intimately with its readership. Here you’ll find a library of recent building studies, together with View, Skill, Urbanism and Marginalia pieces – in fact the entire printed oeuvre, with extra material, news, opinions and much more.

But perhaps the highlight of the enterprise is the ongoing digitisation of the AR’s huge historic archive, which will make key articles by its illustrious pantheon of contributors available at the click of a mouse. Eventually it will be just like having the bound volumes from 1896 on your computer, a feat that would have seemed beyond the realms of fantasy to my early predecessors. In the long and distinguished history of the AR, this is our moon landing moment. Join us on our voyage of digital discovery.