Concrete Boots

Keeping it quiet

Cabe was good enough to contact Boots this week with the news that the John Perry Children’s Centre in Dagenham has been shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Better Public Building Award 2006. Unfortunately, the design watchdog didn’t find space in its three-page press release to mention who the architect was. A Boots investigation revealed that the proud firm is DSDHA. Hopefully Cabe, which co-sponsors the award, will ensure the architect gets a higher billing at the awards ceremony on October 26.

Sister act

As the first chair of the Society of Black architects, a board member of the Arts Council and recipient of an OBE, Elsie Owusu takes some upstaging in architectural circles. But her sister Adjoa (pictured), a professional singer, managed it with her performance at Feilden & Mawson’s 50th birthday party at Somerset House last Wednesday. As well as giving a soulful rendition of Do You Know the Way to San Jose?, Adjoa led the guests in singing Happy Birthday as they cut the practice’s birthday cake.

False security

Architects who fly to jobs via the US may be concerned by the revelation of Seth Stein, architect of south London’s Baltic restaurant and Peter Mandelson’s interior designer of choice, that he was manhandled by a mysterious individual on a flight from the Caribbean to New York in May.

“I’d just settled down to make some notes on the landscaping of the site when he grabbed me,” said Stein. The man, who claimed falsely to be a New York policeman, insisted on searching Stein’s pockets despite the flight crew’s assurance that he had passed security checks.

Looking round

Images of Greenwich Millennium Village will be used by BBC1 as one of eight new “ident” links launched on Saturday, all themed around “surprising” approaches to the symbol of a circle. In the case of the Millennium Village, designed by the late Ralph Erskine, residents opening and closing their windows to reflect sunlight create a spiral of flashing light.

What a bore

Bad luck to Gustafson Porter who, in the week it was named Landscape Architect of the Year by Horticulture Week magazine for its park at Swiss Cottage, had to admit that the park’s water feature has been temporarily closed. Apparently maintaining the water’s correct pH level proved a problem and Camden council has closed the feature for two to four weeks. The Diana memorial fountain designer points a finger at the bore hole the council sank to draw water, which, it says, “was always quite separate from Gustafson Porter’s design”.

Making a stand

Apparently, the Department for Trade & Industry has decided the UK’s expertise in sustainable building is a key export industry. Sadly, it has failed to tell anyone in the UK. It did, however, take out a stand at last year’s Green Build conference in the US — which kept collapsing.