More Comment – Page 353
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Opinion
Counting support
This week’s Arb board meeting took an amusing turn when chairman Humphrey Lloyd pointed to statistically dubious feedback on Arb’s annual report.He proudly pointed out that an impressive 11.8% of respondents found his foreword the most interesting section, with only a lowly 11.2% opting for the report of the ...
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Opinion
Fashion darlings
It’s official: DRMM has arrived in fashionable circles, having just made it on to Vogue magazine’s “must-know who, what, where, how and why of the moment list”. Alongside pictures of Scarlett Johansson, Sienna Miller, Kirsten Dunst, José Antonio Reyes and Sam Taylor Wood are Philip Marsh, Sadie Morgan and Alex ...
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Opinion
Disappearing act
Zaha Hadid may have been frustrated in the past when her competition winning designs didn’t see the light. But it was she who failed to materialise last Wednesday night when at the last minute she let the RIBA know she couldn’t personally deliver her long-scheduled Lutbetkin lecture at Portland Place. ...
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Opinion
Cowboy dreams
The fundraising for David Adjaye’s Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver is in full swing. An event last week, which raised $250,000 for the museum, included a game of chance where people purchased a can for $100 that contained a mystery prize. One of the prizes was a trip to ...
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Opinion
Penguin palace
What do you get if you take an igloo, a train, an airplane, a fishing trawler and a very cute-looking penguin. Well, according to Richard Rogers Partnership, a new research station for the British Antarctic Survey in Antarctica. Rogers’ shortlisted submission for the RIBA-run competition is a triumph of simple ...
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Opinion
Jacob Kinderegg
I am here to discuss the future of the extension I have designed, the ‘Radical Corkscrew’
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Opinion
Tribal gathering is a formidable force
If you join a group called Tribal, you probably want the war drums to beat.
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Opinion
Community begins on your doorstep
I am a passionate believer that architects should be actively engaged with their communities.
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OpinionConcrete Boots
Pearls of wisdomWelcome to the world of Japanese philosophy according to Tadao Ando. Under the philosophy, pearls are inward-looking and introverted while diamonds are extrovert, outward-looking and full of energy. Talking to BD, Ando likened his tempered and considered architecture to a pearl. “There are small, brilliant things and large, ...
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OpinionFred Trousers
Ian Martin is away. Our guest columnist this week is Fred Trousers, president of the Royal Institute for the Protection of British Architects.
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Opinion
A united front on tropical timber
Your report (News October 22) gave the unfortunate impression that the RIBA and English Heritage were at odds over the use of certified timbers. This is untrue. We are as one on the issue of the use of tropical hardwoods. We start with the premise that we strongly support limiting ...
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Opinion
The big squeeze
Cabe has launched its trenchant critique of housing design, but on closer inspection all it does is to reveal the superficiality of architectural ideas about this subject.
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Opinion
Place your bets
Regarding your article, “A fight to the death?” (News Analysis October 15), the image of two fighting dogs is very evocative, so is there anywhere I can put a tenner on the RIBA to win?
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Opinion
Memorial of mud
I wonder if Tony Fretton had visited the Diana memorial lately he would still consider it “a serene and beautiful piece of work” (Letters October 22).I visited it last Wednesday at about 12.30pm. There were some 20 visitors wandering aimlessly within the confines of a temporary fence. Fretton would now ...
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Opinion
Put in the hours
Flipping marvellous. No sooner than I stop charging hourly rates for domestic projects because most people don’t want to pay as much per hour as I pay my car mechanic, than I’m told that all architecture fees may soon have to be based on time.
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Opinion
More, more, more
I had the good fortune to visit Venice recently and took the opportunity to take in the Biennale.
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Opinion
Lost for words
The architectural profession is sexist enough without headlines such as “Backing for man-hour fee scales” (News October 29). This is just lazy ladguage.Peter Morris, London
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Opinion
System that haemorrhages millions
Pointing out problems with the Private Finance Initiative is as easy as shooting fish in a barrel, but that doesn’t mean we don’t bother.
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Opinion
Queens royal seal a green turning point
It has been a good autumn so far for establishment endorsement of the environmental agenda.
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OpinionConcrete boots
On shaky ground Tony Blair has tried manfully to stay mates with the environmental lobby, but he’s really gone and blown it now, judging by the reaction to his naming a road for the Prime Minister’s Better Public Building Award last week. Environmentalists are fuming, especially as its construction led ...