More Comment – Page 361
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Opinion
Sound and vision
The hold music for RTKL’s Beijing office is the theme music from Quentin Tarantino’s movie, Kill Bill. Considering most of the film was shot in China and features lots of martial arts and samurai swords, it is hard to think of anything more appropriate. Except for Libeskind’s “New York, New ...
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Opinion
Putting years on
Hospital design is under the spotlight like never before following Cabe’s savaging of the proposed Royal London Hospital. So it is cheering to hear that architects at Capita Symonds have transformed themselves into old people for the sake of good design. In redesigning Derby City General Hospital, the architects have ...
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Opinion
Razing the roof
Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels actor Nick Moran thought he had created a perfect rooftop chill-out zone to entertain friends at his £385,000 Georgian flat in Camden. But he has been ordered by party poopers Camden Council and English Heritage to tear down the timber-and-glass summerhouse because it defaces ...
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Opinion
Council conquest
Concrete Boots always suspected the planners at Edinburgh City Council were a wild bunch, and now it has been confirmed by Edinburgh Fringe act Tim Fountain.Fountain’s show, Sex Addict, involves him trawling Gaydar, the gay internet site, and asking the audience to pick someone for him to have sex with ...
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Opinion
Prezzers palace
The Daily Mail was last week apoplectic about changes to the planning guidance on country houses. As part of an outraged article by historian and gardener Sir Roy Strong, the paper created a mock-up dream home for arch-enemy John Prescott. Its attempt at a cutting-edge design included such witty features ...
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Opinion
Ian Martin
Meeting with Patina: some small talk, some synergy-mapping, then on to the main agenda item — making money
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Opinion
A £1 billion tragedy waiting to happen
Don’t say they didn’t warn you. Britain is about to make a £1 billion building blunder — the government’s own advisers say so. The plans for a new hospital in east London are so bad, according to Cabe, they wouldn’t even win planning permission if they were applied to a ...
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Opinion
Modernists hide behind glass facade
I am alarmed by the misplaced energy expended over the topic of “iconic” architecture. Some of this opprobrium should be reserved for the nondescript, mediocre buildings that clutter our cities, and that have become the acceptable benchmark by which we judge anything remotely out of the ordinary.Future Systems’ scheme for ...
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Opinion
Change the world
“Streets and squares” beat “pods on sticks” (Letters July 30), but the only reason they beat, say, parks and flats is because they help to control some of the worst features of our unequal and fearful society. Surely we need more vision. All too often designing out crime has designed ...
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Opinion
Get off the ego trip
Ellis Woodman and George Oldham (Soapbox and Letters July 30) neatly put their finger on what is wrong with “landmark” buildings. The fact that Alsop’s Cloud can be touted around for any other site says it all. These are hugely egotistical buildings, too big for their boots and in danger ...
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Opinion
Reality check
Steve Miller’s ill-mannered letter (July 30) may make good reading, but the tired caricature he draws of Alsop masterplans cynically cobbled together over louche lunches is not founded in reality.Read on, Steve, because this is how it really is…Working on a range of major regeneration projects (including Middlesbrough) Tees Valley ...
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Opinion
Joined-up thinking
George Ferguson (Soapbox July 23) writes a great deal of sense. As he says, the professions are far too disjointed and protective of their own roles to make places that inspire, and the institutes’ hands are likely to be forced by the government if they do not act. There is ...
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Opinion
Going it alone
Once again, a major RIBA policy decision is announced without any reference to the RIBA Council (Soapbox July 23). The policy wasn’t in George Ferguson’s election manifesto either. This latest episode reinforces the concern I have always had about the undue concentration of power resulting from the RIBA’s reorganisation ...
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Opinion
The right course of treatment for PFI?
Hospitals and doctors’ surgeries are the public buildings we visit when we are at our most vulnerable and where we experience some of life’s most vital moments. So how does the government’s plan to abolish the body that looks after the quality of these spaces, NHS Estates, fit in with ...
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Opinion
Alsops lost love
Publishing schedules can play wicked tricks when events move fast — and Will Alsop is the latest victim. A new book, The Treasures of Liverpool, hit Boots’ desk this week, featuring Mr Alsop’s ex-project, the Cloud, across a jolly double page spread, and even a little piece by the architect ...
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Opinion
Royal warrant
Oh dear. John Prescott and the Prince of Wales have fallen out. Just months after they shared a platform at a Prince’s Foundation event and had people rolling in the aisles with their witty repartee, Poundbury has come between them.The foundation has submitted proposals for new homes at the Dorset ...
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Opinion
Home guard
An American website is keeping a running tally of how much the war in Iraq is costing US citizens in real terms. One novel way of calculating the cost of the war is the number of homes that could have been built for the same money. The number rises minute ...
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Opinion
Hair-brained?
Daniel Libeskind seems to have taken up residence in the Concrete Boots column of late, though it’s hardly our fault he is so prolifically humorous. The architect has hired architect Alexander Gorlin to design his new pad in New York, just a few blocks from Ground Zero. Asked why he ...
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Opinion
Spanish snips
And still with hair, there’s strange news from the West Country this week, where a popular Bristol hair salon has renamed itself Gaudi Hair Design, apparently in tribute to the celebrated Catalan architect. A bottle of vintage Head & Shoulders to the first reader to request “a Sagrada Família style”. ...
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Opinion
Ian Martin
Say what you like about Trousers, his enthusiasm is infectious. I find myself beaming at the drinks waiter