More Comment – Page 325
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Opinion
Arb is proactive
Richard Coleman, head of regulation, ArbFurther to Kate Macintosh’s letter (September 23), your readers should be aware that the Arb board is working hard to eliminate what is a national problem with BT directories and inaccurate architect classifications.We have, in fact, used the example in Clive Jones’s local directory in ...
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Opinion
Bad design abound
Robin Vaughan seems to be quite excited, if a little confused, about the potential for the further testing of architects and their patience by Arb (News September 9). He shouldn’t, however, worry too much that “there’s a world out there thinking architects are doing well”. A perusal ...
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Opinion
Aylesbury error
It is sad that your front page report in last week’s issue (News September 23) says that the Aylesbury estate was designed by Austrian architect Hans Trenton. This suggests that Southwark, which at the time had the largest housing programme in London, had brought in a private architect from abroad.For ...
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Opinion
Defending defence
Further to your article “group calls for boycott of design show” (News September 16), we feel it is important that there is a balanced debate and that any errors of fact are corrected. Reed Exhibitions would argue that defence and security sectors play a vital role in preserving peace and ...
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Opinion
When in Milan, design for Milan
Italian architects protested this month at the proliferation of foreign architecture appearing in their own country. What they are saying should make an elite minority of British architects stop and think.
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Opinion
Adapt or die
Former BDP head Richard Saxon said this week that the profession needed to be more technically proficient, business savvy and team up to form “megafirms” to take on PFI work.
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OpinionAfter a fashion
English Heritage chief executive Simon Thurley has a reputation for being a bit of a dapper dresser.
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Opinion
Beyond our Ken
Ken Livingstone is used to fighting the Labour party, but this time he’s up against a much more intransigent foe.
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Opinion
Bombing bridges
In the same week as a report for the RIBA warned that architects were introspective and liked to think of themselves as misunderstood artists, Tony Fretton did little to heal any perceived rift between the general public and the profession.
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OpinionThe Leaning Tower of Pisa and me
I’d been visiting friends in Pisa since the 1980s, and then I had a fling with an Italian architect who lived in Pisa, who introduced me to the engineers working to stabilise the leaning tower.
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Opinion
Why link 7/7 with Arb numbers?
Being the MD of an architectural practice predominantly made up of “black and minority ethnics”, I was intrigued by your headline “Black designers could ‘help beat terror’” (News, 16 September).
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Opinion
When in Roma...
With reference to your editorial in BD 16 September, the sensibility of Italian architecture is firmly rooted in its sense of place. Perhaps the greatest exponent and exporter of this is the Renzo Piano Building Workshop. It at least acknowledges context, local/regional tradition, culture, environment and climate. Sadly the globalisation ...
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Opinion
Hate mail to Gehry
Many of us in Brighton are hopeful that Piers Gough will take his own advice: “If I were you I would immediately cancel your job, get very poor and then get a Frank Gehry [affordable] flat” at the King Alfred site in Hove (News, 16 September). We would then at ...
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Opinion
PII hike hurts
The hike in the minimum level of PII being considered by Arb will hand more commissions for small domestic work to the under-qualified and unqualified.
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Opinion
Skewed priorities
Not only is Arb constantly seeking to expand its powers to control the way architects go about their legitimate business, it is failing to fulfil one of its two statutory duties — protection of title.
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Opinion
Get it right...
Further to your article “Arb plans double cost hike” (News, 16 September), in relation to PII levels I told your reporter what Arb planned to do was to look at all the information and then make a decision. That’s what it did. No increase was planned, as your headline reported, ...
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Opinion
House style
You report that the “country house” clause of PPS7 is about to be tested(News, September 16).
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Opinion
Story of structure
With reference to Ellis Woodman (Soapbox, 16 September), it is study of structure that links architectural history to design, but neither is structure much taught in schools of architecture. Gropius’s “inner logic” did not always extend to his construction but the restored Bauhaus curtainwall lives on as his structural and ...
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Opinion
The RIBA has failed us as a guardian
It is the latest sorry instalment in the story of this country’s refusal to properly guard the archives of our greatest architects.