More Comment – Page 345
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OpinionConcrete Boots
Good vibrationsLast week, we learnt that architects are highly desirable as dates. So perhaps it should come as no surprise that an architecture student has built a model of an orgasm.Ronnie Gensler, from Columbia University in the US, “studied, subdivided and finally modelled an orgasm” in the form of an ...
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Opinion
Charles frets over health
Prince Charles spoke at the Royal College of Physicians this week on the environment’s impact on health. Here is an edited version of his speech:It is imperative that we apply the notion of healing not only to ourselves, but also to our built and natural environments that have been so ...
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Opinion
Start listening to the kids
Sometimes it’s difficult to know how much responsibility to give children. Let them set their own school lunch menus and society’s efforts to combat obesity would sink quickly in a sea of fizzy drink and chips. Besides, that’s a job for Jamie Oliver,
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Opinion
Historic influence
What was your criteria for selecting the “role models” for aspiring women architects?It does not seem to reflect a representative cross-section of the profession or areas of work where women are particularly successful.In my experience, a great proportion of women architects in the UK work and have achieved excellence in ...
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Opinion
In need of support
I am a female sole practitioner having worked for many years in local authorities. Men are not usually very supportive of women in the office or on the site, and many women struggle to be one of the boys. It took me many years to realise that builders didn't think ...
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Opinion
No job for anyone
I am baffled why women, or men for that matter, would want to increase their representation in architecture. This is not a gender issue: architecture is a lousy business model and with the poorest ratio of creative to production time. Zaha is exceptional and has made untold sacrifices in her ...
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OpinionTalkbox: Riccardo Marini
Mackintosh-trained architect Marini is Edinburgh’s design leader. He has been working with Terry Farrell to police the design quality of the city’s development, including the 18,000-home Leith Docks given the green light this week.
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OpinionSizing up the Supercity
In a video playing at his Supercities exhibition in Manchester, Will Alsop says he is “interested in the city we don’t know”. But is the visiting public interested in what he has conjured up for a city of 15 million stretching from Liverpool to Hull?
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OpinionBunny peculiar
Last week, a 3m-high fluffy blue puppet, half rabbit half alien, perched outside a signal box in Shoreditch.
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Opinion
The young need a land of opportunity
The nervousness in official circles about the chance of a successful roll-out for John Prescott’s Sustainable Communities Plan just won’t go away.
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Opinion
Throwing stones at those in glass houses
Wake up all you architectural glass junkies, it’s time for a change.
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OpinionConcrete Boots
Take heartFor all those lonely architects who spent a sad Valentine’s Day in front of the drawing board with only a Pot Noodle to love, fear not. The dating agency for professionals, Drawing Down The Moon, has found that architects are among the most desired people out there. In the ...
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Opinion
Ian Martin
I look forward to a remake of The Wild One, with Johnny and his gang on a trail of latte-fuelled rudeness through Godalming
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Opinion
Plunging to new depths
In your edition of February 4, I read, and not without despair, that: Hadid’s aquatics centre has “a roof inspired by the flow of water”; Sauerbruch Hutton’s Frankfurt office was “inspired by the natural world”; and Chris Wilkinson’s King’s Dock project was based on “my mobile phone”.Is this the ...
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Opinion
Model potential
Andy Feculak’s letter (February 11) regarding the unsustainability of PRP’s Summit House was based on the incorrect assumption that it would be detached. The example on show at the Sustainable Communities Summit was an end-of-terrace designed to be adaptable to different sites. In a three-storey terraced layout, a typical density ...
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Opinion
What policy?
In response to Robert Booth’s piece on new urbanism (Editorial February 4), I hate to disappoint your readership. If the UK is to adopt a “US-style urban policy”, then welcome to the desert. The US has no urban policy.
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Opinion
Stay composed
How fitting that the RIBA has been inspired to commission music to mark the presentation of the Gold Medal to Frei Otto (Culture February 11). The pre-eminent former Gold Medallist Le Corbusier commissioned Edgar Varese to compose a piece for his Philips Pavilion at the 1958 World Fair in Brussels. ...
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Opinion
Just for the Record
Thank you for publishing the Architectural Heritage Society of Scotland’s concerns regarding refurbishment of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Daily Record building (News February 11). It is in everyone’s interest to see it back in use, but that doesn't mean accepting something insensitive. Part of the proposal involved the insertion of a ...
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Opinion
LPS is a danger
BD first notified me about problems on the Packington Estate in July 2003 after Islington council warned tenants of the urgent need to remove all gas cookers on safety grounds. The HSE pointed to the fragile nature of the buildings in a risk assessment in September 2003.I was appointed by ...