More Comment – Page 360
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Opinion
Ian Martin
I switch off the fan and watch the Me–Shell deflate around him. He looks like a petulant cartoon ghost
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Opinion
China’s crisis of conscience
Rem Koolhaas had a choice to make in early 2002 and ordered a Chinese meal to give him the strength to make it. Should he bid for the Ground Zero project in Manhattan or the China Central Television building in Beijing?
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Opinion
Speaking the same urban language
In his recent article (Soapbox July 23), RIBA president George Ferguson rightly highlights the need to put urban studies at the heart of the urban renaissance if we are going to revitalise our cities and protect the countryside. After decades of neglect, people are once more returning to more civilised ...
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Opinion
Hospital drama
It is clear that the £1 billion Royal London Hospital has some issues (News and Editorial July 30), but to use this to rail against the concept of PFI is unbalanced. Specifically regarding design of such projects — and this would be true no matter the procurement route — ...
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OpinionArchitects dogme
Aran Chadwick (Technicalities July 23) makes an interesting connection between the restrictions of the “Dogme” films and those imposed on the making of buildings. The connection could be taken further with a highly selective and restrictive set of rules based on Dogme’s “vow of chastity”. The goal would be to ...
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OpinionNo slip-ups here
Further to your article “End of the iconic age?” (News July 23), in which you cite our new visual arts building for Colchester by Rafael Viñoly, I would like to clarify the status and concept of the project.It is an ambitious but viable scheme made possible by a partnership consisting ...
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Opinion
Look no further
To all those firms putting themselves to the trouble of recruiting abroad (News July 30), would it take too much imagination to offer flexible or part-time work? Maybe this could tempt back some of the women who have left the profession in their droves because of the difficulties of combining ...
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Opinion
Learning curve
Now that the shock has subsided, it is important to assess the implications of the alarming failure rate at Birmingham School of Architecture. The school (and its external examiners) should be commended for having the resolve to fail students who have not achieved the required standards. This is far less ...
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Opinion
Fee farce
It is interesting to note that the RIBA is suggesting that architects will be able to enhance our fees in the future by first subscribing to the long-discredited notion of “architectural determinism” and, second, doing our jobs properly by producing well-designed buildings (News August 6).
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Opinion
Slaves to detail must not win urban battle
We have wound ourselves into a Gordian knot. We allow a cynical builder to construct 14 units in mock heritage style shoehorned inelegantly onto a site appropriate for half that amount; while an ambitious, daring and modern interpretation that challenges the site and tries in its own way to contribute ...
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Opinion
Arch conventional
Ronald McDonald has spurned some of the hottest architectural talent in Chicago for some of his own in-house architects. Proposals by Helmut Jahn for a new burger outlet in Chicago, featuring a pair of 100ft golden arches, were spurned by McDonald’s in favour of a more conventional scheme. But, when ...
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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 ...