More Comment – Page 366
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Opinion
Cut out the bells and whistles
Paul Edwards’ letter (BD June 11) slating the Bo’ness housing scheme as ordinary, ugly and uninspiring misses the point entirely. The scheme is not only a very worthwhile exploration into how one might better this type of housing; it is also a blessed relief. It has none of the tiresome ...
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Opinion
Shuttles worth
It’s great to see BD giving its full support to Ken Shuttleworth’s new practice since he split from Foster’s six months ago. Only six months ago I didn’t know (and cared even less) about Norman Foster’s other partners. But thanks to the tireless campaigning of BD, we can read ...
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Opinion
Happy homes
Yup, it’s plain. There is no architectural interest in how we’ve twiddled over the basic housing box, or delivered the government’s housing agenda; no wow factor, and most decidedly no fashionable, ironic attachment to the dull, British institution that is suburbia.At Bo’ness we set out to recover the good ...
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Opinion
Simplicity reigns
We read with dismay Paul Edwards’ criticism of Malcolm Fraser’s Bo’ness housing. Yes, the scheme is “ordinary”, but ordinary in an unpretentious, beautifully simple and elegant fashion that contrasts with the wilful gimmickry of much contemporary building. Fraser has achieved modern housing rooted in the locality, and one can imagine ...
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Opinion
Mark of honesty
While always relishing the more flamboyant cutting-edge designs often featured in BD, I found the article on Malcolm Fraser’s Bo’ness housing refreshing in illustrating a scheme where the architects suppressed any desires to leave their “mark” on an area for the sake of honest, vernacular housing. It would be interesting ...
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Opinion
Mutual respect
Regarding Sarah Wigglesworth's article (In Practice June 4), I recently attended reviews of the first-year final project at the University of Sheffield, and was especially impressed by the peer-led review procedure.At the "Studio Culture — Who Needs It?" conference in Oxford in December, it was noted that the days of ...
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Opinion
Pay and display
Charges for pre-planning consultations should be the other way round; architects should be paid to discuss embryo schemes with planning officers so that the latter may have some influence on the form and content of applications, thus hopefully making them more acceptable to the local authority and so more readily ...
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Opinion
Dont talk, make
I notice that, yet again, you have featured a building/comment by Ken Shuttleworth in your publication — this time a natty wicker stool (News June 11). I think perhaps the time has come to look at other architects, perhaps even some who are actually building rather than just talking ...
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Opinion
Opposites detract
Last week’s Architecture Foundation debate on the eastern growth of the City of London had all the subtlety of a bulldozer. At one end of the debating table was Mike Bear, the developer behind the controversial demolition of Spitalfields Market, who described the Foster & Partners office block built on ...
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Opinion
Hailing Holyrood
RMJM recently refused to let the BD-commissioned freelance writer Peter Wilson into the Scottish Parliament building because he had been critical of it in the past. But national press coverage of Holyrood has been more favourable. Observer architecture critic Deyan Sudjic spent a page praising the nearly finished building ...
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Opinion
Tsar bidder
Fancy buying a Tsarist palace in St Petersburg? City governor Valentina Matvienko said this week that more than 2,000 listed buildings would be put up for sale to private buyers for the first time in a bid to save the city’s crumbling heritage. The buildings will be sold at half ...
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Opinion
Farewell photo
How the penny drops. Cabe commissioner Sunand Prasad was unusually keen to take a photo of the throng at Jon Rouse’s leaving do last week. All the commissioners were there in force. It seemed an odd urge at the time, but now with Stuart Lipton’s resignation and the admission of ...
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Opinion
Tory multitasker
Caroline Spelman MP is a woman in a hurry. Quite literally. The Tory shadow cabinet member fitted in an interview with BD between two meetings and even ran the length of Whitehall to vote in a House of Commons division halfway through the interview. She returned from the vote out ...
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Opinion
Departures mark a new era for Cabe
The revolving door at the Waterloo HQ of the national design watchdog could hardly spin any faster. The Commission for Architecture & the Built Environment has been gripped by the departure of its first chief executive, the arrival of a second and now the departure of its founding chairman, Stuart ...
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OpinionRod Sheard
The Australian director of HOK Sport designed Lisbon's Estádio da Luz, home of Benfica football club, which hosts the Euro 2004 clash between England and France this Sunday
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Opinion
Questioning Peabody priorities
Charles Thomson (Letters May 28) praises the Peabody Trust for its high-quality design, buildability, sustainability and innovation, while damning many in the social housing movement as second-rate with regard to the quality of their own new developments.Apparently, allowing schemes to overrun budgets and delay the upgrading of properties should ...
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Opinion
We deserve better
We question how you justify devoting four full pages to a housing development that is not only ordinary, but also downright ugly and uninspiring (Works June 4). We suppose this must be because the project architect is renowned and occasionally writes a column in BD. Of course, there may have ...
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Opinion
Higher purpose
“Bristol’s tall tales” (Peer Pressure May 28) seems to be trying to create an argument about tall buildings per se. This is missing the point of the Temple Quay tower, where the issue was not one of height — it seems anyone can design incredibly tall buildings — but sensitive ...
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Opinion
Burges bonus
Concrete Boots is a little harsh in chiding Jimmy Page for not letting the public into William Burges’s Tower House (May 28).Notwithstanding the fact that it is a private residence, Leighton House Museum (located nearby) came up with the brilliant idea of arranging guided tours of the house as part ...