More Opinion – Page 370
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Opinion
Peter Rees
The opening of the Swiss Re tower this week confirms the City's shift from boring post-war office blocks to bold new design. The Corporation of London's chief planner is excited
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Opinion
Go back to school to solve skills gap
I couldn't agree with Robert Booth more (Editorial April 23) that Prescott's and "Egan's dreams will come to nothing without [the] core skills" of the best architects and the many other professionals who need to be involved in the huge sustainable communities programme.The purpose of the national centre, in whatever ...
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Opinion
Men suffer, too
Having read “Fear and loathing in the boy zone” (In Practice April 23), I feel moved to write to reassure Sarah Wigglesworth that the very same problems she has experienced working as an architect on site, in terms of bullying, intimidation, criticism of our work, refusal to take instructions, procrastination, ...
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Opinion
Playing the system
I knew the press would find it difficult to report accurately on the exit of AA chairman Mohsen Mostafavi, but Will Hurst’s report is misleading. The article makes it look as if he is going because he is not wanted by the school or because he has not done a ...
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Opinion
Unhelpful tactics
The group I chair will, no doubt, receive, from Arb board members who have made anonymous comments to BD (News April 23), the courtesy of a private reply to a private letter. What they (and your readers, since BD omitted it from the story) may not have known is that ...
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Opinion
Lifting the lid
I refer to the article concerning the Guy Pound court case (News April 23). I acted as expert witness, and the points raised fail to even scratch the surface of what proved to be an extremely complicated and protracted case lasting more than a year in court. The case raised ...
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Opinion
Uphold the title
BD might have a new format, and very good it is. But the old ideas continue: if Guy Pound said he was an architect, and the Serious Fraud Office agreed, then he must be one, even though he was not listed with Arb. If the professional press can’t be discriminating ...
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Opinion
Bold statement
I wonder how far a statutory requirement to submit design statements with planning applications will get us? Even assuming they don’t just become a series of standard clauses, it is difficult to imagine how the statements that might have been put forward by the winners of the Young Architect of ...
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Opinion
Unwelcome export
Rest assured, Tony Aspinall (Letters April 23), you are not the only architect dismayed with the incongruously designed College of Art & Design in Toronto. However, there are some benefits, namely it was built in Canada and not Britain, and, fortunately, we do not live in the locality of ...
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Opinion
Smoked pickle
In a moment that was more Manhattan than London, Swiss Re security men pounced on our venerable correspondent Christopher Woodward, when, after three hours in the tower, he lit up a well-deserved cigarette on the building’s forecourt. The signs may not be up yet, they explained, but smoking was strictly ...
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Opinion
Spin the Gherkin
He’s versatile, that Norman Foster, as he was at pains to stress at the opening of the Swiss Re building this week. Chatting to Swiss radio, the Lord of the Gherkin asked the reporter which spin he would like on the building: “I can explain it emotionally; I can explain ...
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Opinion
A rising trend
Jean Nouvel was in London this week to hook up with Foster on their collaboration in the capital and learnt the nickname for the Swiss Re, which translates as “le cornichon erotique”. “I’ve got one of those,” he exclaimed excitedly, referring, of course, to his own torpedo-shaped tower in Barcelona.
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Opinion
Body building
Remember how Future Systems’ Jan Kaplicky harped on about how thongs and breasts helped to inspire his architecture in Confessions? Now the firm’s other partner, Amanda Levete, is at it, too. The double-page spread in the Guardian arts supplement she guest-edited last week juxtaposed a large picture of a woman’s ...
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Opinion
Glass worship
OK, from venal to divine inspiration. An architect has inspired a West Country vicar to imitate David Blaine’s glass-box stunt to raise money for a new scheme. This Saturday the Rev Nigel Done will suspend himself in a glass box for 12 hours to raise the £125,000 needed to realise ...
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Opinion
Ego reduction
So Zaha Hadid really is mellowing. Even the national press is having to ditch its preconceptions. “Where’s the vibrant monster I had been promised from previous interviews?” asked a Guardian interviewer. “Where’s the ball-breaking harridan barking abuse into her mobile as she wafts into her north London studio in vertiginous ...
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Opinion
Woolly jargon will not plug skills gap
Learning from John Egan is rarely fun. His grandiose visions of a unified construction industry are more about committee work, strangely-titled industry bodies and woolly concepts than actually making great architecture. His latest contribution: a plan to solve the skills crisis so the government's Sustainable Communities Plan investment isn't wasted ...
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Opinion
Pizza to the rescue
“There should be enough hydrogen to float ‘analogue cities’ a mile above the originals”
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OpinionRichard Hutchinson
Running 26 miles in the London Marathon wasn't enough for the Livesey O'Malley partner. He also agreed to critique a building for each mile for BD.
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Opinion
Golden community opportunity
John Prescott has a golden opportunity to create a national centre dedicated to building sustainable communities that includes not only planners, engineers, developers and councillors, but also housing and social administrators as well as social scientists. Much is commonly assumed about the mistakes of the past 50 years, but ...