More Opinion – Page 372
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Opinion
Regional fairness
I was at first shocked when I read that the RIBA was to get strict on those that do not comply in terms of membership, professional indemnity insurance and CPD, but then I realised it would rid me of the unfair competition and I thought it an excellent move. However, ...
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Opinion
Ban the bad
RIBA president George Ferguson is urging architects to “practise intolerance” on bad architecture with a rallying call on the profession to be “as intolerant of bad and mediocre architecture and planning as we should be of bad food”. So next time you walk past a building, you don’t like you ...
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Opinion
Wright stuff
Americans love Frank Lloyd Wright almost as much as they love anything even vaguely historical. So when the two come together the dollars flow, as demonstrated by the $400,000 preservation of a small prefabricated house designed by the master architect in Illinois. The 1957 home is being taken apart and ...
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Opinion
Clissold cacophony
A series of bizarre faults with the Clissold Leisure Centre are listed in Hackney council’s latest report on the troubled north London building. One item on the list reads: “Inadequate privacy to female changing rooms.” Another states: “Blocked symphonic drainage outlets”. The last one perplexed BD. Isn’t the word “symphonic” ...
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Opinion
The wrath of EH
The Audit Commission has run the rule over Runnymede District Council, which gave Beadle consent to demolish the Wentworth house by Connell Ward & Lucas. The council, whose planning committee sanctioned the demolition subject to John Prescott’s approval, has been designated an “excellent” local authority with particular reference to making ...
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Opinion
Dictating demands
Romanian architect Anca Petrescu is looking for work having just completed her first job. The 54-year-old is available after completing the world’s second largest building, the 3,700-room Parliament Palace in Bucharest. She can call on experience of a demanding client (the late dictator Nicolae Ceausescu), the interruption of a palace ...
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Opinion
British architects must crack own code
How's this for a test run? Take 150ha of land in the Thames Gateway, plan 12,000 new homes and apply design codes across the whole site.
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OpinionHelp wanted
Young and malleable or old and experienced? Issues arise when adding a new member of staff
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OpinionIs this a healthy way to build?
Ten years ago the new UCL hospital was an early PFI project. As it nears completion later this year, some are wondering if it is straightforward architecture or another example of the cost of compromise.
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Opinion
A privileged few
The point about Thatcher's children ("Why don't these Brits win YAYA? Comment & Analysis March 26) is that they are now Blair's graduates, struggling to pay back student debts before hopefully scraping together enough money to buy a house whose price rises quicker than their income.This is the real context ...
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Opinion
Shed no tears
Great Comment & Analysis (March 26), but ShedKM would like to point out to your readers that we didn’t actually enter the competition. In fact we never have done!Whether this is because of false modesty, or that we are just too busy is unclear. Perhaps, though, we accept that our ...
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Opinion
Someone different
With a plethora of candidates all barrelling at the presidential title, a sense of proportion is needed at the RIBA.For peace of mind I would go with Brian Godfrey, a man who I believe is of his time, a man of unsullied reputation and plainness and courteousness. The press will ...
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Opinion
Terms of confusion
Our Vision for a new settlement on the banks of the River Moscow (News April 2), and in particular our use of allegorical descriptions for the layering of urban quarters that our masterplan creates, seems to have created a great deal of confusion at both BD and Edaw.All great towns ...
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Opinion
Unashamed
As one of the planning authorities "named and shamed" in your article on the planning delivery grant (News March 12) I would like to assure you that the reason for Cannock Chase District Council's poor success rate in defending its decisions on appeal over the last year or so has ...
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Opinion
Pomo silliness
So Robert Venturi denies he is a post-modernist (Comment & Analysis March 19). The Pope has also denied he is a Catholic, I believe. The Venturis' great pomo legacy was to remove any idea of the social or political relevance of architecture and redefine it in purely aesthetic decorated sheds/ducks ...
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Opinion
Festival facts
Gordon Miller (Skylon revisited, Letters March 26) seems a bit confused. The Sea and Ships pavilion, in front of the Dome of Discovery at the Festival of Britain, was designed by Basil Spence’s London office under Andrew Renton, and I was involved with designing this building, and also worked on ...
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Opinion
Fool’s gold
How terribly droll for the Royal Scottish Academy to open up its press day on April I with some huge, well-viewed images by Terry Farrell. The cappa mounted photographs take up a whole wall, just for fun and include some sketches that the great man may have produced while running ...
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Opinion
Clever Rem stumped
Rem Koolhaas is notoriously obsessed with media coverage of his work, which is why a few weeks ago his office asked BD to fax a recent editorial to their Dutch headquarters.The editorial, which argued Rem was “too clever”, was duly faxed across and received with silence.But, according to BD’s moles, ...
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Opinion
The show of tomorrow
London has finally got a £100,000 show to celebrate Archigram, and host, the Design Museum, will have been well pleased with a glamorous launch show last week where luminaries spotted included model Marie Helvin and actress Eleanor Bron. Archigramites have been trying to put on a show for the past ...
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Opinion
Burying the past
It turns out the developers that demolished one side of the beautiful Spitalfields market on the edge of the City of London have suddenly developed a taste for heritage and history. Once a very large and bustling historic market complete with five-a-side football pitches, Spitalfields is now a much smaller ...