ODA demonstrates DIY approach to planning

Reassuring words from ODA chairman John Armitt in a discussion this week about the costly business of getting planning on mega schemes.

CapCo’s Gary Yardley was admitting that the £15 million put aside for Farrells’ Earls Court scheme was “100% wrong” — the developer’s final bill will be nearer £35 million — when Armitt reflected on how the ODA had done it.

“I’m told the largest planning application in Europe was for the Olympic Park,” he said. “The great benefit was that we submitted it to ourselves.”

Out of the Box

Olympic chiefs have hired branding specialist Small Black Room to come up with names for buildings and spaces across the Olympic Park.

As a result Make’s copper-clad handball arena has been renamed Copper Box — a move that did not go down well with British Handball chief executive Paul Goodwin.

“Why have they not renamed other facilities in a similar vein?” he asked. “How about naming the Velodrome ‘the big round wooden building’ and the basketball arena ‘the marshmallow’?”.

No fear

Still on the Olympics, Boots was interested to learn that, following the Supercross World Cup test event, the BMX track is having to be redesigned.

Thought to be the world’s toughest course, featuring an 8m sheer drop and tight hairpin bends, it all proved too much for the riders, who complained that it was “terrifying”.

Tell me why…

When it came to explaining the benefits of John Lewis-style partnerships, Make’s finance director, Barry Cooke, on Radio 4’s PM programme, was all sweetness and light.

All credit to him for getting phrases like “mutual respect”, “outrageous success” and “outperform our sector dramatically” past the interviewer. But it all sounded a little too scripted to be convincing, especially when he tried to persuade us that, “unlike Bob Geldof” Make staff “all love Mondays”.

Dress to impress

Regular Boots readers will be familiar with Port, “the magazine for men”, for which the AA’s Brett Steele is architecture correspondent.

Brett’s role presumably has more than a little to do with this issue’s six-page fashion shoot, focusing on the life of a dapper and clearly spectacularly loaded AA student. In the library, our hero is looking studious in Margaret Howell; in Bedford Square, he’s rocking Dolce & Gabbana while, rather against his better judgement, Boots fears, he has donned Dries van Noten for an afternoon in the modelshop.

The tagline “Just because your work is in progress doesn’t mean your wardrobe needs to be” was evidently written by someone who never had to take out a student loan.