All Opinion articles – Page 319
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Opinion
Architects need not be tortured artists
Architects need multiple personalities. To be successful, one has to combine a diverse set of contradictory skills, from visionary artist to hard-nosed lawyer, and encompassing all manner of occupations including businessman, social scientist, technologist, accountant, salesman and marriage guidance counsellor.
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Opinion
Signs of trust in the next generation
Patrick Lynch gave a humble acceptance speech when he picked up our Young Architect of the Year Award on Tuesday night. He said he was proud to have been part of such a strong shortlist, adding he only hoped he could deliver on the trust that had been put in ...
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Opinion
Centralisation is killing our cities
A decade and a half after a resurgent Barcelona used culture and urban vigour to fire-up the Catalan economy, Britain is still struggling to understand the truth it illuminated: that cities, and their regions, are our primary economic powerhouses.
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OpinionConcrete Boots
Top of the fopsFormer ambassador to Washington Christopher Meyer was branded a “red-socked fop” by deputy prime minister John Prescott last week after embarrassing revelations in his new book upset the government. In the same week, Boots saw Terry Farrell wearing red socks and asked him if that made him ...
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OpinionSuzi Towel
As minister for the media, I was cross to see my husband’s dealings with those Iranian businessmen all over the papers
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Opinion
Thermal solution
One route to reducing pollution in some smoke-laden Chinese cities (Solutions October 21) is to exploit the geothermal energy in volcanic areas, such as the hot water that has bubbled up to the surface at Xingcheng in Liaoning Province in north-east China since the Tang dynasty.
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Opinion
Necessary quality
I was very interested to read Anthony Thistledton’s negative comments on quality assurance that appeared in the article on Ojeu questionnaires (News analysis November 18).
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Opinion
Hoary? True story
Far from being a “hoary myth” that the Nazis closed the Bauhaus (Letters November 18), in fact they closed it twice: at Dessau, September 1932; and its emaciated privatised form at Berlin, April 1933 (Frank Whitford’s book, Bauhaus, has a photo of police loading the students into trucks).
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Opinion
Peripheral edge
While I applaud BD’s 50/50 campaign, everything I have read so far misses one crucial point: if you employ women architects you get better-quality architecture. The reason is simple, in all things in life yin and yang produce a balanced harmony.So it is in architecture — women experience space differently, ...
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Opinion
Don’t leave it to the housebuilders
Cabe has been caning the housebuilders again. Zoë Blackler (Leader November 18) doled out predictable advice about good design not being an optional extra — the sort of stuff I wrote in the eighties.
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Opinion
A lesson in division from Moshe Safdie
When the Israeli/Canadian architect Moshe Safdie visited the UK earlier this month to deliver the RIBA’s annual discourse, he showed an impressive body of work around the world.
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Opinion
Call the bulb police
Nick Cullen of Hoare Lea is spot on. Ban the tungsten lamp. But this would only create a lightbulb black market (a light market?).
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OpinionConcrete Boots
Wheel of fortuneAs British Airways sells its stake in the London Eye to the Tussauds Group for £95 million this week, Tussauds has made it clear to Marks Barfield Architects that it would buy its share on “the same terms as BA”. That presents quite a dilemma. What do you ...
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Opinion
Rules are written for the big boys
Anyone who regularly bids for work will be familiar with the jargon of the Ojeu – the Official Journal of the European Union, where requests for architectural services can be found alongside calls for suppliers of large-capacity incontinence kits.