All Opinion articles – Page 341
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OpinionLeaf it out
Please stop it. First dRMM with Kingsdale School at Dulwich. Then Will Alsop with his nursery at Harlesden. And now the managed workspace by McDowell & Benedetti in North Yorkshire (Solutions March 11).Wonderful, boundary-pushing architecture, I am sure, but will you stop putting trees under roofs. Trees are complex living ...
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OpinionJust for the rich?
Linking the live-work building type, with the Sustainable Communities Plan, one could have been forgiven for thinking that the two schemes presented by Ellis Woodman (Works March 4 & 11) might have contained elements that would find wider application, but instead we were shown two architectural examples of the most ...
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OpinionTalkbox: Julian Tollast
Poacher-turned-gamekeeper Julian Tollast has joined developer Quintain as head of design development after 17 years rising through the ranks at Farrell & Partners.
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Opinion
Ian Martin
Correctly predict ‘Budget Boost For Regeneration’. You’ve been Quangoed comes in at 12-1, then Go to Pub and Hair of Dog
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OpinionEmbassy light
Designing an embassy should be a dream commission, but it appears as fraught with difficulties as it is loaded with promise, writes Robert Booth. That was the impression given by an intriguing open ideas contest run by the Czech ambassador to London, which BD was invited to help judge. Scores ...
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Opinion
Concrete Boots
Cannes kerfuffleThe chaos caused by 17,000 jolly property professionals upping sticks to Cannes for the annual Mipim shebang is legendary, but this year things went one step further. One nameless delegate carelessly abandoned their CBRE-branded conference bag in the middle of Nice airport, causing some rather half-hearted attempts at evacuation ...
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Opinion
Audit office finds a use for design
How would you feel if your client sliced £2.6 million off the budget of your £33.5 million job after you had already saved £800,000? Apart from a feeling of deja vu, you are likely to fret about the impact on design quality.
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Opinion
Ethics is a matter for all consciences
Sheila Mullon (Letters March 11) makes the ridiculous assumption that ethics are of no concern to the RIBA, based on my reluctance to be drawn on some unspecific examples. The ethics of practice should be taken extremely seriously. We have our own long-established code of conduct and have contributed to ...
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Opinion
Science getting lost in aesthetics focus
In our society scientific endeavour is becoming dangerously unfashionable. University departments are being closed and fewer students are choosing science-based subjects at school. We are in an age of ambiguity where expressing ideas, however easily reached, is more saleable than the hard graft involved in acquiring knowledge and establishing certainties.
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Opinion
Royal philosophy
For probably the first time in my life, I agree with something Prince Charles has said.
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Opinion
Piling on the perks
RTKL was mentioned in BD’s careers guide as one of the top five firms for perks. It did not, however, mention nearly half the benefits that we offer.
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Opinion
Loose morals
Your article on ethics exposes the utter lack of a moral imperative in architecture.
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Opinion
Lead the way
Architects should lead their clients and insist that all buildings use renewable energies, doing away with unsustainable materials and dinosaur construction techniques that use massive amounts of embedded energies and reliance on fossil fuels.
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Opinion
Ian Martin
Sitting in a Stalinist multi-level bachelor pad with shagpile carpet and a piranha pool is my client, ‘Comrade Orange’
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Opinion
Following the herd on ethics
Well done for raising the temperature of moral debate (News Analysis March 4). If professional magazines don’t do it, these difficult issues will go unexamined.
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Opinion
Wrong direction
Where did Arup’s project architect derive the symbology for the bus station at Vauxhall (Works February 25)?
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Opinion
A different tune
It is OK to design for an oppressive regime as long as one does not play the lead fiddle to the tune of oppression.
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Opinion
Chemical reaction
So Mairi Levitt and Robert Adam would willingly design a germ warfare experimentation centre for the British government because they both believe it has strict regulation on such things and would act ethically.
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OpinionConcrete Boots
Journo gristDeputy prime minister John Prescott has a fairly well-established warm-up routine he uses at press conferences these days. It involves taking a journalist to task about a particular story that upset him and then broadly criticising all journalism. Maybe it is a ploy to get the journalists in line ...
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Opinion
Animal alarm
I was astonished that not one of your panellists would reject a commission to design a government-backed animal research centre.