All Opinion articles – Page 360
-
Opinion
Mandy money
Still at the RFH, CEO Michael Lynch wasn’t pulling any punches over Peter Mandelson’s criticism of the renovation scheme. Referring to the fact that Mandelson launched the Millennium Dome project at the RFH, Lynch said: “I would have liked some of the Dome money.”Wouldn’t we all.
-
OpinionMadcap madness
Buildings in the shape of toasters and multi-coloured pods on wonky sticks. How original.In this case it is the redevelopment of Middlesbrough waterfront, the latest masterplan by Alsop Architects. Indistinguishable from any of its other recent masterplans, it clearly demonstrates no reference to context or understanding of deep-rooted ...
-
Opinion
Letting off steam
Alsop himself is angry about the evaporation of his Cloud, and regeneration company Liverpool Vision got some of his invective in Louis’s favourite paper on Saturday.In an interview, curiously badged “exclusive” given he poured out his heart in BD the day before, Alsop fumed: “I only had a meeting with ...
-
Opinion
Ian Martin
Things are back to normal. Well before lunch, this week’s proposed world’s tallest building is announced
-
Opinion
Human sacrifice
Your reported demise of the icon (News July 23) may not be bad news in all quarters.When RIBA president George Ferguson addressed the Traditional Architects’ Group at the RIBA in February he distinguished between modern and traditional building style and between modern and traditional urbanism. Whereas he said he would ...
-
Opinion
Get off our land
Has it not occurred to anyone that most people in the countryside don’t want modernist buildings? They resist new buildings only because they are invariably of modernist design. It’s probable that most of them have moved to the country to get away from that great modernist urban experiment of ...
-
Opinion
Dont shed tears for the lost icons
There were no tears shed in my house at the news that the V&A extension had spiralled into oblivion and that The Cloud had proved to be so much hot air.
-
OpinionA damp squib
Far from being futuristic, John McAslan’s circular canopies for the Piccadilly Gardens (News July 23) took me back to the 1970s, when, as a summer-working student, I joined the design office of a well-known oil company.It too used overlapping circular canopies of varying heights — until it found that people ...
-
Opinion
A slow response risks collapse disaster
You can imagine the baffling letter hitting the resident’s doormat. It’s on government notepaper and states in dauntingly obscure Whitehall language: “The LPS block you live in may not have been investigated in accordance with the MHLG Circular 62/68 (1968) or the BRE guidance published in 1987.”
-
Opinion
Dont let ego war destroy our cities
That some emperors are waking up to the fact that their new clothes are not as promised (“End of the iconic age”, July 23) is good news. However, the threat to our towns from ego-architecture remains. A top person in an urban regeneration agency recently told me that he commissioned ...
-
Opinion
Bare noises
A press briefing about the acoustics makeover of the Royal Festival Hall revealed some interesting, but strange, facts about how sound reverberates around a concert hall. According to acoustics expert Larry Kirkegaard, the sound in the Royal Festival Hall would be better if the audience was naked. Apparently, a fully ...
-
Opinion
Louiss love affair
Nathaniel Kahn calls to talk about his cinematic quest to discover his dad, Louis, in the film My Architect, which is previewed next week in London. After agreeing that big-name architects tend to be an eccentric bunch after he met IM Pei and Philip Johnson for the movie, he reveals ...
-
Opinion
Pile on pressure
The RIBA Conference in Dublin enjoyed a lively discussion on PFI (News and Editorial July 16), but to say that the public sector is on the road to hell is pushing it. PFI is not about to disappear: it is a funding system that is far too attractive to the ...
-
Opinion
Monumental risks
Public monuments are, by definition, useless (Soapbox July 16): they have no apparent function in our architectural culture, unless, of course, they are called landmarks. But if we are to remember worthy people or significant historical events, they will be with us for as long as society itself exists.Yes, there ...
-
Opinion
Super-size model
We’ll pretty much go to the opening of an envelope, so it was with pleasure that we scooted along to a new phenomenon — the opening of an architectural model. Not an exhibition, oh no. Just the one piece. It did have multi-coloured lights though. The model in question was ...
-
Opinion
Why we need an urban institute
What do I mean when I say that the RIBA should become an institute for urbanism? It ceased to be an institute for architects some time ago, instead becoming an institute for architecture. The time has now come to make a bolder step and to open our doors to all ...
-
Opinion
Ian Martin
The Gourd would enhance Tamworth’s world-class city status (already 6.8 on the Pritzker Scale)
-
Opinion
So, farewell then
Paul Foot, radical left wing journalist and one of the founders of Private Eye, who died this week, might have appreciated an item in Concrete Boots. RIBA council member Sam Webb told BD how he used to work closely with Foot nearly 35 years ago to examine the scandal of ...
-
Opinion
Fail safe
George Henderson, emeritus professor at De Montfort University, is the man chosen to unpick the scandal of the 90% failure rate in the part one course at the University of Central England. Henderson may be able to bring some useful experience to bear on the problem — at De Montfort ...
-
Opinion
Iconoclasm, clouds and con tricks
This summer’s argument between iconic and contextual architecture changed from parlour game to public debate on Monday when Alsop’s Cloud scheme in Liverpool, Britain’s most iconic proposal of recent years, was scrapped by its public-sector clients and the public that holds them to account.