All Opinion articles – Page 370
-
Opinion
Unhelpful tactics
The group I chair will, no doubt, receive, from Arb board members who have made anonymous comments to BD (News April 23), the courtesy of a private reply to a private letter. What they (and your readers, since BD omitted it from the story) may not have known is that ...
-
Opinion
A rising trend
Jean Nouvel was in London this week to hook up with Foster on their collaboration in the capital and learnt the nickname for the Swiss Re, which translates as “le cornichon erotique”. “I’ve got one of those,” he exclaimed excitedly, referring, of course, to his own torpedo-shaped tower in Barcelona.
-
Opinion
Playing the system
I knew the press would find it difficult to report accurately on the exit of AA chairman Mohsen Mostafavi, but Will Hurst’s report is misleading. The article makes it look as if he is going because he is not wanted by the school or because he has not done a ...
-
Opinion
Smoked pickle
In a moment that was more Manhattan than London, Swiss Re security men pounced on our venerable correspondent Christopher Woodward, when, after three hours in the tower, he lit up a well-deserved cigarette on the building’s forecourt. The signs may not be up yet, they explained, but smoking was strictly ...
-
Opinion
Peter Rees
The opening of the Swiss Re tower this week confirms the City's shift from boring post-war office blocks to bold new design. The Corporation of London's chief planner is excited
-
Opinion
Men suffer, too
Having read “Fear and loathing in the boy zone” (In Practice April 23), I feel moved to write to reassure Sarah Wigglesworth that the very same problems she has experienced working as an architect on site, in terms of bullying, intimidation, criticism of our work, refusal to take instructions, procrastination, ...
-
Opinion
Lifting the lid
I refer to the article concerning the Guy Pound court case (News April 23). I acted as expert witness, and the points raised fail to even scratch the surface of what proved to be an extremely complicated and protracted case lasting more than a year in court. The case raised ...
-
Opinion
Glass worship
OK, from venal to divine inspiration. An architect has inspired a West Country vicar to imitate David Blaine’s glass-box stunt to raise money for a new scheme. This Saturday the Rev Nigel Done will suspend himself in a glass box for 12 hours to raise the £125,000 needed to realise ...
-
Opinion
Spin the Gherkin
He’s versatile, that Norman Foster, as he was at pains to stress at the opening of the Swiss Re building this week. Chatting to Swiss radio, the Lord of the Gherkin asked the reporter which spin he would like on the building: “I can explain it emotionally; I can explain ...
-
Opinion
Unwelcome export
Rest assured, Tony Aspinall (Letters April 23), you are not the only architect dismayed with the incongruously designed College of Art & Design in Toronto. However, there are some benefits, namely it was built in Canada and not Britain, and, fortunately, we do not live in the locality of ...
-
Opinion
Ego reduction
So Zaha Hadid really is mellowing. Even the national press is having to ditch its preconceptions. “Where’s the vibrant monster I had been promised from previous interviews?” asked a Guardian interviewer. “Where’s the ball-breaking harridan barking abuse into her mobile as she wafts into her north London studio in vertiginous ...
-
Opinion
Living in a time bomb?
Relations between Islington Council and the tenants of its Packington Estate would not normally make huge news in BD. But this week, things are different.
-
Opinion
Bold statement
I wonder how far a statutory requirement to submit design statements with planning applications will get us? Even assuming they don’t just become a series of standard clauses, it is difficult to imagine how the statements that might have been put forward by the winners of the Young Architect of ...
-
Opinion
Body building
Remember how Future Systems’ Jan Kaplicky harped on about how thongs and breasts helped to inspire his architecture in Confessions? Now the firm’s other partner, Amanda Levete, is at it, too. The double-page spread in the Guardian arts supplement she guest-edited last week juxtaposed a large picture of a woman’s ...
-
Opinion
Go back to school to solve skills gap
I couldn't agree with Robert Booth more (Editorial April 23) that Prescott's and "Egan's dreams will come to nothing without [the] core skills" of the best architects and the many other professionals who need to be involved in the huge sustainable communities programme.The purpose of the national centre, in whatever ...
-
Opinion
Terror warning
After the Madrid bombings and a year since the invasion of Iraq, it is a good time to reflect on how terrorism is working. We should consider what a national response should be, and, as a profession responsible for the environment, we should start a more open and balanced debate.We ...
-
Opinion
Spurning the table
Maybe I am the only architect who looked at your front cover picture “Table for Toronto” (News April 16) and thought, “Thank God I don’t live in Canada”.That poor defenceless Victorian building being trodden on by an invader from another world of class unpleasantness. What a streetscape. Graffiti walls, hideous ...
-
Opinion
Root of a problem
South Bank Centre chief executive Michael Lynch’s prediction that the revamp of the South Bank Centre will be complete by 2010 is surely a hostage to fortune. The Royal Festival Hall project has a green light, but problems still run deep – a couple of inches deep – on ...
-
Opinion
Pizza to the rescue
“There should be enough hydrogen to float ‘analogue cities’ a mile above the originals”