All Opinion articles – Page 376
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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.
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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Opinion
Pizza to the rescue
“There should be enough hydrogen to float ‘analogue cities’ a mile above the originals”
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OpinionRichard Hutchinson
Running 26 miles in the London Marathon wasn't enough for the Livesey O'Malley partner. He also agreed to critique a building for each mile for BD.
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Opinion
Growing pains
Ken Shuttleworth knows a thing or two about office space, having designed half of the landmark schemes in London lately. But even in the name of research, isn’t moving his own office four times in just three-and-a-half months pushing it a bit? His new office, Make, will shortly be ...
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Opinion
Hey good looking
Congratulations on dragging BD’s layout into the 21st century. It hadn’t changed much in the 30 years since it first appeared as a tabloid (which I guess says quite a lot for the original concept) – but you have made the most of the use of colour, big pictures ...
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Opinion
Woolly jargon will not plug skills gap
Learning from John Egan is rarely fun. His grandiose visions of a unified construction industry are more about committee work, strangely-titled industry bodies and woolly concepts than actually making great architecture. His latest contribution: a plan to solve the skills crisis so the government's Sustainable Communities Plan investment isn't wasted ...
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Opinion
Essex lies
I was horrified to learn from Concrete Boots (April 2) that I was quoted as using the term “Basildonisation”. I have never used this word, nor have I compared Basildon unfavourably in any way; I do not know Basildon well enough to comment on its merits or demerits. Clearly, the ...
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Opinion
Wembley detour
Remember walking down Wembley Way to a big match? The palpable sense of procession towards a national icon. Let's hope things don't change. Boots hears whispers that Quintain, the developer of the new "pedway" from Wembley Park tube station to the stadium, is keen for its competing architects to lead ...