All articles by Amanda Baillieu – Page 24
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Opinion
Schools project needs total shake-up
It was only a question of time before the government twigged that its school building programme was in deep trouble. But for anyone involved in Gordon Brown’s flagship project, news that the first targets had been missed came as no surprise.
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Opinion
RIBA should take a more critical stand
Why wasn’t an architect present at this week’s widely publicised meeting between the construction industry and housing minister Yvette Cooper?
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Opinion
Substance will drive PM Brown’s agenda
New Year is supposedly about resolutions and looking forward. It’s also about marking anniversaries and looking back to see what’s been achieved. Ten years ago New Labour came to power with a list of promises — some fulfilled, some not — including a pledge to use PFI, despite its already ...
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Opinion
Green issues dominate this year and next
How will architects remember 2006? As the year when a member of the BNP stood for election as RIBA president, or when Sunand Prasad became the first non-white architect to succeed?
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Opinion
Gazprom competition was no contest
Leaving aside Russia’s state gangster culture, where corruption, violence and vice flourish, its courting of iconic architecture to usher in an era of economic bling raises awkward questions for those involved in their creation.
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Opinion
A good news week for Olympic design
Just when things were looking chronically bleak for those charged with delivering the London Olympics, this week has good news not just for architects, but for anyone who was worried the games would be a missed opportunity for the UK’s talented pool of designers.
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News‘Design is at the heart of what we are doing here’
Ricky Burdett is to become design adviser to the London Olympics after mounting critcism that the design of the 2012 games is being handed to contractors.
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Opinion
Libeskind’s lesson on finding the positive
As Daniel Libeskind admits, much of what an architect does is performance. Buildings have to be defended linguistically as well as visually but few architects are as convincing as he is when it comes to communicating ideas. Yet, as he admitted last week, it can be a struggle.
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Opinion
Housing renewal needs quality control
Anyone who has struggled in assembling a Billy bookcase from their local Ikea may wonder what challenges await those brave enough to buy one of their prefabricated homes.
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Opinion
Jowell ducks 2012 design responsibility
From Nervi’s stadium for the Rome games to Isosaki’s for Barcelona, it’s hard to think of an Olympics where the architecture has not been commissioned by the host nation as a work of civic stature with international status.
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Opinion
Arb niggles, but bigger issues lie ahead
Should architects be up in arms that the annual retention fee — the pompous name for the cost of being a member of Arb — has gone up by £1.50? It is not much but some feel the increase is not only unnecessary but also legally questionable.
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Opinion
How to avoid a succession of disasters
It’s not only prime ministers who find the business of succession difficult. Architects do, too.
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Opinion
Can Unesco focus minds at Liverpool?
Liverpool’s world heritage status appears to be in trouble. Next week a delegation from Unesco arrives in the city to decide if it needs to become embroiled in not one but several of the city’s new developments.
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Opinion
Carbon allowances are a fair solution
It is not only the Conservatives who are facing difficulties reconciling a green agenda with cheap airfares.
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Opinion
Suburban lessons for Thames Gateway
What should we make of John Rouse’s outburst that the suburbs are where we would all really want to live if only we had the choice? Admitting you live in suburbia is not unlike confessing to enjoying boating holidays on the Norfolk Broads — actually quite pleasant but not at ...
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Opinion
Design panels need some new faces
Each week, it seems, another commission or panel is set up to advise on the fraught issue of design.
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Opinion
Venice lessons don’t tell whole story
Anyone in Venice last week for the opening of the biennale might think they were witnessing a defining moment: the moment when architects were forced to admit defeat and confess they no longer had any answers to the problem of cities.
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Opinion
Sifting through the embers for reason
The timber industry is on a roll, thanks to the government.