Let's table a change

If you were looking for inspiration for a new dining table, you could do worse than go to 100% Design, the interiors show in Earls Court that is looking sprucer and more 'designy' than in years. You would probably not decide however to by 'Worldscape' by Atmos Studios, although it is for sale.

Crucially, it is designed by an architect not a furniture designer. Although not 'practical' in the usual sense, it has been used, since Atmos designed it amazingly fast to host 'world dinners' in the run up to the Olympics last year. It is a representation of a map projection of the world, with all important heights and depths represented, and depressions of varying sizes to represent cities.
It is a work of imagination and enterprise, and yet was really a sideshow in the life of an already busy architect, with some award-winning buildings. You may have to be almost insanely dedicated to undertake a project like this, but it certainly makes life more interesting, and beats sitting around waiting for the work to come in. I really wish I had been to one of the dinners. Perhaps the new owner would like to stage some more?

What the Heatherwick row tells us about attitudes to architecture

Apparently the story about accusations of plagiarism against Thomas Heatherwick crashed The Guardian's website, because there was so much interest. It was amazing to see it on the newspaper's front page. In the world of architecture, such stories happen fairly frequently, sometimes with justification from the aggrieved, sometimes not.
The difference of course is that Heatherwick has become so high-profile, and the Olympic cauldron even more so. It may have been a quietish news day, but it is interesting to see how far up the news agenda the combination of a charismatic designer and a design that has been watched by millions can get. The cauldron may only have existed for a few weeks, but it looms larger in the public consciousness at present than almost any building.
The other odd thing is the timing of the story, driven by the ban on publicity, which prevented Atopia from speaking out until now. And one of the ironies is that the accusations against Heatherwick were made against someone whose entire career is built on thinking differently. An architect may design similar rooms and spaces and details over and over again - and borrow from the past - and be none the worse for this. Heatherwick, however, relies on thinking from scratch on every occasions, which is why his objects (including tiny buildings) tend to be more satisfactory than his major incursions into architecture.
Perhaps what this really tells us is that, even for a most original thinker, there are only so many ideas available. If Heatherwick, as seems probable, came up with a similar solution to Atopia's without having seen the architect's proposal, it does not make his achievement any the less. Even for somebody who trades on his originality, being able to sell and execute his ideas so triumphantly is a great achievement as well.

Was Monday good news day?

A week ago on Monday was 'blue Monday', the day of the year when we were all meant to feel most depressed. For the construction industry though it seemed as if this Monday was more like 'golden Monday'. It was extraordinary to wake up to news which seemed to be all about creating construction work.
First there was the confirmation of the proposed route for the northern part of HS2, the high-speed rail line, although there will evidently be a lot of arguing about the route before this translates into real work.
Then there was the unrolling of the much-discussed Green Deal to the public, which should generate work at the smaller end of the market for approved installers.
And if architects, rightly, think that HS2 is too infrastructure based (although there will be new stations) and the Green Deal too small and trade based, then they can take heart that the embargo has, finally, been lifted on publicising Olympic work. OK this is too little too late, and of little benefit to many. And yes, there is plenty of bad news around with practices still going out of business, product manufacturers becoming insolvent, and the prospects for construction work looking gloomy overall. But how nice to have at least a little oasis of cheer. With gift horses so rare these days, we shouldn't look this one in the mouth.

Little cause for discontent in Dundee

Building Design says that the V&A has wasted the time of architects who entered the competition for its new outpost in Dundee, given that winning architect Kengo Kuma has been asked to redesign to fit the budget. But how outraged should they really be? Not very, I suspect.
Competitions are notorious for not producing workable designs, because how can they? There just isn't the mechanism for establishing the close relationship needed between architect and client, particularly when the architect comes from a different continent. And budget overruns are not unusual in this process either. Think of Zaha's competition winning Aquatic Centre for the Olympics, which had to be changed drastically. In that case there was an interim solution that wasn't great, but everyone seems to feel that the completed building, once the temporary add-ons are removed, will be a stunner.
Kuma is a very talented architect, who doesn't seem to have done a bad building yet (let's hope that the UK does not have the depressing effect on his talents that it seems to have done on Piano's skills). It is exciting to have somebody of that level of ability working in the UK for the first time.
The obvious comparison is with Turner Contemporary in Margate. Like Kuma's first effort, Snohetta's original design was in the water - in that case entirely in the water, and not a gentle river but the violent sea. When that proved too risky the client jumped ship (appropriate metaphor) to the safe hands of Chipperfield, with impressive results. Presumably they felt that there was nothing to be salvaged. And presumably the V&A believes the opposite - that Kuma's initial vision will work with the trimming and change of aspect.
We must wait to see the results. I believe - and hope - that they will be pretty good.

The irony of Open House

This year Open House London celebrates its 20th anniversary with a fuller and more diverse programme than ever before. Although it is not until 22-23 September, the ballot (an innovation)  has already closed for the most popular sites. There are emphases on landscape and engineering, and there are tours, as well as the usual opportunities both to access grand buildings that are normally inaccessible and to nose around in your neighbour's rear extension.
The irony is that this festival of openness, that is predicated on openness, happens when much of our capital is more closed than ever before. Edwin Heathcote touches on this in the introduction to the brochure when he writes, 'Not every change in London has been for the better. Argument still rage about the privatisation of public space...' The arguments about public space received a closer focus in the run up to the Olympics. Before the nation was subsumed into a great love-in and celebration of wins, the heavy-handed security pointed up how little of 'our' space was really 'ours' and how restricted we can be.
But this kind of privatisation, revealed in Anna Minton's excellent Ground Control and emphasised by the photographer Grant Smith in his battle to take photos where he wishes, is not the only thing excluding us from London. Money is doing it as well, as parts of the city become so expensive that even the 'normal rich' can't afford to live there. The idea of 'trickle down' wealth has long been discounted, but there is a sort of trickle-out effect in London where the hyper rich push out the merely rich, the rich push out the comfortable, and London becomes an onion of different layers of wealth, with many simply unable to afford to live in the capital. It would be a bit much though, to expect Open House to solve all those problems. Happy birthday!

Lost in Nottingham

The happy visitors to the Olympics praised not only the games and the volunteers, but also the efficient running of London - something that, as a native, I of course love to criticise. It was interesting therefore to hear a Brazilian journalist on the radio talking about Rio, where the games are going next, and reminding us how much bigger the logistics problems are there.
But you don't have to go as far as South America to find somewhere that is less easy to use than London. I was in Nottingham yesterday, visiting a building relatively close to the city centre and decided, with two colleagues, to walk back to the railway station. It was doubtless our fault, or that of the person who gave us directions, that we went the wrong way. When we stopped a passer-by he set us on the right path, said it was about 15 minutes walk but suggested we might prefer to take a taxi. We ignored his advice, but soon realised why he had given it. We were skirting the absolute core of the town, but by no means on the periphery. Yet it was almost impossible to cross the road. There were barriers, and hardly any crossings. Those that did exist all took you in the wrong direction. Cars roared past, there were scarcely any pedestrians, and the buildings, a mishmash of offices, industrial properties and residential, made almost no effort to address the street. I know there are good buildings in Nottingham, but we didn't pass any of them. The city was once famous for its lace - but the coarse filigree of its road network is certainly nothing to be proud of.

The campaign against Olympic gagging

I can't stop smiling at the photograph of Hattie Hartman, sustainability editor of The Architects' Journal, sporting the Olympic protest dress.

The absurdity of the ban on designers promoting the work they have done on the project becomes more obvious by the day. I was with the several members of the landscape team on the Olympic Park yesterday. Visitors to the site have been stunned by just how gorgeous the landscape is, and it will be an indisputable treasure of the legacy - in an area starved of outdoor space it will be a tremendous asset, and it is also a pathfinder for sustainable design. Yet they, like the architects and engineers, have been subjected to these ridiculous gagging orders. Only now are some of them starting to relax their constraints a little.
Let us hope that by the time we get to the Paralympics we can celebrate everybody - athletes and also the design teams without whom none of it could have happened.

London's East End and Middle East

Yesterday's Observer Review section had a special focus on the East End of London, as a slightly quirky preview of the Olympics. It covered everything from the best clubs to an interview with artist Rachel Whiteread who not only lives in the area but whose latest installation will be on the front of the Whitechapel Gallery. At its heart though was a piece by Rowan Moore, who is not only the paper's architecture critic but also a long-term resident of the East End ( I suspect he spends his weekends in the country).
Moore discusses the perennial problem of gentrification, that the undoubted changes for the better in the physical environment and in facilities bring with them rising housing prices and a danger of not catering to long-term residents. This contrast is accentuated by the presence of Canary Wharf, the new financial district which houses some of the country's richest (and most reviled) bankers. Moore talks about a 'lumpy' social fabric that echoes the lumpy physical fabric.
He doesn't have many kind things to say about the Olympics either, arguing that it does not work as a coherent whole. Elsewhere in the paper there is a long article about the growing influence and ambitions of Qatar, which has bought the Olympic Park, and is of course a major investor in the Shard which had a fancy completion celebration last week. It certainly was Qatar's week - there was also a large conference in London called Qatar Infrastructure Projects 2012 looking not at how the Qataris could further invest here, but at how the British could win work over there. It is a reminder of how truly international property and construction are. But there is still a slight uneasiness about the level of Qatari investment in London's property scene. This is not I think any particular dislike of the Qataris but just because it is a blatant reminder that so much of our infrastructure is seen as an investment opportunity rather than a way of improving the well-being of residents - whichever country they come from.

In praise of quiet winners

I am delighted to have been asked to judge the Wood Awards this year, and spent much of the weekend going through the late entries which, in time-honoured tradition, almost equalled those that were received on time. There is some wonderful work, ranging from tiny follies, artworks and extra rooms up to substantial schools, healthcare and cultural buildings. But it is no criticism to say that there are no blockbusters this year, nothing to compare to the Velodrome, a building which has already achieved high visibility and will have far more over the summer. We just aren't building on that scale now, and even the largest buildings submitted don't play that part of 'objects in the landscape' perfected by the Velodrome and also by one of last year's winners, Brockholes.

The recently announced RIBA awards showed a similar trend away from scene stealers. The Olympics represent the last hurrah for 'big architecture' for some time to come, and the few schools that are feeding through represent the end of the pipeline for Building Schools for the Future, before the cost-cutting future in which government representatives have stated firmly that the new commissions will not win architecture prizes. Architecture is in a state of flux, but the news is not all bad. New practices are forming and, surprisingly, making a living as well. And whereas the very special surroundings of the Velodrome and Brockholes make it right that they should stand out, buildings that relate to their neighbours are what we all need more of, even if they are not so photogenic.
We can be quietly confident of seeing some great, quiet buildings rewarded in the years to come.

For the love of civil engineers - and the Severn Barrage

'I love civil engineers' was the surprising declaration from architect John Lyall, speaking at an RIBA panel discussion last night called 'The Olympics: Power Dressing'. It became less surprising when you realised that civil engineers have given him a whole new field of endeavour, since he was invited to join a bid for the sewage network under the Olympic Park, which resulted in him designing the Pudding Mill Lane pumping station, and then several related commissions.
So why does he love them so much? Partly it seems because they have an innocence about architecture and so are surprised and delighted by what can be achieved. And partly because their budgets are large and so spending a fraction extra on the building element can be easily absorbed. At Pudding Mill Lane Lyall actually saved money, by designing a circular enclosure that was supported by the caisson below rather than requiring separate foundations.
He decorated the external wall with original drawings by the great sewage engineer Joseph Bazalgette, a reminder that civil engineering was once a heroic discipline. And had the buildings to match, such as some of the great pumping stations that decorate surprising corners of London. Lyall himself won a much bigger project as a result of his Olympic work, a giant sludge processing plant at Crossness, that will transform the waste from south London into fertiliser.

For architects these areas are exciting because the buildings they design are so definitely needed -  a counterpoint to some of the follies that have been built as part of the more misconceived arts-driven projects.  Here we have civil engineering in need of a building rather than a building in need of a function.
So perhaps it is not surprising that one of the architects best known for getting things done - Marks Barfield, the conceiver of the London Eye - is in a group backing the latest attempt to get a Severn Barrage built - a project that recently hit the news as Peter Hain quit the shadow cabinet to work for its realisation.  The project is still controversial, but represents an enormous potential win in terms of green electricity. In straitened, non-frivolous times, there is great satisfaction for architects in engaging with the issues that really matter.