Is the Orbit really too small?

The most contentious statement at a seminar that I chaired last week came from Clive Dutton, executive director for planning, regeneration and property at the London Borough of Newham, host borough for the Olympics. 'The only thing wrong with the Orbit is that it should have been three times as big,' he said about one of London's most contentious and least-loved landmarks. Few would think of this twisted red metal object as 'landscape' but that was how Dutton defined it, in a discussion entitled 'Why invest in landscape?' The event took place at the offices of architect Patel Taylor, whose work includes the recently opened Eastside Park in Birmingham. Andrew Taylor, one of the founders of the practice, explained that for him 'landscape is the medium that brings buildings together'. The design codes for the athletes village were mostly related, he said, to how they helped to define the external spaces. there was a divide between the speakers, with Dutton and Mark Davy, founder of culture and placemaking consultancy Future City talking about special landscapes that can add excitement, often in a temporary manner. In contrast Sue Illman, president of the Landscape Institute and urban geographer Jonathan Smales,founder of Beyond Green, were more interested in having good landscape everywhere. Illman outlined the advantages that water sensitive urban design (WSUD) can bring, not only creating nicer places to live but tackling the triple whammy of floods, pollution and the urban heat island. Smales is a firm believer in densifying cities, but said that this can only work with great landscape design. There was a lively discussion from an audience of design professionals, developers and local authority members, particularly over who would actually pay for and maintain such schemes. Ceding control to private developers may in some cases be undesirable but, given current finance, can local authorities be trusted over maintenance?

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.

Save our concrete spaces

Yesterday in the Observer Rowan Moore launched a diatribe against proposals for London's South Bank, specifically the Hayward Gallery and Queen Elizabeth Hall. They will, he says, involve 'thrusting commercial space into almost every spare void'. Nature, we are told, abhors a vacuum and so, it seems, does commerce.
Moore, who does have form as a complainer, is worried that the South Bank will be turned into another airport terminal or shopping centre, albeit with some fresh air. His worries have some justification. There was a lot of fuss when shopping started creeping into railway stations that it would somehow spoil the pure experience of travel. But they seem an ideal venue for shops, which are either convenient or help to kill time, or both. Similarly at airports - what do you do if you don't shop or eat? Hunch over your laptop?
But the South Bank is very different. It already has some shops and eating places, as Moore points out. The British Film Institute, after many false steps, has transformed itself into a permanently buzzy venue. Gabriel's Wharf nearby has maintained an alternative feel to its retail, probably because its temporary status - stretching out wonderfully in the recession - has discouraged the chains. But the outlets under the Festival Hall are, as Moore points out, all chains, and we could expect more of the same. They are often reliable, but they don't give an individual character - and the South Bank is a concrete oasis with some great cultural buildings.
The problem may be that we just don't appreciate it as open space. When we think of open space and landscape we think of parks and planting. Which are admirable, and to be encouraged. But the South Bank is a very different kind of landscape - a concrete landscape on several levels, with places to gather, for temporary events, and a great balcony onto the river. It is worth preserving.