Can infinite freedom be justified?

I was struck by something that Felix Mara wrote in The Architects' Journal as part of his review of the Arcelor Mittal Orbit. When he first saw the drawings, he said: 'I was determined to like it, as it would obviously be controversial and I happen to believe, as far as the appearance of their work is concerned, artists and architects should have licence to do whatever they want. There is no shortage of people intent on standing in their way.'
Irrespective of what you believe about this particular project, is this a valid position? Work by artists and by architects is not necessarily comparable.If the art is not 'public art' but will exist within a gallery or private space, then we are not obliged to see it, and one can easily defend the artists right to do what they wish, within certain very specific bounds of decency - and perhaps not even there.
But public art and architecture form part of our daily environment. There have been plenty of anomalies in both the law and the application of the planning system, and the new National Planning Policy Framework is only likely to throw up a new set. But surely this is not an argument for no regulation at all - for saying that any building, providing it is functional and energy efficient, can look like anything, wherever it is. There are some very bad buildings, and there are some highly inappropriate ones - possibly good buildings in the wrong place. Sustainability, we are always told, is about much more than just energy saving. It is about building sustainable environments. Should all architects (and artists) really have carte blanche, everywhere?

Change the building not the behaviour

Today I was at the Building Centre and in the ladies' toilets (which each have their own washbasins in them) there was a sign above the loo paper saying 'Please don't use the toilet paper to dry your hands as it will run out. Please use the hand dryers. These toilets are not serviced regularly.'
What could the facilities team have learnt? They could have put more loo paper in the loos since it was obviously needed. Even better, they could have provided paper towels as they were what people wanted. I can't believe that this was a purely environmental decision, since the debate about paper towels vs hand dryers is a finely balanced one. I think it was just a matter of someone deciding how things should be and then trying to make people comply.
A good facilities manager - like a good architect designing a building - should try to work out what people want and try to give it to them, not issue instructions to make them change their behaviour. Of course sometimes you need people to change their behaviour (usually to conserve energy) but the most successful systems are designed in ways that people want to behave, or at least can be encouraged to behave, rather than going against their instincts. That is usually the cause of many of the buildings that perform so much more poorly than was predicted at the design stage.

Bleak outlook - no outlook

No, this isn't a post about the state of the economy. It is triggered by a discussion on the website Quora in response to the question 'Why don't most casinos have windows?' The reasons given include the need not to distract people with an awareness of the outside world, not allowing gamblers betting into the morning to realise that the sun had come up (at this time they tend to be at their drunkest and apparently it is the most lucrative time), and because windows would help them find their way out. Of course there are security issues as well. In the days when books were seen as still having value, many university libraries were designed without opening windows to prevent students throwing books out to waiting friends. And I suppose, as well, that windows allow you to see in - and many people may not wish to be seen at the tables.
What is interesting about these issues is that they immediately make you think of why windows are so important in most buildings. About, in fact, the importance of daylight. There are a few buildings where we don't want it to intrude, such as the cinema (although this is probably why going to the cinema in daylight still feels faintly naughty). But most of the time it is good for us to see out, good for our well-being and our general happiness. Lighting companies work very hard to create lights that simulate the effect of daylight, sometimes even changing colour temperature through the day, but this can only ever be second best. For orientation, for resting the mind, for making us feel connected with the world and the passing of the day and the seasons, you can't beat a window.

No excuse for getting up late

You won't have to worry if your watch stops or your phone battery runs out, if you are staying in this special hotel room in Ghent, Belgium. Called the Hotel Gent, it is a project by Japanese artist Tazu Rous, who has constructed a temporary room around the clock tower of the historic station. Presumably the clock doesn't strike, or visitors would have to be issued with ear plugs.
These temporary hotel rooms are all the rage. David Kohn's 'Room for London' in the form of a ship is perched on top of the Hayward Gallery for the whole of this year.

Both would be fun to stay in, but I think that Kohn's is superior, as it enhances the building on which it stands. Ghent's clock tower appears to be wrapped in temporary scaffolding. And is there nobody in the town who actually likes to consult the station clock? Rous may be responsible for a few missed trains.

Good news from Spain and Germany

Can there be good news from both these countries? Given the economic crisis, and the fact that what will rescue one will be, at the least, unpopular in the other. Well it seems that there can, at least in the world of architecture.

Spain is to get its first significant building by Renzo Piano, an arts centre in Santander. I admit that my heart sank when I first read about this, thinking, oh no another museum that they can't afford and can't afford to run. But this one will be entirely funded privately, by the Botin Foundation which is putting up the money not just for the building but also for running it.  And the building should not only be a glory in itself (a modest, visually floating structure), but also involves landscaping and the reconnection of a cut-off part of the city.
What more could one want? What a lot of people want is a civilised, well-designed and affordable place to stay when they are travelling. That is what Generator Hostels aims to do, using cutting edge design and art works while still providing beds at between 17 and 37 Euro a night. It just announced its latest development, in Hamburg, as part of a 200 million Euro expansion plan. So, in very different ways, these are two types of affordable, well-designed developments. The staycation may be under pressure in the next few years.

Being clever with heat

Combined heat and power systems are increasingly popular, as is heat recovery. It always seems ironic to me that we are developing these technologies when, through better insulation, Passivhaus etc, we are cutting down on a requirements for heating. And when technologies such as solar thermal can easily heat hot water. Still we do need heat at certain times - the problem is that we don't always need it when it is available.
So it is interesting to see that scientists in Germany have come up with a new way of storing heat, for re-use when it is needed. The storage method, developed by Fraunhofer, is intended in the first instance for use with biogas plants, but since it is is simply a storage method, could presumably be used more widely. The technique, using zeolite spheres, occupies a quarter of the space of heat storage and in water and has the added advantage of not actually storing heat itself. Instead, heat is used to dry out the spheres and, when you want them to emit heat, you allow them to take up water again.
The principle has been known for ages, but the researchers have addressed important practical details. Hooray for science!

Homes for grannies

I hope you all had a good long weekend. While the country was celebrating the jubilee of its favourite granny, the government made an announcement about a type of accommodation that the Queen is never going to need - the granny flat. It said it would introduce a council tax break for anybody converting a garage or other unused accommodation into a granny flat. This caused some confusion, as apparently they are already tax exempt. So the government back-pedalled and said it didn't just mean grannies (or grandpas) but any member of the family - including presumably adult children who have become part of the 'boomerang' generation, leaving home for university and then coming back again.
It seems that the government is changing its mind all the time about taxes and fiscal incentives, pace the pasty tax and tax exemptions for charitable donations, but this time it does seem to be doing something rather clever. It is breaking up our terribly rigid ideas of where we should live, that anybody with any aspiration to success should be a homeowner and, failing that, can make do with renting a self-contained flat. Some small places, almost but not quite independent of their owners, could suit all sorts of people at all sorts of stages in their lives, and perhaps ease our chronic housing situation and even, whisper it, pull inflated house prices down a bit. Just don't expect the queen to move in.