The latest controversy surround Britain’s childcare rules and regulations involves two policewomen working alternating shifts being told they cannot look after each other’s child without breaking the law. This is only one example of what one might describe as the infantilisation of society, in which nothing can happen unless it has been cross-checked with ‘health [...]
Posts from ‘September, 2009’
Role reversal focuses the mind
One of the problems for contemporary architects is the strictness of the planning and regulatory regimes they face compared with their predecessors only a few decades ago. This applies particularly to proposals in towns and cities, where almost limitless numbers of organisations have a hand in determining whether something is or is not built. In [...]
The past is rarely enough
The planning committee of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is not necessarily a radical group when it comes to design. On the other hand it would be a big mistake to assume that it is predictably opposed to contemporary (ie ‘modernistic’) architecture. When its planning officers recommended refusing the Daniel Libeskind designs for [...]
Thinking up-front about energy
The London architect Simon Sturgis has been doing some interesting analysis of carbon emissions in relation to new construction and/or refurbishment, and trying to make sense of the figures compared to other energy costs.
This bucks the usual trend in thinking about these things, which is to downplay the initial carbon emission ‘cost’ in favour of [...]
