http://blog.emap.com/letterfromlondon Fri, 19 Feb 2010 17:44:17 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en At last year's World Architecture Festival in Barcelona, our thematic exhibition was called ' Less Does More'. Curated by Jeremy Melvin, it featured case studies from around the globe, looking at everything from Masdar to the London Olympic stadium, and from the financing of  housing in East Africa to a ... http://blog.emap.com/letterfromlondon/2010/02/19/clients-will-love-less-doing-more/ For decades, UK legislators have used the planning system as a way of taxing development, via ‘Section 106’ or its predecessors, essentially a planning condition which constitutes a tax. From one point of view, these payments are a useful way of providing community benefit, which recognises the increase in land ... http://blog.emap.com/letterfromlondon/2010/01/25/letters-from-london/ There has been a spectrum of opinion and a spectrum of people (if you can have such a thing) involved in the great environmental debates at the Copenhagen climate summit. At one end you have the devout climate-change believers, for whom everything is simple: this is the situation and this ... http://blog.emap.com/letterfromlondon/2009/12/17/coping-with-copenhagen/ One of the consequences of endless fiddling with geographical boundaries in Britain over the past 50 years has been a huge loss of local, regional and national identity. Almost everything has been subject to phoney ‘efficiency changes’ with postcodes cast to the winds, counties smashed, big cities drifting in and ... http://blog.emap.com/letterfromlondon/2009/12/07/what-does-it-mean-to-be-english/ The after-dinner discussion addressed the following question: ‘Can building change the destiny of world cities?’ Like most such debating-style propositions, this one was full of ambiguities and subsidiary points for discussion, not least the question of what defines a world city. Moreover, the concept of destiny excludes a fundamental change ... http://blog.emap.com/letterfromlondon/2009/12/01/does-building-change-city-futures/ London's popular mayor, Boris Johnson, has been taking advice from many quarters on his policies in respect of design quality. The elephant in the room when design is discussed by politicians is the cost, or additional cost, of commissioning excellent design as opposed to whatever the construction sector chooses to ... http://blog.emap.com/letterfromlondon/2009/11/16/prioritise-and-tell-it-how-it-is/ News that the UK government is to ‘fast-track’ planning applications for nuclear power stations follows shortly after a New Labour commitment that communities would be given a greater say over what is built in their areas. The Conservative opposition has also indicated that it intends to give local people more ... http://blog.emap.com/letterfromlondon/2009/11/10/faster-should-mean-better/ Our attitude to the past is a good guide to what we think about the present, hence the continuing interest in (and controversy over) what buildings do or do not get listed. And having been listed, what we then find acceptable in terms of alteration or even demolition, for it ... http://blog.emap.com/letterfromlondon/2009/11/03/letter-from-london/ Any discussion about how architects charge fees brings into sharp focus the perspectives of supplier and customer. For while architecture, as a profession, is about serving the interests of society in general and clients in particular, that does not mean it is a charitable activity. George Bernard Shaw’s cynical description ... http://blog.emap.com/letterfromlondon/2009/10/27/injecting-certainty-into-fees/ One of British architecture’s more piquant moments of recent years took place at the Stirling Prize ceremony on Saturday night. Marco Goldschmied handed over a cheque for £20,000 to Richard Rogers, following the announcement that the Maggie’s Centre in Hammersmith had won the 2009 award. There wasn’t too much eye ... http://blog.emap.com/letterfromlondon/2009/10/20/counting-the-cost-of-competition/