Archinect - News

Norman Foster pushes government to hold architecture competition for a new House of Lords

2020-01-22T13:51:00-05:00

According to Architect's Journal (AJ), in a letter published in The Times, Norman Foster – writing as Lord Foster and president of the Royal Fine Art Commission Trust – said the ‘power of architecture’ should be used ‘to express our political and economic ambitions’. It comes in response to Prime Minister Boris Johnson's desire to move the upper chamber of parliament out of London, reports AJ.

In his letter, Foster wrote: "If we are to build a new House of Lords, we must set our sights every bit as high and produce work that represents the very best that our age can offer. An architectural competition, backed by a clear brief, would be the place to start."

UK architects react negatively to conservative electoral victory

2019-12-13T14:09:00-05:00

Piers Taylor of Invisible Studio said the newly elected government: [...] "We are left now with our country in tatters, and no hope, no future and no sense that our government will ever be anything other than a horrendous concoction of idiotic, self-interested, self-serving and morally bankrupt half-wits. We deserved better: we had our chance, and we’ve blown it. Now for two decades or more of discontent."

Architects in the United Kingdom are not taking kindly to the electoral rout taken by the nation's liberal political parties in this week's election.

The conservative electoral victory guarantees that Brexit will finally come to pass; UK Architects have strongly opposed the measure, particularly due to the difficulties the change would bring both for UK architects working abroad and for the availability of international talent to work in the UK, among many other concerns.

UK to introduce national building safety regulator in wake of Grenfell tragedy

2019-10-25T14:30:00-04:00

Legislation that would force developers and landlords to comply with rigorous new safety standards will be announced in the Queen’s speech on Monday with the aim of preventing a repeat of the Grenfell Tower disaster. Ministers say that the creation of a new buildings safety regulator will be the biggest reform of the sector in 40 years, imposing far stronger obligations on those responsible for the safety of high-rise buildings throughout design, construction and occupation.

The creation of a new national building safety regulator comes as the UK government prepares to release a report investigating the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire that killed 79 people.

The report is set to be released on October 30th.

RIBA wastes no time reminding Boris Johnson of the immense challenges facing the UK's built environment

2019-07-24T18:03:00-04:00

Boris Johnson has a mammoth task on his hands as soon as he enters No.10. Brexit, climate change and ensuring the UK has a safer, high-quality built environment must be priorities.

The assumption of Boris Johnson to the prime ministership of the United Kingdom has come with no honeymoon period, it seems. This week, as Johnson's selection was formalized, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) issued a pointed and lengthy list of concerns facing the nation's building industry while vowing to "engage with the new Prime Minister and his government immediately, ensuring the voice of architects is heard loud and clear.”

In a letter reacting to the selection of the new prime minister, RIBA CEO Alan Vallance said, "The global climate emergency is the greatest challenge the world has ever faced. With 40-percent of carbon emissions generated from the built environment, the [prime minister] must recognize how vital our profession is to ensure the UK meets the net-zero target."

Valance added, "The unacceptable delay to reforming building and fire safety regulations since the Grenfell Tower tragedy must be urgently addressed. The [prime minister] must strengthen ...

Scrapped London Garden Bridge stirs up legal questions over $60m public funds spent

2018-08-01T14:01:00-04:00

The trustees of London’s garden bridge, including actor Joanna Lumley and the former Labour minister Lord Davies, could have breached their legal duties over the failed project, that cost taxpayers more than £40m, according to a leading lawyer. The legal opinion comes as pressure mounts for a formal investigation into how the charity behind the abandoned scheme spent so much money without construction work even beginning.

"The decision to press on with the construction contract led to public losses, initially capped at £16m, increasing to an estimated total of £46m by the time the scheme was cancelled in 2017," The Guardian reports. "The project, championed by then London mayor, Boris Johnson, was intended to be majority-funded by private donations. However, the bulk of the money spent came from the £60m in public funds handed to the project."

Boris Johnson faces continuing pressure over canceled London garden bridge

2018-03-19T13:40:00-04:00

Gwynne demanded Johnson provide evidence for his allegation against Will Hurst, the managing editor of Architects’ Journal who has won several awards for his coverage of the garden bridge, or withdraw them and apologise. The letter adds to the pressure on Johnson over his role in the troubled story of the planned pedestrian link across the river Thames, which he commissioned and championed as mayor of London, a job he held until May 2016.

During his term in the London mayoral chair, British foreign secretary Boris Johnson advocated passionately for the £46m Heatherwick-designed London garden bridge proposal, which ultimately lost public support and was scrapped by incoming mayor Sadiq Khan—while the financial burden for the controversial project remains on the public.

A new Labour initiative pressures Johnson to shed light on his allegations that Architects’ Journal managing editor Will Hurst essentially killed the project because of a "dislike that the Architects’ Journal journalist concerned had for Thomas Heatherwick". Hurst and the AJ categorically deny this claim.

Which architect would be best suited to design Boris Johnson's proposed Channel bridge?

2018-01-22T14:20:00-05:00

The clown king of novelty infrastructure fantasies has once again stolen the limelight with his preposterous plan for a 22-mile bridge across the Channel. [...] But none of this matters. In a world where Johnson got as far as flushing £37m of public money into the Thames on another fantasy project, the Garden Bridge, a great Channel crossing could easily be conjured into being.

The Guardian's architecture critic, Oliver Wainwright, responds to the former London Mayor's suggestion to build a 22-mile bridge across the Channel and physically connect the European Union with the brexiting island kingdom (on top of the already existing 31.35-mile Channel tunnel).

Let's just say, Wainwright isn't a fan and pens an angry roundup of prominent architects that either have designed other Johnson mega-visions, like Heatherwick's Thames Garden Bridge and Lord Foster's Thames Hub, or have a history of going over the initially proposed project budget a tad or a thousand.

Third runway at Heathrow gets the go-ahead

2016-10-25T12:30:00-04:00

Ministers approved the long-awaited decision at a cabinet committee meeting on Tuesday. Transport Secretary Chris Grayling called the decision "truly momentous" and said expansion would improve the UK's connections with the rest of the world and support trade and jobs. Although Heathrow has always been the favourite among businesses, it has attracted the most opposition from MPs with constituencies near the airport or under flight paths.

The expansion which had been publicly opposed by Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, Tory MP for Richmond Park, Zac Goldsmith and Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson has been widely debated for years.

Funded with private sector cash the new runway will cost £17.6 billion but provide 260,000 more flights with an estimated boost of £147 billion to the economy over 60 years. However, construction is unlikely to begin until 2020 at the earliest.

Read more about Heathrow and UK aviation projects here:

Architects react to shocking EU referendum result

2016-06-24T11:02:00-04:00

All the progress we have made will now be put on hold and the government’s attention will be diverted while we try and work out how to deal with Brexit. - Rob Naybour, Weston Williamson + Partners

Today marks a historic turning point for the UK and European Union - the UK has voted to quit the EU. What lays ahead no one is really sure; Cameron has already resigned this morning and discussions for a second Scottish referendum have begun.

The majority within the architecture industry have strongly and vocally supported the Remain campaign celebrating the integral role the EU has played in inspiring and funding creative projects, free movement and the benefits of an internal single market. Most importantly community; a community based on respect and support that derived from the desolate situation after World War Two that at its core believed in humanity.

The referendum has revealed some alarming results about the state of the UK, a very clearly divided country. However the decision has been made and we must now face up to these consequences, we must now address what kind of a nation we want to be.

We asked top architects for their reactions to the result and how they think it ...

Sadiq Khan investigates troublesome details in Thames garden bridge project

2016-05-17T05:34:00-04:00

[Mayor Sadiq Khan] has already begun scrutinising Boris Johnson’s decisions relating to the controversial project, to which £60m of public money has been allocated in circumstances previously criticised by parliamentary spending officials as unorthodox. [...] The proposed bridge has secured vast sums of public money despite being initially promoted as entirely private-funded. It has recently been bedevilled by accusations that its designer was selected before the actual tender process began.

The Guardian also points out that former London Mayor Boris Johnson met with Thomas Heatherwick five times, and is quoted as being "keen" on Heatherwick's design, before the selection process for the bridge's designer even began. Also somewhat worrisome was one of Johnson's last acts before leaving office: lowering the fundraising minimum for the bridge, allegedly to make sure that the project continued.

Related on Archinect:

A guide to London mayoral candidates and their housing policies

2016-03-30T20:56:00-04:00

Which London mayor candidate will fix the capital's housing crisis? There’s a short answer to [that] question. It is that none of them will. There are two big reasons for that: one, there’s only so much any mayor has the power to do about the city’s various housing problems; two, none of the front line candidates are willing to do everything they actually could do. Housing policy is difficult stuff...

For more on London's housing woes, check out these links:

London's Garden Bridge endangered by public funding shortfall

2015-09-25T04:34:00-04:00

The London garden bridge project has been placed in jeopardy after a London council withdrew its support because of public costs and the Labour mayoral candidate, Sadiq Khan, said he would ditch the proposed horticultural Thames river crossing if he took office.

Thomas Heatherwick's proposed Garden Bridge, which recently inspired a satirical contest of unpalatable entries, may be doomed to remain a hotly contested rendering. The £30 million of public funds needed to fund the bridge has temporarily been withdrawn because Lambeth council leader Lib Peck said the cost is "unjustified." Both current Mayor Boris Johnson and chancellor George Osborne have pledged £30 million of his own to the project, but it will still need additional funding to bridge the gap.

London Mayor Boris Johnson pledges £285,000 to crowdfunding projects

2015-09-18T07:38:00-04:00

This week, he signed over £285,000 of his £9m High Street Fund, created in March, to projects which will "re-energise the capital's high streets"...the mayor's office is donating to these projects through Spacehive, a civic crowdfunding website through which campaigners can raise money from the public to fund their community schemes.

From a proposed revitalization project known as the "Peckham Coal Line" that, much like New York City's High Line, would transform abandoned coal sidings into a foliage-rich walkway for pedestrians and cyclists, to a public library in an alley known as a "Literalley," designers and dreamers alike are being encouraged to enter their high street improving projects into a bid to be awarded money from Mayor Johnson. His favorite projects will receive up to £20,000 each.

London to try out an all-electric double-decker bus

2015-07-01T05:25:00-04:00

[London Mayor Boris] Johnson, who uses the city’s bike-share system to commute to work most days, told the Guardian that he would welcome the quieter, greener buses on his city’s streets, saying current buses are like “throbbing, belching machines that emit their fumes like wounded war-elephants”.

Since 2008, London Mayor Boris Johnson has introduced over 1,300 hybrid buses onto city streets, and all-electric single-decker buses have been in use since 2013. It was previously thought that all-electric double-decker buses weren't feasible – their size makes them too difficult to efficiently power with electricity alone. BYD, the Chinese firm that will build the new all-electric buses, can provide batteries that will "apparently be light and cheap enough" to power London's iconic double-deckers. The first pilot bus will begin operating on London's Route 16 this October.

More news from London:

A look at Boris Johnson’s legacy to London

2015-04-20T18:49:00-04:00

Boris Johnson’s term as London mayor has produced a surprising mix of spectacular and workaday projects – along with some famous follies. But will he leave the city looking better than it did seven years ago?

Boris Johnson greenlights London's "Crossrail" bicycle superhighway

2015-01-29T15:10:00-05:00

Boris Johnson today confirmed he would build Europe’s longest segregated urban cycle lane through central London after delays likely to be suffered by motorists were reduced. The Mayor approved the “Crossrail for bikes” protected route through Parliament Square and along the Victoria Embankment and Upper Thames Street after it won overwhelming public support.

London Mayor Boris Johnson: Nimbies pretend to care about architecture to block developments

2014-07-24T13:57:00-04:00

Homeowners who "pretend" to care about architecture are "nimbies in disguise" who in reality want to block any development in their local area, Boris Johnson has said. In a scathing assessment, the Mayor of London said homeowners are dishonestly claiming they care about new homes being affordable or well-designed, in fact they simply oppose new developments entirely. Mr Johnson has promised to increase house-building in the capital, and wants to see 45,000 new homes by 2018.

Boris Johnson must build a proper case for transforming London's skyline

2014-04-14T15:49:00-04:00

Dear Boris, Let's agree that towers can be beautiful. Let's also agree that London needs new homes and plenty of them. It may well be that many of the 200-plus tall buildings now proposed can play a useful role if, as you say, they are "sensitively managed, well designed and in the right place". London is not Amsterdam nor Vienna, cities whose inherited profile is retained at all costs. But neither, as you once put it, should it be Dubai-on-Thames.

Boris Johnson's abuse of planning power is an assault on democracy

2014-02-03T13:48:00-05:00

By intervening in the local planning process, the mayor of London is creating a more exclusive, divided city of private enclaves, designed only for the needs of the rich. [...] While the Mount Pleasant case might be dismissed as the usual cast of nimbys set against the inevitable steamroller of market forces, it in fact reveals some disturbing truths about how the mayor's planning machine is actively working to make the city a more divided, exclusive place.