World Architecture Day 2013 NY

As the East or West debate looms, the fragility of London’s main airport has been highlighted this week with news of cancelled flights dominating the UK media.

Heathrow is always fair game for journalists, knowing that for most readers, it could be them on their next flight. Passenger pain, in any form is therefore guaranteed to get their interest. So when something goes wrong, in this case, images of would-be passengers sleeping rough in a snow-bound airport, extensive media coverage was inevitable.

But without going into the painful details of how unprepared the airport operator was for a relatively small and well forecast scattering of snow, what’s evident here is simply a manifestation of lack of capacity. Any business running at 98.2% capacity has no resilience, a small grain of sand in the well oiled machine that is Heathrow Airport will have an immediate and disruptive effect on operations.

Unfortunately, there is no quick fix in sight to provide extra capacity for the airport and worse, there is as yet not even an agreed course of action to start the process, which is why the forthcoming East or West debate on the 5^th February is so crucial…

To join the debate, click on the link below:

http://www.wantoday.com/eastorwest/

Big gun lays out plans for East – Another nail in the coffin for London’s Heathrow ?

In the game of chess that is defining the shape of the UK over the next few decades, a dramatic move took place this week. Douglas Oakervee, now one of the most important players in this amazing game, submitted his vision for a new £49bn airport in the Thames Estuary to the Davies Commission.

For those who don’t know, Howard Davies, ex head of the CBI is the big cheese tasked with the unenviable burden of having to decide if West is best and a add third runway to London’s Heathrow airport or whether the UK’s sun will in fact rise in the East and commit to reshaping the whole country’s infrastructure and support a brand new airport in the Thames Estuary.

Douglas Oakervee is a key participant in this unfolding drama. Possibly the UK’s most revered airport guru, he oversaw the building of Hong Kong’s replacement Chek lap Kok airport, a case study with a compelling parallel to London’s current airport dilemma.  More recently he was commissioned by London’s Mayor, Boris Johnson to conduct a feasibility study into building an airport in the East of London. A move that put Johnson on a slow collision course with UK premier David Cameron who was elected partly on a no third runway (Heathrow) ticket. Under significant pressure from UK business, DC is now rumoured to be going soft on this decision, a view substantiated by his timing of the Davies report, instructed to come in after the next election in 2015, committing the country to years of stalemate in this vital race for air links to emerging markets where time is of the essence.

Of course the Davies commission has much wider terms of reference than simply East or West? but increasingly the country’s stakeholders in this real life Truman Show;  an eclectic line up of architects, visionaries, conservationists, politicians, communities and commercial movers are polarizing and this column supports the view that the end game will inevitably distil down to this one simple choice.

But what makes Oakervee’s deposition a game changer, as most urban planners will explain, is not about airports, it’s more about transport links, more about where the huge workforce will come from. The master-stroke embedded in Oakervee’s expert, Bridget Roswell’s plan is locating the main airport terminal at Ebbsfleet. Utilising the underused station on the HS1 line, linking St Pancras to Paris Gard de Norde is a masterstroke, dramatically minimizing costs in one fell swoop. In the radical design, a high speed rail link will connect the terminal with the airport. An extension of London’s Crossrail, currently under construction would close the loop, fully integrating the new airport Hub with the UK’s capital.

Whilst Roswell’s airport could well handle some 150-160 million passengers per year, double Heathrow’s current capacity the real issue is timing. Given the green light, her new airport could be operational by 2025. It has been estimated that a third runway at Heathrow would only take a year off this.

With two major players, Foster and Partners and Oakervee now both vying for competitive schemes for the East, the new question facing the UK must be; “has Heathrow’s sun already set?’

It seems too late to offer help to the Saudi’s to find a balance between the need for a new, bigger Mosque and the need to maintain representative and worthy monuments of the past for prosperity, connection with the community’s roots and a sense of continuity. Time and again mankind has been shown to benefit from a memory of the past in seeking to enrich the future. Architecture is so often the prime symbolism of that memory.

Medina has a packed centre and the Mosque clearly belongs there. One can only hope that the proposition of creating the world’s biggest building, a new Mosque for 1.6 million Muslims, overlaying this central site, will be one which combines preservation and rejuvenation with the creation of the new. There are rumours that it will not. A fundamentalist approach is apparently being adopted which will cut ties with the past, to rid the city of its historic connections, even with the buildings that hold meaning as poignant as that which houses the tomb of the Prophet Mohamed.

I hope it’s not true. I hope it’s not too late to apply the kind of analysis that we use in the UK, where we accept occasionally that heritage must give way to the new, particularly where doing so serves the public good. It seems that a public good is afoot in this case, but is the argument balanced? Has the exercise of analysis been carried out? Have the 4 archi-types of cultural value, developed here, been applied there? First, how valuable is the archaeology of the buildings? Second, how valuable is the expression of the past and how valuable the craftsmanship of previous builders to display it? Third, what about the beauty of the structures under threat. Do they lift the spirit? Will the new building achieve the same value? Fourth, will the familiarity of the place be lost, that which people are comforted by, that which the community as a whole recognise as theirs.

These are of course western values and they may not be appropriate to the desserts of the Middle East.

If similar questions have been asked, out of the Muslim culture, then so be it. If not, perhaps a pause for thought, deep thought of the kind the Prophet Mohamed might have applied, should prevail before it is too late.

Richard Coleman
Heritage Consultant London
Chairman of World Architecture News WAN

Will Alsop’s keynote address reflected on his Doodle Bar in Battersea – a vibrant, versatile arts and events space designed for creative innovation, ideas and experimentation. It fed neatly into the launch of World Cities Network, which also focuses on developing infrastructures that create the conditions for growth so that urban spaces can grow organically.

Deeming the title of her sector too ‘soul-destroying’, Vicky Richardson from the British Council rebranded ‘Residential’ as ‘Need and desire’. A fitting epithet, since Tanya Kalinina of McAdam Architects went on to outline the current housing crisis in Moscow. Julian Weyer of CF Møller Architects went on to adumbrate on the necessity of combining an attractive lifestyle with sustainability, pointing to recent housing projects in Stockholm as successful examples. He touched on adaptive re-use as a possible solution to resilient urban development through retro-fitting of current buildings to make more energy efficient and the regeneration of social housing.

Opening the second half of World Architecture Day, Jeremy Dixon of Dixon Jones discussed the pedestrianisation of Exhibition Road. He asserted that the regeneration afforded a strong sense of space for its users and demonstrated a microcosm of how cities function and evolve, wherein the environment responds to natural organic changes and a shifting urban fabric. Hiro Aso of McAslan+Partners also discussed the undeniable success of the King’s Cross station project.

The question of how to create flexible spaces that are memorable and nuanced is a constant challenge in regenerating urban spaces. Can design inform the way we use spaces? Dixon believed that the Exhibition Road project created a strong sense of place and liberated the institutions along it. Aso believed that flexibility should not be involved in design – everything should be exact and delineated for a specific reason and function.

In the third sector of the day: Civic buildings, Róisín Heneghan of Heneghan Peng took to the floor to discuss two projects her practice are currently working on: the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and the Visitor Centre at Giant’s Causeway, Northern Ireland. Successfully conflating the public with the iconic, both designs sensitively integrate with their surroundings without compromising the overall identity of the site.

The ensuing discussions reflected on the themes of culture, interaction, memory and the physical characteristics of place, with a particular emphasis on the continuity of civilisation and what we leave for future generations. In an impromptu interjection, Mike Hammond hijacked proceedings to announce the winner of the WAN Civic Buildings Awards 2012. The recipient was the Olympic Velodrome by Hopkins Architects. Fortunately, the practice’s partner Chris Bannister was on-hand to receive this coveted accolade.

For successful healing to take place (not only for the patients and their families, but also the staff), healthcare design must be welcoming, calming and stress-free. Effective, responsive design has a vital role in creating this environment and influencing the health and well-being of the patient. Sunand Prasad of Penoyre & Prasad underlined the relationship between good design and positive patient outcomes. “We are not just designing a building; we are taking part in the way healthcare is delivered.”

It is clear that the future of healthcare will be more personalised, self-directive and consumer-driven. Through the use of technology, patients can take greater control over their own health and consequently elevate the quality of care.