34

Context | Feedback LETTERS

We welcome letters but retain the right to edit them. Email rjletters@atompublishing.co.uk, fax 020 7490 4957, or write to us at RIBAJ, Atom Publishing, Clerkenwell House, 45/47 Clerkenwell Green, London EC1R 0EB

BUILD FOR LIFE We have been trying to address the theme of your last issue for some time. Our ‘Santiago Townhouse’, which has been shortlisted in the British Homes Awards, includes an adaptable ground floor that can either be part of a large family home or become a self contained garden flat as easily as locking a door. This area has a disabled sized toilet which doubles as a wet room and other details that allow the elderly or infirm to be part of the family home while retaining some independence. As the elderly population

grows and household budgets tighten such solutions must be the future, so why don’t volume house builders build this way already? The RIBA needs to enlighten the government and show that design is about solving problems – some of which will be future problems. Building more houses will not solve the housing deficit unless they can be easily adapted for changing

circumstances and be able to accommodate care for the elderly with minimum fuss. Thank you for a thoughtful

and well considered magazine. Alex King Alex & Edward Architects

CONSERVATION ACCREDITATION The ‘Special Needs’ article in the July/August issue of RIBAJ was both misleading and disingenuous regarding the Conservation Register. It refers to the launch of

the RIBA register in February 2011, (which has about 100 members) but fails to mention the Register of Architects Accredited in Building Conservation (AABC) which was set up in 2002 and has 389 members (it originally also had RIBA involvement). English Heritage recognises

both schemes as compliant with its requirements for architects working on grant aided church repair projects. Your omission will simply reinforce the view of many in

RIBA JOURNAL

JULY/AUGUST 2011 | £5.50 | €19 | US$20 WWW.RIBAJOURNAL.COM

Accommodating the third age Designing for older people

author’s trials in self build, where he has my sympathy, having taken seven years to do a similar thing myself. I know that EU means European Union, and TSB might mean Trustee Savings Bank; but CLG, MITIE, UKTI? Please publish simple

Profile: Kenneth Grange’s lifetime of design Healthcare: Richard Murphy prescribes quality Rethink: Ask the users what they want In or out: Aged enclaves versus integration

English eschewing phrases like ‘passive adaptive systems’ (?) and those unexplained groups of initials. Anthony Collins, via email

the conservation sector that the new RIBA register is a rival and unnecessary scheme set up solely to generate income for the RIBA. What other purpose can it serve? Rebecca J Grimshaw, Anthony Grimshaw

IT REALLY IS A PAIN Is the article ‘Growing Pains’ (RIBAJ July/August 2011) a spoof? As a retired member I do try to keep abreast of current issues but I find this article incomprehensible – apart from the record of the

DRY YOUR EYES Jean-Jacques Lorraine’s write-up of the RIBA Future Leaders conference (RIBAJ July/August 2011) quotes me as advocating outsourcing production information. In fact I said BIM makes outsourcing far less worthwhile as there is no production information – unless a concept architect outsources the model-making in toto or is teamed with an executive or ‘design for manufacture’ architect. Richard Saxon, via email

all the bits we couldn’t fi t in the mag

Untitled-4.indd 1 WWW.RIBAJOURNAL.COM : SEPTEMBER 2011 23/06/2011 12:16

RIBA JOURNAL | JULY/AUGUST 2011 | 118:07/08 | WWW.RIBAJOURNAL.COM