Intelligence | Editorial

79

LET’S WORK TOGETHER

HOW DOES one measure when development is important enough to the public to merit overriding neighbours’ rights to ensure its construction? It is interesting to note the City of London’s recent invoking of section 237 of the Town and Country Planning Act to override such neighbours’ rights, including those to light, to ensure Rafael Viñoly’s Walkie Talkie tower faced no threat of injunction (p.98). OMA’s Rothschild Bank by Wren’s St Stephen Walbrook is a welcome addition to the architectural menagerie of the City. But it is strange the City’s former sensitivities to buildings around the church, which seem to have affected Foster’s Walbrook office scheme, appeared to have been of less consequence to the planning committee for the much taller Rothschild’s merchant bank. Co-operation at planning stages to ensure the 2012 Athlete’s Village was built took concerted efforts from all parties to realise its accelerated programme (p80), which says much positive about the UK’s ability to deliver. While we got some good facades and spaces, densities are extremely high, so systems are needed in the allocation of affordable homes and control of buy-to-let. Sustainable communities are rarely transient. Similar levels of co-operation in legacy mode will be imperative to ensure that all sustainability aspirations are planned for and ultimately met. Philip Singleton’s account of the draft National Planning Policy Framework (p96) acknowledges the government’s desire to simplify the planning process, but also points out that with Local Development Frameworks going back to the drawing board, the presumption for ‘sustainable’ development will ‘kick-in’, in whatever form it can be argued. As he says, it’s ‘no Nimby charter’. What planning needs is to be more transparent for all. Which comes back to how we define planning for the public good. Back yard aside, how about that Walbrook church yard? What about God’s right to light? In fact, didn’t he invent it?

JAN-CARLOS KUCHAREK

FOUR SIGHT

Kirkstone The Japanese really know how to do baths, so it’s a credit to Kirkstone that its Brathay slate has been specified for the spa areas of the luxury St Regis Hotel in Osaka. But hang about; isn’t most stone in Japan is imported? So then, maybe not such an accolade. www.kirkstone.com

Boex Pencil Bench

2B or not 2B? That is the question. Design agency Boex answered it, 1600 times to be precise, and they’re all pink. The Pencil bench allows you to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous seating – and at £2,950, that’s £1.84 per

pencil. They must have used Caran d’Ache! www.decoratum.com

Lime Technology When it opened last May, the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel in London brought Golden Age glamour to a building with some down-at-heel neighbours. It was helped by the use of traditional lime mortars. Could this be applied to improve the British Library next door? www.limetechnology.co.uk

Dorgard

Keble College Oxford has installed Dorgard wireless fire door retainers to magnetically hold open doors without compromising safety until the fire alarm sounds. Thank God – our heritage won’t be jeopardised the next time the Bullingdon Club decides to throw another dinner party. www.firecoltd.com

DOUBLE TAKE : BIT OF A NERVI?

Few engineers or architects met the structural heights of Pier Luigi Nervi, one of the 20th century’s greatest engineers, so namedropping him with regard to one’s own design would need chutzpah. It’s true, the delicate filigree of intersecting structural members making up Nervi’s 1957 Palazzetto dello Sport should be held up as an amazing precedent for any design, but is that quite what’s happening at John McAslan and Partners’ King’s Cross station redevelopment? Well, at 150m he is trying to more than double the Italian’s span, which might account for the relative chunkiness of the structure. And like Nervi, McAslan’s given us an oculus; but it’s a hat, rather than part of the structure. That is instead caught up in a vortex, sucking its semicircular form into Lewis Cubitt’s ticket office – a necessary evil from having to make your structure span further than the length of a football pitch. But why would we look to the Eternal City for inspiration anyway, when there’s Foster’s British Museum roof right on the doorstep – a pint-sized dead ringer?

RIBA JOURNAL : SEPTEMBER 2011

PHOTOGRAPHER | HÉLOÏSE