Astragal
Discordant notes
Perhaps inspired by too much daytime television, Malta has hired Renzo Piano to plan a £60m makeover of its capital city, Valletta. Piano will reconstruct and redesign buildings destroyed in the Second World War in time for the celebrations of Malta’s 50th year of independence. Not all Maltesers are overjoyed. ‘Jean de la Valette weeps at the Lego-like monstrosities being inflicted upon the city he built. As usual, the unaccountable authorities are spending European Community money like drunken sailors, to ravage and destroy the Maltese national patrimony! […] Centuries of artistes from Caravaggio to Cali weep at the bastardization of Valletta by Signor Piano and his
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sychophant Malta groupies,’ huffs one response to Piano’s plans on local website
Maltainsideout.com.
Battle of Bankside
A battle of style, safety and fast food has concluded in South London. Residents of Clink Street, apparently terrified that a proposal for a ‘high-end’ restaurant by Malcolm Pawley might become an ugly, unsafe Pizza Hut, managed to have his planning application thrown out. Key to their success was their nominated spokesman, local resident and architect Graham Morrison. Te architect-on- architect tussle was eventually won by Morrison, who deemed the plans, ‘an accident waiting to happen,’ with a design that simply is ‘not good enough’.
No holds bar
Good news for Will Alsop, who last week won planning permis- sion, not for a new pod building, but for a licence to serve alcohol at Testbed, his studio and ‘no holds barred’ art space in Battersea, south London. What more could a practice need, with its own bar free to serve booze between 8am and midnight? Discussing the finer points over wasabi peas and whisky at Alsop’s favourite local haunt, Ransomes Dock, the youthful designer revealed the 700-capacity venue will probably host the RCA architecture summer student show next year, plus a European launch of Gavin Bryars’ new album with Tom Waits and a performance of Italian Futurist piano music. Nice one.
Spire dreams dashed
Fans of medieval architecture will recall a plan for a design competi- tion launched last summer by Westminster Abbey to create a new spire for the unfinished church. Te £10 million scheme was destined to progress to an RIBA Competition but has, alas, evaporated. A statement on the abbey’s website explained: ‘After a considerable amount of preliminary and exploratory work, and the publication of important research into the architectural history, it has been decided with much regret that it will not be possible to continue the project’, thus ending many an a-spire- ation to work in the abbey.
Read more architectural gossip at
architectsjournal.co.uk/astragal
aj 02.12.10
WWW.LOUISHELLMAN.CO.UK
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