THE long-awaited audit of conflicts of interest at the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment has produced an expected earthquake. Sir Stuart Lipton, who deserves full credit for setting the new organisation in four-wheel drive from the outset, is stepping down as chairman. The announcement was made two days before the report appeared.
The auditor concludes that the cumulative effect of Sir Stuart’s property interests “is becoming too great, and may be perceived as contrary to Nolan principles” and that the chair of CABE should not be held by a property developer with significant commercial interests.
CABE, as the auditor recognises, needs professionals, whether architects, engineers, surveyors or developers, with first-hand experience, but they must be balanced by others without a financial stake in large building proposals. The question is whether it is any more acceptable for CABE, or its design review process, to be chaired by, say, an architect heavily involved in devising and promoting large-scale property schemes and planning applications.
CABE’s response is to announce the appointment of co-chairs for Design Review who will stand in for the chairman if a scheme in which he or she is involved comes before the commission. But a continuous game of musical chairs will not produce consistency, and risks aggravating those asked to amend schemes and who then find they are presenting revisions to different people with different comments.
The old Royal Fine Art Commission which CABE replaced used to suffer from the gibe that it was a clique of architects approving each other’s designs (though under Lord St John of Fawsley it became a much broader church). CABE has to deal with this problem. Otherwise, for all the Panglossian spin it is putting on the auditors’ criticisms and recommendations, suspicions of cronyism will continue to grow.
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www.culture.gov.uk
THE newly opened extension to the Thyssen Museum in Madrid is a ravishing addition to the City’s museums. Its purpose is to provide 16 galleries to display the breathtaking collections formed by Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisma over the past 20 years. The thrill is to find so many outstanding works by lesser known names, particularly among the landscapes. The new wing, designed by Manuel Baquero and Francesc Pla, gives a new distinction to the green cour d’honneur opening off the Paseo del Prado. The new front is a series of overlays like a collage. At the back, opulent late-19th-century buildings have been retained and restored, maintaining the harmony of quiet streets.
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Inside, the new galleries are worked seamlessly on to those created by Moneo in place of historic interiors destroyed while the palace was a bank. But there is a change of scale, and staircases that tempt you to continue to the top storey.
www.museothyssen.org
The British Pavilion at this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale is to be curated by Peter Cook, who has done more than anyone to break British Modernism out of the straightjacket of conformity. He is giving the space to nine architects who are taking design in new directions, all new to the Pavilion, including (quite rightly) himself. The others are Ian Ritchie, Kathryn Findlay, Ron Arad, Caruso St John, C. J. Lim, Richard Murphy, John Pawson and Gavin Rowbotham. Characterised by Cook as “the Puritan and the Hedonist”, “the finicky and the bombastic”, the game is to put the epithets to the architects. This year’s biennale will run from September 12 to November 7. The director, Kurt W. Forster, has chosen “metamorphosis” as his theme.
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www.labiennale.org
THIS year’s long list for the RIBA awards is a good balance between the big names — Foster, Gehry, Libeskind — and imaginative, welldesigned projects by architects whose names are not yet up in lights. RIBA president George Ferguson says: “I am particularly delighted to see a good number of buildings designed for children, including two nurseries and five schools, amongst this year’s winners”. The website has a colour photograph of all 63 winners.
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www.architecture.com
THE build-up to the second series of the BBC’s highly successful Restoration series is under way. Supporters of the Playhouse in Derry formed a complete human chain around what they say is the only complete walled city in the British Isles, involving nearly 2,000 schoolchildren and a massive game of ‘pass-the-parcel’, which they hope will qualify for the Guinness Book of Records.
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www.bbc.co.uk/restoration