Raising the roof

Fascinating talk at Charleston Farmhouse as part of the Charleston Festival analysing the best and worst of new architecture since the turn of the Millennium.

The panel included Jamie Fobert who is working on the new project at Charleston; David Gentleman, the artist specialising in paintings of buildings; Simon Jenkins, columnist on the Guardian and Julia Barfield, architect.

Buildings which came out of it well were the rebuilt museum in Berlin, the Great Court of the British Museum and the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool. Interesting two of the three were refurbishments or additions to buildings which already existed.

The losers were the Louis Vuitton Foundation building criticized for lack of usable space, the Walkie Talkie Building which the speaker felt had been driven by rental returns rather than aesthetics and the Vauxhall Tower which the speaker had to look at every day and just though was ugly and lacking in imagination.

Instead of naming buildings Simon Jenkins was critical of the cult of the iconic building and felt we should talk more about streets and urban environments. This was pounced on by the two architects on the panel who felt that architecture had moved on from the iconic building and did look at the space a building occupied and its surroundings. A really hot and interesting debate!

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