Questions of perception

This seems to be a month of motes and beams. It’s a dilemma that has been argued since time immemorial, but the theme seems to run through this month’s practice offerings. How you perceive someone else’s efforts depends very much on where you sit, adding a layer of complexity, the subjectivity of truth, to an already tricky conundrum.

‘Implied terms’ in contract, where architects should be cautious if getting litigious over works they might not consider to be proceeding ‘regularly and diligently’. It seems implied terms cannot be assumed – something the authors of the draft Planning Policy Framework might bear in mind when finally deciding the definition of sustainable.

Contracts aside, how does one define ‘effective’ progress anyway? Del Hossain poses this question to architects (p.62), asking them to self-analyse their own business methodologies when setting up and building their own firms. It would appear that while architects are keen (under client pressure perhaps) to read the riot act to ill performing contractors; most, it seems, are far less able to identify inefficiencies and time wasting in their own daily work practices. But ‘if you don’t know where you are going, how do you know when you get there?’ – Hossain argues such things are fundamental to success.

And in a final tip of the hat to effective work practices, Jestico+Whiles says its ‘exemplar’ Passmores Academy in Essex (p.60), was built after producing a design concept and winning the commission on only 131 hours of work. That might serve as a milestone in project streamlining, but one wonders how much user liaison it really involved.
All truths are subjective, and perhaps a greater understanding of another party’s position would allow a contract to run more smoothly, a firm to run more efficiently and a building to be better designed for its users. There’s an American Indian proverb that goes ‘Do not judge a man until you have walked for a week in his moccasins’– that’s 37 hours more than it took to design Passmores!

Jan-Carlos Kucharek

FOUR SIGHT

Camel Solar
Camels retain water so well that their faeces can be used as dry fuel. Once you’re over the concept of burning poo to save resources, consider AET’s Camel Solar system – a vertical thermal collector wall panel that can help lower your fuel bills – without the associated fumes. www.flexiblespace.com

Ergolet Luna
The Eden Project might be a b****r to get to, but it shouldn’t be so bad to get around now Danish firm Ergolet has installed its Luna lifting system in the accessible toilets. It’s a wall mounted mobility hoist that can ‘reach all the corners’ – a coup in this famously spherical attraction. www.ergolet.com

Lime Technology
Lime Technology has applied 10,000m2 of lime render to the largest classical building in the UK for 50 years – a Northampton hospital. ADAM Architecture broke up its monolithic facade with classical pavilions, sugaring the bitterest pilaster of size.
www.limetechnology.co.uk

Clerkenwell Gallery
Architects recently turned out in force to a boozy freebie, the opening of Clerkenwell Gallery, a joint venture by commercial interiors manufacturers. But in the heartland of struggling architects, its owners may reconsider leaving their card behind the bar. www.thegalleryclerkenwell.co.uk

DOUBLE TAKE: Windmills on the mind
If you thought ‘good things always come in threes’, think again. Take Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness – a three-fold meditation on the horror of the Congo’s wilderness, colonialism and human evil – all jolly themes for David Kohn and Fiona Banner’s ‘Room for London’, now beached up on the South Bank. Based on the boat that Conrad captained on the Congo, there’s a good ‘three’ here – its tiny wind turbines, frantically spinning away atop its mast, generating 75% of the frisson for Alain de Botton’s little love shack. Conrad began his famous tale on the banks of the Thames, setting it aboard the steamer ‘Nellie’, an elephantine segue to BFLS’ ‘Strata’ tower at Elephant and Castle. Generating quite a different view for London, this has three wind turbines too, and each one you could easily sail Nellie through, but at best supplies only 8% of the building’s energy. Winner of BD’s 2010 Carbuncle Cup, it seems Londoners have taken the Strata tower to heart in all the wrong ways, echoing Conrad’s haunting words as uttered by the novel’s sinister Kurtz in Apocalypse Now: ‘The horror! The horror!’