黑洞社区

Throwing his top hat in the ring

I ran into Denis Walker at a bash recently. In case you don鈥檛 know, he鈥檚 the chap from the business department who鈥檚 in charge of choosing a chief construction adviser 鈥� so of course I asked him how the selection process was going. 鈥淲e鈥檝e been inundated,鈥� he said. 鈥淭he standard of applications has been very high.鈥� But then he paused and frowned, as though locked in some strange inward debate. Then he asked: 鈥淲ho would you suggest for the role?鈥� Modesty forbade me from mentioning it, of course, but there is someone with more than 160 years of experience in the industry who really ought to be in contention 鈥�

A dazzling refurbishment

A source inside RIBA鈥檚 Portland Place HQ has contacted us about the refurbishment of the building opposite, designed by Ken Shuttleworth鈥檚 Make. The Make-over (sorry, couldn鈥檛 resist) was completed last week and consisted of wrapping the sixties building in extremely shiny gold cladding. The result is that it 鈥渞eflects a lot of light into the faces of people working in RIBA offices, which can get pretty annoying, especially when it鈥檚 particularly sunny 鈥︹�� No wonder RIBA staff have given the building the unaffectionate nickname of the Cadbury鈥檚 Crunchie.

Count Klein

I was a little spooked to hear that 黑洞社区 columnist Rudi Klein has been measured for his own coffin. Apparently the chief executive of the Specialist Engineering Contractors Group has even tried out the box for size. I know that his recent attack on the JCT contracts provoked an angry response in our letters pages (24 July, page 45), but surely Klein is not that worried that a disgruntled lawyer will have him silenced 鈥� Or is it that his Romanian ancestry, of which he鈥檚 never made a secret, hails from closer to Transylvania than he has previously admitted 鈥�

Pirates of Penson

Poor sportsmanship was witnessed at last week鈥檚 Little Britain regatta, when sailors surreptitiously renamed Penson Group鈥檚 boat.

The furtive wordsmiths attacked the architect鈥檚 vessel while it was moored in the harbour, using black tape to change the letters along the side from the company name to a word for a part of the male anatomy beginning with the same letter. While we admire the physical and mental dexterity of these linguistic pirates 鈥� the lettering was changed on both sides of the boat, neither of which was adjacent to land 鈥� their identities remain concealed. However, I hear that the boat had a run-in earlier that day with a particular contractor, which might shed some light on later events 鈥�

Model behaviour

Emily Maitlis, one of the presenters of BBC2鈥檚 Newsnight, was a speaker at the Partnerships for Schools 2009 conference last week. Pondering what life would be like under a Tory government, she promised the audience that they would have the chance to 鈥渓ook at some Swedish models later鈥�. Sadly, she was referring to the Swedish education system, in which Michael Gove, the shadow education secretary, is taking an interest. After waiting patiently for the raucous laughter to subside, she said: 鈥淟et me rephrase that 鈥︹��

Poundbury to d6

The feud between the modernist and traditionalist camps that has been brewing since Prince Charles鈥� takedown of Richard Rogers鈥� Chelsea Barracks is to be settled once and for all. With EU legislation sadly preventing the staging of a duel at dawn between the prince and Rogers, a young London-based architect has come up with the next best thing: a game of chess. Mobile Studio鈥檚 Style Wars: A Vision of Britain is a version of the game in which the pieces are all based on neoclassical revivalist and modernist buildings. So expect Quinlan Terry鈥檚 rival plans for Chelsea (mere pawns) to get a sound thrashing from their opponent鈥檚 queen, Rogers鈥� Lloyd鈥檚 building 鈥�