Charles Glass: Prince Charles Saves Chelsea Barracks
[Charles Glass was ABC News Chief Middle East Correspondent from 1983 to 1993. His books include Tribes with Flags (Atlantic Monthly Press,1990) and Americans in Paris: Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation (Penguin Press, 2010).]
Something happened to British architects after the Second World War....I have yet to meet a British architect who does not believe that the Trellick Tower, a 31-storey socialist-realist monstrosity that dominates the northern reaches of Notting Hill, is beautiful. I have never met anyone else who would not prefer to see it erased from the skyline that it disfigures. I curse the Irish Republican Army for accepting a ceasefire before it brought the damn thing down....Ian Fleming hated the Trellick Tower so much when it was commissioned in 1966 that he named his most famous villain for its designer, Erno Goldfinger....
For those of you who do not spend much time in England, a little background. A recent trial in the High Court involved Prince Charles, the architect Richard (now Lord) Rogers, property developers Christian and Nick Candy and the royal family of Qatar. The lawsuit was brought by the Candy brothers’ company, CPC, against a company called Qatari Diar. The Candy brothers, whose love of Britain obliges them to avoid paying tax in the country that provided their wealth by taking up residence in the Principality of Monaco, sued Qatari Diar. Qatari Diar is the investment company of the royal family of Qatar, said to hold the most valuable property portfolio in the world. Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani , somehow finds time while governing his country to act as chairman of the family property empire. Qatari Diar, to the annoyance of its partners in CPC, withdrew its application for permission to build a complex of luxury apartments at the Chelsea Barracks site that it had purchased for £969 million. The whole project was said to be worth £3 billion. CPC filed a lawsuit that alleged the withdrawal had cost it £81 million. The architect was, as he had been on another Candy-Qatar project in Knightsbridge beside the Hyde Park Hotel, Lord Rogers. The plans were, in common with the rest of Rogers’s oeuvre, modern in the extreme. The buildings on the site would have resembled nothing in the neighborhood and would have contrasted sharply with one of the capital’s masterpieces, Sir Christopher Wren’s Royal Hospital, nearby. Chelsea residents were opposed, but their views (based on past experience) did not count....
The Prince of Wales spoke for everyone in London who has wearied of modernist architecture and its grip over local planning departments. No one likes to see architects, with their peculiar aesthetic, bulldozing of whole neighborhoods to erect temples of vanity to themselves, their patrons and Mammon....Take a look at One Hyde Park, the Candy brothers glass block that obstructs the view of Hyde Park from Knightsbridge and will soon be complete. When its predecessor building, Bowater House, came down, I silently rejoiced. It was a space age (remember the space age?) brute whose only redeeming features were a wonderful Jacob Epstein sculpture of Pan with the family of man and a passage that permitted a sight of the park from the south. Then I saw the drawings for its replacement. As the months went by, I watched it go up, pane by pane. This is where architecture differs from the other arts. If I don’t like a painting, I don’t buy it or hang it on my wall. If I dislike a composer, I don’t go to his concerts. But a building cannot be avoided. It is what you see every day. It fashions your environment. You have a right to be heard if you don’t want your world altered beyond recognition....
Read entire article at Taki's Magazine
Something happened to British architects after the Second World War....I have yet to meet a British architect who does not believe that the Trellick Tower, a 31-storey socialist-realist monstrosity that dominates the northern reaches of Notting Hill, is beautiful. I have never met anyone else who would not prefer to see it erased from the skyline that it disfigures. I curse the Irish Republican Army for accepting a ceasefire before it brought the damn thing down....Ian Fleming hated the Trellick Tower so much when it was commissioned in 1966 that he named his most famous villain for its designer, Erno Goldfinger....
For those of you who do not spend much time in England, a little background. A recent trial in the High Court involved Prince Charles, the architect Richard (now Lord) Rogers, property developers Christian and Nick Candy and the royal family of Qatar. The lawsuit was brought by the Candy brothers’ company, CPC, against a company called Qatari Diar. The Candy brothers, whose love of Britain obliges them to avoid paying tax in the country that provided their wealth by taking up residence in the Principality of Monaco, sued Qatari Diar. Qatari Diar is the investment company of the royal family of Qatar, said to hold the most valuable property portfolio in the world. Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani , somehow finds time while governing his country to act as chairman of the family property empire. Qatari Diar, to the annoyance of its partners in CPC, withdrew its application for permission to build a complex of luxury apartments at the Chelsea Barracks site that it had purchased for £969 million. The whole project was said to be worth £3 billion. CPC filed a lawsuit that alleged the withdrawal had cost it £81 million. The architect was, as he had been on another Candy-Qatar project in Knightsbridge beside the Hyde Park Hotel, Lord Rogers. The plans were, in common with the rest of Rogers’s oeuvre, modern in the extreme. The buildings on the site would have resembled nothing in the neighborhood and would have contrasted sharply with one of the capital’s masterpieces, Sir Christopher Wren’s Royal Hospital, nearby. Chelsea residents were opposed, but their views (based on past experience) did not count....
The Prince of Wales spoke for everyone in London who has wearied of modernist architecture and its grip over local planning departments. No one likes to see architects, with their peculiar aesthetic, bulldozing of whole neighborhoods to erect temples of vanity to themselves, their patrons and Mammon....Take a look at One Hyde Park, the Candy brothers glass block that obstructs the view of Hyde Park from Knightsbridge and will soon be complete. When its predecessor building, Bowater House, came down, I silently rejoiced. It was a space age (remember the space age?) brute whose only redeeming features were a wonderful Jacob Epstein sculpture of Pan with the family of man and a passage that permitted a sight of the park from the south. Then I saw the drawings for its replacement. As the months went by, I watched it go up, pane by pane. This is where architecture differs from the other arts. If I don’t like a painting, I don’t buy it or hang it on my wall. If I dislike a composer, I don’t go to his concerts. But a building cannot be avoided. It is what you see every day. It fashions your environment. You have a right to be heard if you don’t want your world altered beyond recognition....