Who’s celebrating this year?

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We look at the personalities who dominated our news pages in 2007 and decide who are the turkeys and who win our Christmas puddings

Peter Bishop

Design for London director

Bad year: one turkey





London’s new design director had a bumpy first year, beginning in January when he told BD that his new boss Ken Livingstone’s 100 Public Spaces programme was too ambitious. He was forced by the City Hall spin doctors to deny this is what he had meant, but subsequently one of the programme’s most high-profile projects, Stanton Williams’ plans to build a four-lane highway through Sloane Square, became the programme’s first casualty. Meanwhile, Bishop drafted in architecture’s heavy hitters as advisers, presided over by Richard Rogers, and gave the thumbs up to a competition for new bus shelters. DfL also emerged as the main supporter of the 2008 London Architecture Festival after Architecture Week was dumped, while behind the scenes it was busy advising its colleagues at the LDA and elsewhere on which architects to use. This bothered Design for Homes chief executive David Birkbeck, who thought architectural favouritism was still rife in the organisation. No, not at all, countered Bishop, but ended the year saying he intended to draw up a formal framework of architects. But it’s doubtful the accusation will go away quite so easily.
Less controversially, Bishop has gone on record saying he wants to see “a set of standards” to improve the quality and appearance of London’s streets. More will be revealed in March, when DfL’s exhibition on the public realm opens at Somerset House. This may also have to confront the fact that five years after it was launched, only five public space projects have been completed. A further five are in the pipeline, but none have funding in place.
Terry Farrell

Gateway design champion

Excellent year: three puddings





After a great year in which he became the Thames Gateway’s first design champion, Farrell can no longer claim he is not part of the architectural establishment. Asked by housing minister Yvette Cooper to oversee a £35 million plan aimed at making the gateway a “beautiful place to live” — a challenge that will keep the ever-active Farrell busy for the foreseeable future — he also saw his 600-home Founder’s Place scheme in south London get the go-ahead following a public inquiry, and was typically outspoken on issues ranging from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the planning system’s lack of vision.
English Heritage hired him to draw up an alterative plan for Smithfield Market, and he is progressing his concept of linking the two sides of the Euston Road, one of his many ideas for improving the public realm. Somehow he managed to find time to get married — to the lovely Mei Xin — which was celebrated in style at the Wallace Collection. Perhaps the only real blip came in April with the scrapping of plans to extend his Edinburgh International Conference Centre. Can 2008 possibly be as sweet?
Norman Foster

Foster & Partners chairman

Excellent year: three puddings





Britain’s greatest living architect, who celebrated the practice’s 40th birthday, last month, shows no sign of loosening his grip. In January, he announced plans to sell Foster & Partners for £500 million as a means of extending his reach abroad — but this ended in May with a 40% stake being taken by private equity group 3i for a rather less impressive £100 million. Even before 3i’s investment, profits at the 900-strong office were flying — up to £6.3 million in June — almost double the previous year’s figure. Foster’s has continued to stamp its mark on a growing list of global outposts including in India, Hong Kong and the Middle East, and to bring in a handful of smart non-executive directors including John Browne, former chief executive of BP. The international projects, from Beijing’s new airport to the camp Nou stadium in Barcelona, are too endless to list .
Back home, the office lost a planning inquiry in July into a London project which would have demolished the only surviving building in Britain by architectural historian Joseph Rykwert, and found itself unpopular in Dublin when it teamed up with U2 to revamp the Clarence Hotel and build a tower in the docks. But as the most world’s admired architect, according to BD’s 2008 World Architecture survey, this is unlikely to lose him much sleep.
Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid Architects founder

Good year: one pudding





Despite a year that saw her launch projects all over the world, in the UK the story has been less positive, with her Transport Museum in Glasgow, Architecture Foundation headquarters in Southwark and the Olympic Aquatic centre all being squeezed after costs spiralled. While blame is laid at the doors of contractors, this threatened to derail the Architecture Foundation HQ after Bovis refused to build it to the revised budget. Although new contractors have now come forward, the jury is out on whether Hadid’s best work can be realised in the UK, given contractors’ reluctance to get involved. Despite this, her fame continued to soar, and a glowing profile on the South Bank Show coincided with an exhibition at the Design Museum, which was matched only by the firm’s profits of £1.2 million — a rise of more than 300%. The office also came to the rescue of the Serpentine by designing a temporary pavilion after its summer pavilion failed to materialise in time. Behind the scenes, the office is busy working on the Zaha brand, including perfume and shoes, which promises to be a less stressful and even more lucrative career path for architecture’s favourite diva.
Nigel Hugill

Lend Lease Europe chairman

Very good year: two puddings





The Lend Lease chairman and treasurer of the Architecture Foundation is a well known figure on London’s architecture scene, and 2007 saw him at the very heart of the capital’s most exciting schemes.
In January, Lend Lease bagged the £4 billion contract to build the 2012 Athletes’ Village, a development that led to extraordinary plans revealed in BD by Hugill two months later to appoint dozens of leading practices for the 4,000-home project.
The resulting panel of 47 names was a scintillating mix of established names like Ian Ritchie, up-and-coming firms such as Architects in Residence and foreign practices such as UN Studio.
However, Hugill faced criticism that practices outside London had been excluded, and that younger firms were losing out to the six established firms picked for the first phase of the Village in November. To counter this allegation, more names are expected shortly.
Hugill was also in the news for another huge development — the £1.5 billion regeneration of Elephant & Castle in Southwark, which Lend Lease won the right to develop in July, beating competition from rival bidder St Modwen.
Once again, Hugill is promising a “variety” of architects will be appointed for the job, proving he is someone that architects ignore at their peril.
Mike Hussey

Land Securities, development director

Good year: one pudding


Land Securities’ London development director was included in BD’s list of the 50 public figures who would wield the greatest influence over architecture in 2007, and he has not disappointed on that score.
In February, Hussey found himself facing an opponent in English Heritage, which called the developer’s Walkie Talkie tower, designed by Rafael Viñoly, “oppressive and overwhelming”. But Hussey proved victorious in the resulting public inquiry, when the government approved the 39-storey tower in July, calling it a “significant architectural contribution” to the capital.
He is also behind the Victoria Transport Interchange project and has taken on architects KPF, Allies & Morrison, Wilkinson Eyre, Benson & Forsyth and Lynch Architects for the £2 billion job.
Once again, Hussey faces opposition here from the heritage lobby. The height of two KPF towers in the scheme was reduced in April due to possible impacts on the Westminster world heritage site.
The Victoria scheme is proving so tricky that Hussey walked out of a meeting with Westminster council last week, frustrated at the slow process of planning negotiation.
But he has demonstrated an impressive handling of another difficult job this year — that of building Zaha Hadid’s Architecture Foundation headquarters building in Southwark. Despite insisting it would go ahead, Hussey made it absolutely clear this month that the scheme would not be built at any price.
He also had a hand in Design for London this year as a member of its advisory team.
Stewart McColl

Former SMC chief executive

Dreadful year: three turkeys





Stewart McColl’s year got steadily worse as the company he founded struggled to cope with the side effects of gobbling up 11 many practices in less than two years.
In February, SMC’s founder was demoted from chief executive to deputy chairman following a £2 million profit warning, but enraged by BD’s coverage, McColl wrote in, insisting the SMC model was a successful one. History does not relate if he then persuaded his star designer Will Alsop to follow suit, but in a letter to BD the same week, Alsop agreed with his boss that the SMC concept was “alive and well across the nation”.
By May, McColl was forced out of the company, thanks to two further profit warnings and an internal review which had found that practices within SMC were underperforming. By August, Aukett Fitzroy Robinson looked the most likely saviour of the troubled group — a merger that went under the unlikely code name of Project Russia — but this collapsed by October, when both sides failed to agree.

At the same time, BD revealed that Alsop himself was poised to leave SMC to join forces with ex-Rogers director Marco Goldschmied, amid rumours that others in the SMC group also wanted a swift exit.
Since then, the share price has fallen even further to around 10p, compared with £1.80 a share at the start of the year.
Sunand Prasad

RIBA president

Good year: one pudding





Although he began the year on the front page of BD, albeit for not going to a major housing summit attended by housing minister Yvette Cooper, Prasad has kept his head down since, particularly after becoming RIBA president this autumn.And despite the announcement of a new design review panel to advise him on major schemes in August, the RIBA did not have it in place by November, when the most important design of recent times — the Olympic stadium — was unveiled to praise from Prasad and criticism from almost every other observer.
However, Prasad did impress an audience including developer Stuart Lipton and Cabe chief executive Richard Simmons with his inaugural speech last month, covering the history of the profession and signalling a forthcoming re-examination of protection of title and schools of architecture.
The RIBA president has also had success with his practice Penoyre & Prasad, which was named health building architect of the year at BD’s Architect of the Year Awards, made it onto the Athletes’ Village framework, and published its first monograph Transformations, in September.
Next year, though, Prasad needs to raise his public profile or risk disappearing off the radar.
Rod Sheard

HOK Sport senior principal

Very bad year: two turkeys





Foster’s collaborator on Wembley Stadium was relatively quiet for most of the year, no doubt beavering away on the design for the London 2012 Olympic stadium alongside former Archigram member Peter Cook.
Following repeated rumours of major redesigns, images of the £496 million, 80,000-seat stadium were finally unveiled last month to a deluge of criticism from figures ranging from Will Alsop to BD editor Amanda Baillieu, who argued the designs, likened by some to a gasometer, were neither beautiful or sustainable.
Sheard, however, was unrepentant, stressing the functionality and flexibility of the stadium, contrasting it with the permanent Wembley stadium.
“This is not the sort of building that is one huge arch on the north London skyline — it’s a very different sort of building,” Sheard told BD.
“It’s a bit like a lithe gymnast rather than a heavyweight wrestler.”
But despite support from Bob Allies and Graham Morrison in the pages of BD, many in the profession will see Sheard and his stadium as the real turkeys of 2007.
Simon Thurley

English Heritage, chief executive

Mixed year: one turkey, one pudding





The English Heritage boss has had a year with more downs than ups, but has kept his profile high, which is more than can be said of the lacklustre organisation he runs.
EH lost the high-profile public enquiry over Rafael Viñoly’s Walkie Talkie tower in July, leading many people to wonder why it had contested it in the first place. Among those who wonder whether EH needs reform is its former commissioner Piers Gough who suggested, in front of City bigwigs, that it should be stripped of its statutory powers.
This met with a sharp rebuttal from Thurley, but his more serious critics may be the government, which seems to take more notice of Unesco than its own paid-for advisers. Unesco has managed to wrestle the moral high ground from EH by launching its own attack on tall buildings in London and Liverpool, and at the same time there is a growing irritation that EH steps in to defend buildings like Battersea Power Station, having done little to prevent these buildings’ decline before.
Thurley’s staff were also less than happy at the ongoing changes to the organisation. Chief architect David Heath resigned in February, claiming the organisation was beset by low morale, a state of affairs that cannot have been helped by BD’s revelation in May that the number of in-house architects it has had plummeted by 40% in three years.
However, Thurley has staged something of a comeback in the latter half of the year, ushering in new listing and scheduling powers for EH, winning an unexpected funding boost from the government after 10 years of cuts, and finally securing a new chairman, the experienced Sandy Bruce Lockhart after an embarrassing hiatus when no one seemed to be want the top job.
He is currently focused on the public inquiry over Smithfield Market, which many are tipping EH to win.
But one of EH’s biggest battles has been persuading the government to fund a tunnel past Stonehenge so it could proceed with the Denton Corker Marshall’s visitor centre. It is a battle that ended this week when the project was deemed too expensive.


Good year / bad year







Tim Byles

Head of Partnership for Schools

Very bad year: two turkeys

Only a year into the job, Byles has had a rough ride, not least from the National Audit Office, the British Council for School Environments and the education select committee, who all have had a pop at the Building Schools for the Future programme, forcing Byles to admit the original timetable was “over-ambitious”. In September, he pledged to review the procurement process and to improve design, but again came under fire in November, when Cabe revealed that all but one of the first batch of BSF schools had been deemed “unfit for purpose”.






Mike Whitby

Leader of Birmingham City Council

Very bad year: two turkeys
Conservative Whitby has presided over the collapse of Birmingham’s design credentials from the days of former council leader Albert Bore. Most damage was done when he announced that the new Birmingham library would be smaller and more expensive than the Richard Rogers’ design, abandoned on his orders in 2005. Birmingham’s reputation took a further blow when he publicly backed the RTKL’s Vertiplex (pictured), a design roundly criticised by Cabe and local architects, while the city’s Orion housing came second in BD’s Carbuncle Cup.




Rafael Viñoly

Founder of Rafael Viñoly Architects

Good year: one pudding
This year was busy for Viñoly in Britain: after being appointed to masterplan the redevelopment of Battersea Power Station (pictured) in April, he got the thumbs-up from the government for his Walkie Talkie tower in July. He also revealed his masterplan for a 100,000sq m site in Oxford in September, and fans wait with baited breath for his performing arts centre in Leicester to be completed in the spring.






David Chipperfield

Director, David Chipperfield Architects

Exceptional year: three puddings
To receive one nomination for the Stirling prize could be regarded as good fortune. To be nominated twice, and win, made Chipperfield a very happy man in October. He also won plaudits from Gordon Brown for his BBC Scotland HQ in Glasgow, redesigned his proposed Turner Gallery in Margate, won planning for the troubled De Vere Gardens development in Kensington for luxury developer Candy & Candy, and saw another major arts project, the Hepworth Gallery in Yorkshire, go on site.






Margaret Hodge

Minister for Architecture

Good year: one pudding
It wasn’t too hard to impress the profession more than her predecessor, David Lammy, but since being appointed architecture minister in June, Hodge has shown a real interest in design. She criticised housing in Thames Gateway in her Barking constituency in September, and more recently even suggested redrawing the Union Jack to incorporate a Welsh dragon.


Richard Rogers

Director of Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners

Exceptional year: three puddings
Rogers added to his vast collection of gongs in March by winning the Pritzker Prize.
In April, he was appointed by Candy & Candy to design Chelsea Barracks, one of London’s biggest-ever redevelopments. And a major retrospective at the Pompidou in Paris celebrating his life’s work opened in November.

Fonte: bdonline