Paul Finch
Paul Finch is a programme director of the World Architecture Festival
InsightA healthy focus on space
One effect of the current health crisis has been to focus on how we can redesign or rethink the places we live, work and play in to deal with this and future pandemics. That should mean new workstreams.
- Insight
Happy Helical celebrates the City
As we await publication of yet another government review of the planning system, the world of property, architecture and construction can only marvel at the profound belief of politicians that by changing things, they really make a difference.
- Insight
An opportunity to revive old ideas
Political certainty, in the sense of a government with a substantial working majority, is not the same thing as policy certainty.
- News
Simple buildings, complex uses
An intriguing insight into the relationship between architecture, development and investment comes from Yolande Barnes, formerly global research director at Savills, now a professor at, and chair of, the Bartlett Real Estate Institute, University College London.
- Insight
Planning miracles can happen
Developer Iain Hutchinson has shown what determination, ruthless analysis and inspired architecture can do when it comes to winning planning permission on difficult sites.
- Insight
Should new genuflect to the old?
There are different sorts of fire and different sorts of response. Wartime destruction often triggers a desire to rebuild what has been lost (Hamburg, Warsaw); terrorist destruction can inspire a defiant new response (Ground Zero). Accidental fire is rather different, as the tragic destruction of significant parts of Notre-Dame is ...
- Insight
Architecture, planning and heritage are not always a happy mix
At a ceremony earlier this month in Lawn Road, Hampstead, an English Heritage ‘blue plaque’ was unveiled on the Isokon building, a 1934 modernist apartment block designed by Wells Coates. This now includes a museum devoted to the architecture of the period, created from garages as part of a retrofit ...
- Insight
Khan is as pro property as a Labour London mayor can get
The last Labour London mayor, Ken Livingstone, had an ambivalent attitude to commercial property. On the face of it he was a supporter of key projects, such as The Shard. But did he ever really like developers?
- Insight
Five decades on and the world of property hasn’t changed much
I was lucky enough to receive the president’s special award at the British Council for Offices dinner earlier this month, which of course got me thinking about the world of property since I started writing about it 45 years ago, as a trainee reporter on Estates Times (which eventually morphed ...
- Insight
The Garden Bridge project was a sad victim of miserable negativity
In the 1940s, one of the visionary plans for London by the town planner Sir Patrick Abercrombie contained a proposal for a bridge across the Thames with crossing points pretty much where the Garden Bridge was supposed to have been constructed.
- Insight
Clarity of thought and purpose will be crucial for the Grenfell inquiry
From the point of view of broad public protection, it will be important that the official inquiry into the Grenfell Tower disaster is allowed to focus on the critical issues - that is to say the cause of the initial fire, why it spread so rapidly and why a complex ...
- Insight
At last we can resolve disputes about visual perspectives in London
A brilliant presentation at the BCO annual conference last month highlighted the way property and technology are coming together in new ways that should lead to big increases in time and cost efficiency, with the potential to iron out disputes if there is a demonstrable correct answer.
- Insight
Getting to grips with carbon complexity is a simple matter of design intelligence
The architect Simon Sturgis also runs a carbon profiling company, SCP, which has undertaken research for clients ranging from Gatwick Airport and SEGRO to the Grosvenor Estate.
- Insight
2017 Predictions: shuffling people around won't solve the housing crisis
The former governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, describes the future as one of “radical uncertainty”.
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Sir Stuart Lipton: a knight to remember
Sir Stuart Lipton had a double celebration this week: 50 years in the property industry, marked by a reception and supper at the National Gallery on Monday, then three days later a party at Abbey Road Studios for his and his wife Ruth’s golden wedding anniversary.
- Insight
What we want is build-to-let, rather than buy-to-let
There are various reasons for the government’s decision to ‘get tough’ on the so-called buy-to-let market by removing tax advantages.
- Insight
Less regulation, yes, but expect more politicking too
Whatever happens in the world of planning and architecture during 2016, nothing will compare with the importance of the likely referendum decision on whether or not to remain in the EU.
- Insight
London developers should wake up to Zaha Hadid
Fifty years ago it was generally the case that ‘good’ architects, the ones who had redesigned Britain through work on schools, universities, hospitals and housing, did not do ‘commercial’ work.
- Insight
Housing development doesn’t create places – people and activity do
A first-time buyer today requires 10 times the deposit they did in the 1980s, according to the National Housing Federation.
- Insight
The joys of brownfield – now, where have we heard that before?
George Osborne, unique among modern chancellors, has used the Budget to flag up announcements about the planning system, hitherto thought to be the province of the Department for Communities & Local Government.
