Another Profession In The Dirt

And why do they design such ugly buildings?

Here's something truly sad. The so-called "views" are horrid. Then the inte rior decor in a compact space of hotel room dimensions gives the place the feel of a camper trailer. Hotels are strictly temporary lodging for a reaso n.

Unbelievably they have bunches of people living in The Plaza. Even Frank Ll oyd Wright lived there for a time. It was when he met another resident, Sol omon Guggenheim, and got the commission for the horrid Guggenheim Museum bu ilding, that crinkled up atrocity.

"Nicholas Boys Smith is the founding Director of Create Streets, a social enterprise encouraging urban homes in terraced streets, not multi-storey buildings."

"Nicholas was previously a director at Lloyds Banking Group and was educated at Cambridge University."

so he's a lobbyist/investment banker not an architect.

Right, seems to be his goal is to make housing more expensive so his i-banker friends make more money on the grounds of "aesthetics" or w/e. got it.

I doubt that the architects wrote that guff at all. Their marketing department will be responsible for the lurid grandiloquent prose.

They are however responsible for the idea of a making a big paper box with no redeeming features. Using it as a building site to make the components for the cathedral and letting people see real stone masons and other skilled craftsmen at work would be a better use of the space.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. At the moment people seem to want ultra tall slip cast concrete monstrosities with all glass exteriors. The London Walkie-Talkie that cooked a Jaguar being a very fine example!

Some architectural models are truly interesting novel designs but there is a lot of useless tat offered up as well. Most of it does not get built beyond a virtual 3D walk around or a 1:100 scale model.

--
Regards, 
Martin Brown

His resume says "a"director at Lloyds, not "the" director. Typical self-inf lation of what was probably a low-/mid- level management position, which us ually means he didn't do anything in particular. If you read his real estate development position more carefully, you will s ee he's just emphasizing the obvious. The ubiquitous cheap trash designed t o sell fast is a bad investment for the banks because it's beyond rehabilit ation in 30 years time. The whole neighborhood gets taken over by people on the margins of society who are used to living in squalor, so you end up wi th this self-reinforcing spiral of investment death to the place.

In Terminator 2 (I got a nick out of that actually and no I did not give it to myself) it took Skynet 25 days to become self aware.

At that point of course it decides it has no use anymore for humans.

And technology of today is running headlong to that end. Excellent, we trained them to kill themselves and we don't evne need to waste the bullets.

Conversely you build a lot of swish high-end properties in city centers that are bought up by Chinese businessmen and wealthy tech dudes as investment properties that just sit empty most of the time and the people who actually live in the city and make it function day-to-day get the choice between getting drilled up the ass on rent or having a two hour commute every day.

The article seems like he wants some moderate "free market" reforms balanced by...something or other.

Practice shows that when you relax the restrictions on Lloyds guys like him even a little bit they throw billions of dollars at the problem of how to exploit the new relaxed rules to grind the wealth upwards faster than ever before.

"However, if we do this by just ?ripping up planning? and ?building everywhere?, we will lose political support for more homes, above all from homeowners less directly affected by this crisis. Building beautifully with consent will be faster, less controversial, and more effective."

Whatever best-of-both-worlds solution he's proposing will likely just amount to 'building everywhere' lots of big-ass luxury investment properties to sell to investors in practice. you gave 'em an inch and they'll take the mile.

the 'beauty' of some property directly proportional to its price tag

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-inflation of what was probably a low-/mid- level management position, whic h usually means he didn't do anything in particular.

ll see he's just emphasizing the obvious. The ubiquitous cheap trash design ed to sell fast is a bad investment for the banks because it's beyond rehab ilitation in 30 years time. The whole neighborhood gets taken over by peopl e on the margins of society who are used to living in squalor, so you end u p with this self-reinforcing spiral of investment death to the place.

That's exactly the kind of thing he is opposing.

I admit that I have skimmed the conservativehome.com article twice and I still don't understand exactly what he wants or how he intends to go about getting it, so forgive me if I'm just a simple man who when confronted with ten paragraphs of high-concept ideas written by a banker that at least superficially seem to swing back and forth between being in favor of regulation and against I tend to cynically just see a banker playing the act of a centrist in order to help banker buddies hustle some cash.

the comments are funny

"Lengthy article about southern England's housing shortage ~but not a sentence, not even a phrase, about the main cause : mass uncontrolled immigration ~still ongoing ~"

" do you seriously think that England could then house everyone in the whole wide world who wishes to come here ?"

looks like the UK has its counterparts to Americans who think everyone in the world wants to come there lol. talk about self-flattery.

Yeah everyone from the sunny Caribbean and South America full of hot women and beautiful crystal blue-water beaches wants to fall all over themselves move to that rainy shit hole island full off yobbos who hate them if they had other options. same goes for Teaxs. Oh f*ck yeah I wanna immigrate to Texas what a priority!

Phenomenal amount of money wasted on this monstrosity:

Now they're saying it leaks. Imagine a 350 foot rubber seal leaking.

Same idiot just got fined for this joke: