Letters.

SUICIDE TERROR

SIR: I write in my capacity as Chairman of the Association of Engineers and Architects in Israel.

The Architectural Review is a journal of high standing, which gives us a picture of what is happening in the architectural field around the world, and it is much appreciated by our members in that role.

The article by Tom Kay in your May edition 'View from Ramallah' is one sided and utterly partisan. We are shocked and saddened that you chose to publish it, and we urge you to restore some balance by conveying to your readers some of the realities faced by us in our daily lives.

These realities are best explained by photographs taken at the scenes of the attacks on ordinary Israelis going about their family and social activities. Each of these attacks was organized and directed by Palestinians from territory under their control, the consequences were 110 Israelis; men, women and children murdered and 813 maimed by Palestinian suicide bombers within Israel, in a period of three months, paralleling the stay of T. Kay in Ramallab. We have selected and attached 11 photographs showing the results of some of these actions. The images show only building damage, other pictures showing the dead and injured have been withheld out of respect for their families.

It would be appropriate, and a courtesy to your readers, to publish this letter, together with the attached material in the next issue of AR, with similar space and prominence to that given to the earlier article.

We urge you most strongly to do so.

Yours etc

ISRAEL M. GOODOVITCH

Tel Aviv, Israel

ARCHITECTURE AS STATE INSTRUMENT

SIR: While not agreeing in every way with what Tom Kay said in his despatch from Ramallah (AR May 2002), I am writing to defend your right to publish such articles. As you say, the AR is concerned with the creation of the human-made environment, so it is natural that it ought occasionally to comment on its destruction.

Particularly so, when Israelis are clearly using the environment in their struggle against the Palestinians. You may be aware that the Israeli government cancelled the Israeli Association of United Architects' entry to the UTA conference in Berlin because it dealt fairly with the country's policy of planting settlements in Palestine. Rafi Segal and Eyal Weizman, who put together the entry A Civilian Occupation on 'the politics of Israeli architecture', suggested that architecture and planning have been 'systematically instrumentalized as the executive arms of the Israeli state'.

'Planning decisions', they said in their introduction to the catalogue, 'do not often follow criteria of economical sustainability, ecology or efficiency of services but are rather employed to serve strategic and political agendas'.

The entry was intended to ask 'what role do architecture and planning play in state strategy, and what is the role of the architect and planner', but few will be able to consider these questions now that the exhibition has been suppressed.

In this context, the Kay article seems a useful, keenly observed contribution to what should be one of the most important debates for our professions today. Compared with some of the other contributions you published in the last issue, it seems remarkably restrained.

Yours etc

JAMES BROOKS 

Email address supplied

SHALLOW, ONE-SIDED

SIR: I can certainly see the point of political report in a professional magazine, especially as architecture always was and will always be political.

I cannot however accept the shallow one-sidedness of the article 'View from Ramallah' (AR May, p32). Surely such a biased report about a building would not cross the threshold of your magazine. Dealing with politics, wars and human rights does not allow a professional magazine to step out of its attempted objectivity -- on the contrary.

The conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians in the Middle East is a complex tragedy. Trying to present it in black and white will only damage the attempts that should be made to resolve the conflict.

Coupled with the snobbish, contemptuous articles about Egypt and International Tourism, the style of your commentary articles is slowly turning the Architectural Review into an unpleasant read.

Yours etc

ERAN TAMIR-TAWIL

Tel Aviv, Israel

COWARDLY

SIR: Maybe you should read all of those letters (ARs June and July) once more, because your excuse of a reply to the Israeli readers does not answer any of the claims brought against you.

Claiming that View From is a 'personal account' only proves that you are too coward to take responsibility for your own writers, As someone who lost members of his family, both in Nazi Germany and in Israel (by Palestinians murderers), I find your reply humiliating!

Shame on you.

Yours etc

YANIV KEDMI

Israel

FLIES IN FACE OF DECENCY

SIR: I have always had great respect for your magazine, and for the highly opinionated, but usually very responsible, style of your writers. However, the recent 'View from Ramallah' by Tom Kay flies in the face of all decency.

First of all, since when did your architectural magazine decide to serve as a political stage? Second, I assume your editors review what is going into the magazine - how could they let by such an ignorant, irresponsible article? I was especially offended by captions, which I suspect were not created by Mr Kay, as they were even more biased than the general tone of his opus. To revoke the memories of Auschwitz in the context of that article was a shameless lie in the lowest taste. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an extremely complicated one, and should be approached by an outside observer at least with tact, and with something more than raw emotion.

Otherwise, how about the emotions of the parents of a 14-year old girl blown up two days ago in the quiet coastal town of Herzliya? Of the ordinary Israelis who leave their houses every morning, saying goodbyes to their families and always thinking that they may never see them alive or whole again? One last question I have for Mr Kay, since he rushed to mention that he was a Jew: did he care to broadcast that fact to his Ramallah neighbours? Or is he careful not to reveal it 'unless questioned by an anti-Semite', lest he be lynched by his now-comrades like those young Israeli reservists in Ramallah last year?

Yours etc

INGA LEONOVA

Cambridge, MA USA

CITY MEANS PEOPLE

SIR: I was surprised to read your 'View from Ramallah' (AR May). My astonishment was really that a British architectural magazine, and a Jewish architect wrote about the most recent tragedy of Palestinians in 2002.

The essay was the second time I had read that kind of political flavoured writing in the AR, the last time being October 2001 'View': terrorism and the skyscrapers was the subject of that article. In '1256 AR issue' (October 2001, p28) I was one of those who expected to read about the vanishing of towers, and the future.

My point of view, then, was that the article was architectural, and I am convinced now that the 'View of Ramallah' is an architectural essay too. We cannot separate architecture from its surroundings, politics, sciences, economics, humanities and even wars. What Mr Kay wrote was a description of a city devastated, the matter that at least concerns the urban planers.

Kevin Lynch suggested that the components of a city are districts, paths, landmarks, edges and nodes, I believe the forgotten component (the people to whom we erect) is the most important, because city means people.

Sir, I am sure that Mr Yaniv and Mr Ben Cohen (who debated in AR June 2002 the importance of Mr Kay's piece) would advocate such a viewpoint, if the Palestinian tanks were at Tel Aviv, but unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) Palestinians do not own tanks.

Yours truly

MOH'D ABU-SEER

Amman, Jordan

THE 'TOM' OF ARCHITECTURE

SIR: The word 'tom' has three meanings in Hebrew: (1) as a first name (common in Anglo-Saxon countries, but also found in Israel); (2) the end of something; (3) purity/naivety.

The May 2002 edition of the Architectural Review includes a story called 'View from Ramallah' -- four pages taken from the diary of a British architect Tom Kay, who defines himself as a Jew 'only if questioned by an antisemite', a settler in Ramallah. Apparently, such an interesting 'beast' does exist. Politics and architecture, politics and construction have been closely interrelated over the years. Architecture and construction have many references: economic, cultural, political, all on top of their practical applications of housing, storage and utility.

In my opinion, the diary described in the AR has no professional relevance to the acclaimed magazine, whose focus should be exactly as its name suggests -- Architecture.

A one-sided, full of hatred view was expressed in the diary, cynically using the magazine in making a statement with a target audience unable to quickly respond, when the 'tom' in it is the first name of the author as well as the 'end' of the architectural section in this edition of AR, while the professional content describing important projects is significantly less comprehensive than Tom's 'tom'-less sting -- where no pure intent is to be found.

One photograph, titled 'Echoes of Auschwitz', shows a pile of eyeglasses in which one can identify pairs of sunglasses, that, supposedly, fell out of a display in a shop, 'Medical Aid Ophthalmic Centre' as Kay's name for optical shop. Without any 'tom' (naivety/purity), with strong hatred and distortion, the author compares these sunglasses to those eyeglasses taken from the children and adults, living souls, who were butchered in Auschwitz during the Holocaust.

I was not familiar with Tom Kay as an architect. He chose to make himself famous as the architect of hate, and as such, managed to be accepted into our professional Pantheon and will probably be known as the hated architect.

My view of the author is clearly stated above. I have even stronger reservations concerning the conduct of the magazine. It was Kay who drew his combat pen, but it is the editorial team of the AR that reviewed his diary and decided to publish it. With such people I had better take a careful approach, since a photograph and a published word can be just as deadly as any common bomb.

Yours etc

URI ZRUBAVEL

Architect & Town Planner 

Tel Aviv, Israel

(The President of Israel Association of United Architects)

BIASED REPORTING

SIR: Shame on you! I read your article 'View from Ramallah' in AR May 2002. What the material in the article has to do with architecture is beyond me. Furthermore, I do not understand how a respectable publication such as The Architectural Review can publish such a one-sided, biased, unverified article such as this.

Kay, in the very first (bold) paragraph says that he moved to Ramallah in Palestine. I am confident that your readers are intelligent enough to know that there is no country called Palestine! There is an area controlled by a corrupt terrorist organization known as the Palestinian Authority. The article goes downhill from there. Note too, that Kay's own government suggested that he not visit Ramallah, much less move there.

I must say, however, that Kay has a vivid imagination. He states that the area was under constant curfew, yet we get his 'first-hand' information from all over town. He says that he went out looking for cigarettes but from the way he writes, he may have been looking for something a little stronger! (With the fantastic views from his apartment why do we get two pictures of the same building -- a building that looks like it should have been knocked down years ago, before it falls down. This one building has many broken windows, but broken from which side, and by whom? The other buildings look in good condition. Most of the plastic signs are intact! And not even one picture of a tank or a soldier.)

How strange it is, after two weeks of curfews, etc. On 10 April: 'Supper this evening was of beautiful salads'. It is but a simple slip such as this that reveals just how unbelievable the story really is.

Yours etc

MOSHE APPELBAUM

Architect

METALLIC TASTE

SIR: The two 'black' pages of your comment on 'Building with Metal' seem to be very appropriate to the two photographs shown (AR June 2002). The twisted columns of Bernini's baldacchino above Saint Peter's tomb, as yet not found, do not announce his resurrection. Perhaps by re-using the bronze plates of the Pantheon's portico their intention was to demonstrate rupture of Roman-Catholic Church from Roman Antiquity.

But for that religious purpose I do prefer, together with the commentator, to go to Saint Peter's church in Klippan or to Saint Mark's church in Bjorkshagen in Sweden, both designed by Sigurd Lewerentz, where the brick masonry and brick vaulting, resting on steel beams, is recalling the essential and dear to masons' truth of construction.

One should also notice there the beautiful usage of copper in many details. What better testimony to spiritual feelings of builders and participants.

As to Frank O. Gehry's titanium, you rightly write: 'His Bilbao Guggenheim. showed the potential of seemingly incorrosible material'. Unfortunately the cladding of titanium sheets over a complicated steel structure had produced a chemical reaction exposing rusting stains in many joints of arbitrary curved surfaces, subjected to the humid Atlantic climate of Bilbao.

'Yes' to what you say: 'Our main task as a profession is to reduce consumption of energy in buildings, both in construction and in running'.

Architects--take a good notice before is too late.

Yours etc

ADAM MILCZYNSKI KAAS

Pamplona, Navarra, Spain

SUTHERLAND'S RILED, TATE'S REVILED

SIR: Oh dear, Sutherland's riled, Tate's reviled! (AR May, p95). As Tate's former business partner I register an interest. I write this from a hotel in Minneapolis where I have just presented a paper to a symposium on public art at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. A paper that first established a personal theoretical position (influenced by Tate) followed by slides of my built works (some designed with Tate), and particularly Warrington Town Centre which has been recently completed in collaboration with American artist, Howard Ben Tre. I am moving on to Chattanooga, where I will be advising the City on the implementation of their new George Hargreaves master plan for the downtown and the integration of art into the public realm.

Last week it was Derby Arboretum where my current practice, Landscape Design Associates, has envisioned a plan for the restoration and development of one of the very first parks specifically designed for public use, by that extraordinary theoretician J. C. Loudon, and opened in 1848. Through our historic research, we confirmed that it was visited by two of the great founding fathers and theoreticians of landscape architecture, Frederick Law Olmsted and Andrew Jackson Downing. The plan is driven by a contemporary reading and development of Loudon's theory and vision. A couple of weeks ago it was Barnsley with Will Alsop working with the community to achieve the vision we have been working on together there for Yorkshire Forward.

My teaching at the Bartlett has brought me into contact with Cohn Fournier, project architect for La Villette--we have debated the strengths and weaknesses of building 'theoretical' models. For what it's worth, I still believe that La Villette is 'outside architecture' (parkitecture?) not a park. In my writing, practice, and teaching of landscape architecture in the UK, US, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Australia since the 1970s, I have striven for a theoretical base. And I am not unique as a landscape architect in this--check out the lineage of Tunnard, Jellicoe, McHarg, Jacobsen, Hargreaves, Corner, Bell, Thompson, Latz, etc. Lyall's contention that there has been an '... absence in landscape of even a whiff of theory ...' doesn't bear scrutiny--indeed, he has contributed to it himself. The point, contrary to Lyall's view, is that some landscape architects--including Tate, and many others with an interest in landscape, have been consistently developing landscape theory. And that 'looking back', there always has b een 'visual design talent' out there--again check out Tunnard, Jellicoe, Jacobsen, etc.

Lyall's view of the 'corporate landscape dross' of the 'Clouston landscape design empire' has translated into a personal attack on Tate, This is unfortunate, unfair, and clouds the real value of Great City Parks. Readers should look at AR April 1991 (pp63-67) for a description of Sha Tin Town Park, Hong Kong, directed by Tate, and judge for themselves whether this is 'corporate landscape dross.

Readers should also, perhaps, check the other reviews of Tate's book which have been overwhelmingly positive. Or, just buy it and have at hand what cannot be found elsewhere in one book: 'not a history but a comparative study of 20 public parks in the northern hemisphere based on the proposition that well planned, well designed and well managed parks remain invaluable components of liveable and hospitable cities'. Because it's true: it is, they are, and therein lies its value. Incidentally, the book is worth the cover price for the pictures alone, many by the late, great landscape photographer Martin Jones.

Yours etc

JOHN HOPKINS

Peterborough, England