Letters.

HOW CAN YOU, AR?

SIR: I realize you don't have an 'outrage' section but need to comment on your July 2001 edition, which featured the Horizon development in Darlinghurst, Sydney, Australia (p52).

Beyond the glitz, glamour and the massive profits that surrounded this development are thousands of local people who now have to live in the shadow and outlook of one of the worst forms of architectural expression that has cursed the Sydney skyline in a long time.

Massively out of scale, compromising the privacy and outlook of practically a whole locality and casting winter shadows over a kilometre long, what can be worthy about this development? But this is only where it starts. The owners and tenants of this building pay up to a thousand dollars a week or a million dollars to buy one of the apartments. The maintenance levies are large.

What was once a picturesque street of predominantly three-storey sandstone terrace houses and shop fronts has suddenly found itself with a new big brother of 43 floors that dominates this historic neighbourhood locality. How can AR feature this as an example of good architecture? Yes, the balconies have a great shape and there is some colourful Op art in the foyer but what about context and respect to what's around it.

I am outraged that you should offer this development such merit and not consider the negative social and environmental impacts it has created and the greed that ultimately built it.

Yours etc

GREGORY FERNANDES

Sydney, Australia

We do have an outrage section from time to time when something is outrageous enough. The Editors

DICTATING VALUES

SIR: It is amazing how easy it is to become 'chauvinistic' (French), writing even from London, as this is the case of Ada Havnar (AR May 2001, p30). Did Havnar read Auguste Perret's 'unfinished essay of 1940 in homage to Mussolini batiseur?

What 'famous Modern architects were prepared to lick the boots of dictators and authoritarian regimes in the inter-war periods and in the occupied countries during the Second World War' - which and where? Before writing 'Mies's attempts to come to terms with the Nazis in 1933', Ada Havnar should study fully the history of Germany and of the Bauhaus.

What documents substantiate Havnar' s claims of 'Le Corbusier as Mussolini worshipper and pander to Vichy government'?

Could Havnar reveal the data on 'American Fascist movement' and its 'devotee' Philip Johnson.

Havnar's speculations 'how far heroes of the Modern Movement would have gone to get work' are of such demagogic nature that should never be put into print.

Any moral and political accusations should always be documented in order to give them credit.

Yours etc

ADAM MILCZYNSKI KAAS

University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain

WARTS AND ALL ARCHITECTURE

SIR: Great Editorial Comment! I agree - housing is the stuff of cities and that is precisely why we need precedents...

But as an architect working in an emerging economy, trying to 'design' and make social housing as a new entity work as a viable proposition, balancing 'design' against almost impossible financial contraints, social need and developer driven programmes, the examples of housing shown in the latest AR are of little relevance. This is not to denigrate them, but viewed from our context - South Africa 2001 - housing backlog approx 2 million?, they are all luxury housing projects, belonging to First World economies.

Surely, AR could temper this with some real' examples from Third World/emerging economies where the challenge of housing provision remains huge.

Warts and all, we could all learn some lessons from precedent and hopefully balance design and reality.

Yours etc

HEATHER DODD 

Johannesburg, South Africa

FIELD WORK

SIR: What I like best about your magazine is that it always encourages us toilers in the field to try harder. There are always examples of architects at a modest level making something out of nothing.

Yours etc

GUS ALEXANDER 

London EC 1, England

SPLIT OPINION

SIR: In the May issue of AR there is your Comment, an article called The Magic Labyrinth. The second paragraph you start with the sentence: 'Only the Pantheon from the second century AD remains to us of the great enclosed public spaces of Classical times'.

I don't know what the sentence really means since in Diocletian's Palace in Split, Croatia, the world's best preserved monument of its kind still lived in from the fourth century AD, there is 'the great enclosed public space of Classical times' that nowadays serves as Catholic Cathedral, Older authors call it Jupiter's Temple and some recent ones Diocletian's Mausoleum.

It would be nice if you would visit the Palace and add something new to your article.

Yours etc

VISNJA KUKOC-BOROTA

Split, Croatia

SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL

SIR: What a relief, that little Parisian house by Georges Maurios was in your July issue (pp72-73). Here was an honest answer to a problem common in many city centres - how to make the most of a small site with limited means. Most of the other houses in the issue look like holiday homes for millionaires: interesting enough by themselves, but taken together, far too rich a helping. Leave that sort of thing to the consumer magazines.

Yours etc

WILLIAM ADDIS

Birmingham, England