Letters.

PROPAGANDA

SIR: Reading through your May issue, I was surprised to find out that your magazine now covers world politics as well as architecture. Unfortunately the level of the first is embarrassingly shallow. Your article 'View from Ramallah' by Tom Kay proves to be a typical anti-Israeli propaganda of the sort one finds in British papers. Tom Kay cannot possibly begin to understand the complexity of the Israeli-Palestine conflict, and the objectives of the latest operation in the West Bank, based on his brief experience in the region. (The operation was a result of months of fierce terror attacks and suicide bombers, which killed hundreds of innocent Israelis.) He is undoubtedly not qualified to pass any sort of political analysis.

However discriminating your article may be, it is almost unforgivable that being an architectural magazine you have chosen to give him a stage.

Yours etc

YANIV KEDMI

Tel Aviv, Israel

EVERYTHING IN HUMAN LIFE

SIR: I would like to thank you for your article. Every one should know that architecture is not just plain building (2d point of view), it is about everything in human life (3d point of view). For all of those who wonder why discuss a political issue in an architectural magazine, I would say since when has architecture been apart from politics. Please trace the history of architecture, you will be surprised that politics made our architectural heritage. For example forts, palaces, bridges etc, aren't those for political reasons? Only truth makes great architecture. What has been discussed in the article is only and only the truth.

Yours etc

KHALID DAHNIM

Email address supplied

OBSCENE

SIR: As one opposed to the Sharon Government's policy and actions in the Palestinian territories I find the comparison Tom Kay makes between the spectacles in the museum at Auschwitz and those in the destroyed ophthalmic centre in Ramallah obscene; those at Auschwitz were literally taken from the faces of victims before being murdered by the Germans and their helpers while those at Ramallah have no comparable identity: they are an example of mindless vandalism, inexcusable certainly, but on any rational analysis having absolutely no moral equivalence.

I agree that Kay's lively and informative, if at times overemotional, dispatches are of wider interest; but is AR the right forum? You are not after all a journal of current affairs. Are we to expect regular features on issues of injustice and human rights? If so you will tragically not be short of material not least from the Arab world. Or is this a one-off because the perpetrators were Israeli?

Yours etc

MAX NEUFELD

London, England

OFFENDING, ONE-SIDED

SIR: With your permission I would like to start with a word of appreciation. Your magazine has been inspiring my architectural work and thinking in the past several years and I take this opportunity to thank you and your staff for your effort.

I read carefully the article 'View from Ramnllah' by Tom Kay, published in the last May issue. I sincerely share the international community's concern for the safety and wellbeing of our Palestinian neighbours, however as an Israeli your one-sided view of the current confrontation in the Middle East is offending. I assume your magazine has decided to take part in the latest hypocrite European trend of condemning Israel as the 'bad guy' and seeing the Palestinians as the 'good guy'. You share a common point of view, which is based mainly on ignorance. In this story there are no good or bad guys. So in order to get a better View from Ramallah I invite you, and your correspondent Mr Kay, to get a view from Tel Aviv where a baby girl aged one and her grandmother were brutally murdered by a suicide bomber just a few hours ago while sitting in a cafe.

Your magazine, sir, should deal with architecture. That is what you know best. Once you start to deal with politics you lose your reader's appreciation and credit.

Yours etc

ELIE ELIAKIM 

Eliakim Architects, Tel Aviv, Israel

NOTHING TO DO WITH ARCHITECTURE

SIR: I am a Costa Rican architect who was trained in the UK, I have great respect for England and its democratic and pluralisti society, I have received your magazine for almost 15 years and I always look forward to the next issue, it gives a great view of what is going on architecturally all over the world.

All this was on my mind when I opened the May issue of the magazine and read Tom Kay's article on Ramallah's destruction; I was amazed to find that kind of article in your magazine, the article has nothing to do with architecture; in all the years that I have been reading the Architectural Review I have never seen before opinions about a war zone, civil conflicts etc. I found Kay's writing completely out of place in an architectural magazine. What are you trying to get through???

Yours etc

KARIN NAGEL

Email address supplied

MORE NEEDED

SIR: I would very much like to see occasional articles such as Tom Kay's in the AR. I think that such a personal view from a fellow professional is very useful. I have passed copies of the article to members of my family and friends exactly because it has not come from the usual news channels.

Yours etc

ROBERT BARNES

London W 10, England

NO RELEVANCE

SIR: Tom Kay's diary (View from Ramallah, AR May) or his problems about admitting to being a Jew have absolutely no relevance to Architecture or Town Planning, so why did you find the need to publish his views in a distinguished architectural magazine?

Perhaps, as an architect, I could write an article (View from Tel Aviv) for you to publish about daily living under the ever present threat of suicide bombers.

Yours etc

BEN KAPLAN

A POLITICAL JOURNAL?

Tel Aviv, Israel

SIR: Since when has AR become a political journal? It was extraordinary to see four entire pages (View from Ramallah, AR May) dedicated to such a one-sided and blinkered view of an extremely complex, already propaganda-drenched and manipulated situation. The crisis concerning the Middle East is already thoroughly misrepresented by much of the press and media, and history is being rewritten by the minute to suit whatever arguments are flying around at any one time. War and conflict are never pretty and what one individual sees cannot (especially in this situation) relay a truthful representation of a crisis as a whole.

If you are going to further the political scope of your journal, let us hear what the many different types of peoples are saying and doing. In this case, there is a huge range of people who live in Israel, which is arguably one of the most culturally integrated and cultural countries in the world.

And then there are all the other conflicts in the world: architects live in those places as well. AR is a fabulous architectural journal -- please, stick to what you do best.

Yours etc

J. S. TARRANT

Email address supplied

INAPPROPRIATE

SIR: I was outraged to see your May 2002 issue with its 4-page article titled 'View from Ramallah' (p32). Tom Kay may be Jewish and maybe an architect, but other than that there is absolutely no connection whatsoever between his political opinions and a respectful architectural magazine. I see your compliance to publishing this man's diary as completely inappropriate, not to say shamefully one-sided and deeply biased. How dare you associate a picture of broken sunglasses with Auschwitz and Nazi Germany? As a descendant to a family whose complete members were executed in the gas chambers in Auschwitz and as someone who has lived for a long time in Israel and has seen the war in the West Bank and Gaza from up-close, I find this comparison profoundly offending.

I can't even begin to think of how a rational person can equate a political-based war (be it right or wrong) with the mass annihilation of a whole nation. I can't even believe that I'm actually writing this to an architectural magazine that seemingly deals with architecture and the built environment. I find this whole affair very sad and extremely disgraceful.

Yours etc

OMER BARR

Email address supplied

FAIR REPORTING?

SIR: I have always appreciated professional and academic publications and organizations that take the time to deal with political issues. I read Tom Kay's article on Ramallah with interest. May I suggest that for the sake of unbiased reporting you run a follow-up. May I suggest that this be on my dear friend, Moshe Derfler, 45, a photographer who worked closely with many architects, and who was blasted to pieces by a 'holy martyr' in the Nahariya train station on September 9, 2001. May I also suggest that your follow-up include a few words about Yigal Goldstein, 47, an architect who died in the same terrorist attack; and maybe even a few words about Dov Chernobroda, 67, another architect who was killed in the terrorist attack in a restaurant in Haifa on March 31. And while you are at it, maybe mention Daniel Carlos Wegman, a 50 year old engineer, who was killed in the same event; and Aviel Ron, 54, a man responsible for the digital mapping of the country; his son Ofer, 18, and daughter Anat, 21. Or maybe, wri te a few words about Aviel Ron's wife and Ofer and Anat's mother, a computers expert at the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the Technion, injured during that same attack, and left alive with the memories of an annihilated family. What about Eyal Yoel, 29, a graduate student in our University, and a friend's grandson -- are you interested in chemical engineers or just architects? There are many more including also simple construction workers, such as Constantin Straturula, 52, and Virgil Martinesc 29, two Romanian citizens employed by an Israeli contractor, killed in a bomb attack on May 10, 2001.

And if you are really interested in fair reporting, why not run a sequel to your Ramallah article, one that can include numerous pictures of the cafes, restaurants, buses, bus stops, main streets, malls and other Israeli urban settings blasted to pieces time and again by the Ramallah-directed holy martyrs and freedom fighters? Would you care to include in such an article some more of the 505 Israelis assassinated between September 2000 and May 2002?

I am sure you will find in my suggestion enough architecture-related material worth your time and space -- maybe even more so than in Tom Kay's article.

Yours etc

ISAAC A. MEIR

Email address supplied

THE EDITOR REPLIES:

We are not in the least biased. We do indeed publish Israeli architecture. The Architectural Review is about the creation of the human-made environment, and so it must also be concerned with its destruction. Rarely do we have an architectural correspondent able to comment on suck destruction from personal experience. We have carried articles on destruction in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It should also be emphasized that View From is a personal account from a particular place. We hope to be able to publish shortly letters from correspondents in Israel, Kabul and Iraq about conditions in those countries. This debate is continued on our website forum: arplus.com/forum/fomm htm. P. D.

FATHY: NAIVE CRITICISM

SIR: I have been a subscriber to your magazine for many years and put a great deal of faith in its content. It is for this reason that I was rather upset by Peter Davey and Caroline Pulford's View of Luxor (AR April 2002) and the dismissive tone in which it describes the work of Hassan Fathy.

Peter Davey and Caroline Pulford draw our attention to the decay of Fathy's mud brick buildings in New Gourna, suggesting that, 'even in a place where it only rains for half an hour in four years, maintenance should have been thought about'.

And yet in the previous sentence it is noted how well maintained the mosque is. Surely the mosque is therefore proof of the capabilities and longevity of mud brick construction. Similarly I would challenge any modern building that has been left idle for 30 years not to be in desperate need of a facelift.

To call the reinforced concrete structures with brick infills currently being constructed in New Gourna 'the true contemporary vernacular' is naive. Fathy himself considered the use of concrete but ruled it out, the reasons being primarily twofold. When a family has no money to feed themselves or buy their children chalk for school then they are in no position to afford cement and other modern materials, however subsidized they might be. All that they can afford is their time.

This relates to the second point, that this method of building is not sustainable in poor areas. The people for whom such new houses are intended would need a skilled workforce brought in to build for them. Similarly, even if they did learn from initial buildings and develop a skill base they are no closer to sustainability since they still cannot afford the raw materials.

I would like to recommend the book, Architecture for the Poor, by Hassan Fathy, where the issues discussed above and in Peter Davey and Caroline Pulford's piece are considered in far greater depth.

Yours etc

TIM RYAN

Bishops Stortford, England

TATE, AND LYALL

SIR: Reading Sutherland Lyall's review of Great City Parks by Alan Tate (AR May, p95) one is left wondering what Lyall hates most, the book, the author or the landscape design profession.

Did Lyall bother to read the book properly or did he simply choose Alan Tate's text about Paris' Parc de la Villette as a hobby horse upon which to vent his spleen.

The 20 public parks Alan Tate writes about are among the most admired and enjoyed urban green places in the world. For Lyall to write them off as 'corporate landscape dross' is as ignorant as it is absurd.

Tate's book is well written, excellently researched and full of quality illustrations. It tells its story well and deserves to be read by all those interested to know more about how the world's great parks were made, how they are managed, renewed and sustained.

The whiff I detect in Mr Lyall's review is not lack of design theory but that of spite. But then can we expect more from the former editor of a free building trade newspaper?

Yours etc

BRIAN CLOUSTON

Durham, England

ARCHITECTURAL & ACOUSTIC HARMONY

SIR: I would like to add a little to the description of the new recital hall at Benslow Music Trust (AR May, pp70-74) because it marks a new step forward in architectural acoustics design.

Patel Taylor Architects proposed a strong circular element in the plan shape of the hall which, among other things, conveniently embraces a grand piano or chamber orchestra. Such circular geometry, of course, focuses sound and if the players are near a focus they will hear differences in loudness which will make playing in good ensemble difficult. Similar undesirable variations in loudness will occur for the audience.

To counteract this focusing, the conventional approach is to break up the circular geometry with facets or convex surfaces to provide a degree of sound diffusion. The results are not always architecturally satisfactory. However, it is now possible to generate a surface geometry mathematically which will provide the exact degree of sound diffusion required -- in this case maximum diffusion to cancel the strong focusing. What is even more attractive is that a 'shape motif'can be chosen by the designers, eg a continuous wave, a stepped surface or some other geometrical form, and this shape is optimised, or morphed, by the mathematical process to give the precise diffusing surface.

In the case of the Benslow recital hall, the designers chose a continuous wave of varying amplitude and the optimised version of this resulted in the so-called 'free-form wooden screening' which lends 'a sculptural dimension to the space'.

The beauty of this new approach is that it enables the combination of precise acoustical performance with the desired architectural form.

Yours etc

RAFAL ORLOWSKI

Arup Acoustics, Cambridge, England