Dullest architecture programme ever

[RSJ]

Just seen the South Bank Show on Norman Foster and the British Museum. After 5 minutes I was looking at my watch. This has to be the most mind-numbingly tedious programme on architecture yet broadcast. Even Melvyn Bragg seemed to be glazing over like the Great Court. What is it about Foster?

[MG]

I agree, I eventually turned off the sound and read a Harry Potter book instead.

[RSJ]

It seems Melvyn did a South Bank Show on Foster in his first series back in 1978 - covering the then-revolutionary Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia.

Which makes you think: might have been better for Melvyn to focus on a rising star of the new generation, rather than return to grizzled old Norm.

But who today is doing anything halfway as radical as the Sainsbury Centre was then?

[GregF]

Foster's job on the museum was quite good (glaze roof etc).....typically Foster.....but it did seem a bit sterile as an environment with all that white and lack of a bit of colour.

[RSJ]

On the whole I like the Great Court - think it works well, wonderful roof etc. Acoustically it is a however a total nightmare - the worst echo of any building I've ever been in. Sound just goes round and round all those hard surfaces.

But my original point was not about the deficiencies or otherwise of the Great Court, but about that clearly deficient TV programme. An object lesson in how not to make a programme about architecture.