Re: Re: Be quiet Mr Byrne

When you say ‘these comments’, which ones are you referring to? GB’s, or this thread?

@what? wrote:

there was no mention of that po-mo monstrosity the other side of the Hugenot site that hosues the sony centre and throws a blank facade up against it waiting for someone to build over the cemetary. the grafton building is one of the finest additions to the cityscape in recent memory and ensures that the hugenot site cannot be built on by virtue of its fenestration to the side. a suitably protective gesture from a government institution.

I saw this argument trotted out during the recent awards, and to me it’s a red herring. As I said at the time, in the thread on this building, what bothers me about it is the way it treats the graveyard as an amenity space, as if it’s there for the benefit of the users of the building. I know that the trustees of the graveyard gave their consent, but to think that the best way to protect the graveyard is to treat it as a nice garden is borderline offensive. It must be pretty unusual to have a graveyard in the city centre, more unusual that it’s a Huguenot one. I would think the fact that it’s the final resting place of people, particularly people persecuted elsewhere (hence their existence here at all), should trump all other considerations. Does it really need a building to come to its rescue?* What a damning indictment.

Or, as I suspect, did the architects/client just want to maximise development on the site, and therefore use the ‘Saviours Of The City’ stance as a cloak of active citizenship? I ain’t falling for it, folks.

*No, it doesn’t. What it needs is sympathetic neighbours.