DDDA Paranoia

which building
i may already have a shot

Sadly this is one more American import.

In New York, in particular, many firms try to restrict exterior, lobby or any interior photographs. Reasons are rarely given, you are more likely to get the bums rush than an answer. Security and, nowdays, intellectual property rights are cited.

You will even hear them say they own the “copyright” of the image of the building.

This trend is beginning to follow American, financial services firms to Ireland. Too many underemployed security guards is a contributory factor.

Of course if you were being mugged or raped down in the IFSC, the same SWAT time would be having tea in the hut.

I bet they work part-time as bouncers too…….the uniform is gone to their heads.

There’s an interesting side-issue here. Do architects or clients own the copyright to their buildings, once they’re built and publicly visible?

The Bilbao Guggenheim went through a phase of claiming money from any publication that printed a photo of its Gehry building – on the grounds that it was its own unique design.

And there are moves to declare copyright the image of Nick Grimshaw’s Eden Project in Cornwall. But this is specifically to cash in on all the advertisers wanting to use it as a backdrop: no-one’s going to stop the public taking snaps.

Richard Rogers guards the image of Lloyds of London most zealously, while at one point Norman Foster tried to round up and destroy all images of himself (not his buildings) that he had not authorised. I don’t think he got very far.

However I too was once stopped by a zealous security guard in the City of London, who sprinted across the street to stop me photographing a new building. He informed me that the building was the company’s copyright and that I could be sued. Do we detect the beginnings of a trend here?

The rules for photographing objects, buildings, installations and other areas of non-public activity are clear. If, positioned on a public highway, footpath or other public realm you may freely undertake to record that which may be seen. If you require a certain vantage point which is only available form private land, the IFSC may be considered as such, you may require permission. These are often clearly identified on DOD and MOD sites on posters at the periphery of the site. In recent years the paparazzi have trampled over this simple rule by the use of ultra high powered lenses, invading the privacy of individuals. Where “public” spaces are concerned, nothing is as it seems. In the situation of being able to cross an urban square or laneway does not confer upon it public rights. A commercial company may decide it is in its interests to promote a public activity (for profit or other means) but also have the right to control the activities within that space.

today i was out at the airport meeting the gf…. anyways went top take shots of the original terminal… was walking away with some lovely ones when airport police pulled up, and asked me about my business…. digital camera which the copper copped and he asked me to delete them on the spot while he watched….

If a client, architect or company can now have legeal rights to images of the outside of a buiding, then it wou ld seem to me that we have yet another unjust law. (The only exception i could agree with would be when the image is used for marketing or profit of some kind)
Ethically , surely city spaces (to include the actuall public realm together with the SKINS of the entities, normally buildings, that create these external spaces/rooms) should be the property of the PEOPLE, the inhabitants of the city.
the people decide what is allowed to be built and what is to be destroyed in the realm that is their dwelling space.(CITY).. surely it belongs to them ????
Afterall, in theory at least, it is the people of the city that have given the permission for the building to be constructed in the first place. Never mind to even mention the actuall specifics of the building’s tectonics and the face it presents to the people of the city.

Is it not these principles being imposed with regulations such as the Listing system ????? some buildings are listed only for their face, and not the unique or special spaces/uses or actuall architectural principles that would have lay hidden behind.

I really do fear that everything in our society is starting to turn against the people/ families/ neighbourhoods/communal and towards the elitist /corporate/ capitalist/ private/greedy/ careless nature of what is becoming the global monoculture.
Q. As architects, do we not have a primary prerequisitive duty of principle to preserve and to create what is right for the people before anything else ????