Letters

Architectural Review, The, Oct, 2001

EXEMPLARY ISTANBUL?

SIR: Reading the text and looking at the illustrations of the competition-winning City Hall for the Greater Istanbul Municipality (AR September 2001, p27), I for one was indeed heartened and encouraged to read towards the end that, 'At the moment, there is discussion about the appropriateness of the project'.

Coming from the AR, the eulogy itself is rather baffling: 'it will be a cultural disaster if this thoughtful scheme was turned down. It could he a major turning point in the city's public architecture, making Istanbul a model for the rest of us ...' God forbid!

Let us sincerely hope that good sense prevails and the design is eventually rejected. And even better, that the Municipality manages to find an architect capable of seeking some inspiration from the once great city of Istanbul itself, rather than from the 'contrasting orthogonal geometry ... from the 1909 Statue of Liberty' - whatever that means!

Yours etc

AYYUB MALIK

Brentford, Middlesex, England

ALEXANDRIA PRECEDENT

SIR: I was surprised that you did not mention Scharoun's Berlin State Library in your discussion of the new one in Alexandria. Here is the prototype for the stepped section of the reading room, and the idea of the individual scholar being able to work in an identifiable place within a very large volume.

Yours etc

ALEXANDER MULVIN

Toronto, Canada

TOO MUCH IDOLATRY

SIR: Edward Robbins had a point about the silly habit of idolatry that is common in this profession (AR August, p78). Don't expect schools of architecture to be at the forefront of any critical revolution; I have fresh memories of a series of lectures where the magic phrase 'Lord Foster' occurred approximately once every ten minutes.

Hero-worship has got absolutely nothing to do with giving credit to whom credit is due, but is rather a way of reducing ideas into meaningless 'isms'. Dogmatism is a crutch for the irresponsible -- the acceptance of a skewed culture of appraisal has ethical problems, because a badly designed building is always a waste of valuable resources.

I wonder if architecture students could gain some critical maturity from a course that consists of doing research on the wacky proposals and failed schemes of the past? There must be lots of examples to choose from.

Yours etc

TEEMU KORHONEN

Helsinki, Finland

VIRTUAL VISION

SIR: You seem to have an obsession with virtual reality that emerges on a regular basis in your articles (notably, the 'Comment' in September AR). Virtual reality was a great rage among students and academics some five or 10 years ago -- partly because few people in the schools wanted to be involved with the messy, time-consuming and sometimes unpleasant business of building and construction.

As you say, VR has now little connection with reality as most of us perceive it. If it had, media moguls would be offering VR sets which could instantly put you into the steam heat of the Tropics or the dark cold of the Arctic, transport you to writhing intimacies of the bedroom or violent hysteria of the battle front. If that could be achieved, huge fortunes could be made.

Perhaps the reason VR no longer has the attraction to academia it once held is because it has not yet had the spectacular advances expected of it. You can afford to ignore it for the present. Get on and worry about something else.

Yours etc

OTIS CHALMERS

Atlanta, USA