202508_19aug_BBC_BuildingSoul

Building Soul on Radio 4

Listening to Building Soul on Radio 4 has given me some depressing deja vu – I’d heard similar stuff when I worked at Leeds School of Architecture for most of the 1970s. The presenter, Thomas Heatherwick started the programme with

“There’s been an epidemic of inhuman building plaguing or cities stripping them of character, joy and soul. I call it the blandemic.”

Heatherwick criticised today’s buildings for their box shapes and ubiquitous flat surfaces of Modern Movement Architecture with its rejection of ornament.