Tag Archives: travel

Architects trained to like buildings we don’t?

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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.

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Embarrassing admission

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(To York Councillors 27th March 2025)

A teenage wedding and planning policy

(Try listening to Chuck Berry‘s A Teenage Wedding before continuing.)

An embarrassing admission. I found myself actually sobbing listening to Chuck Berry’s You never can tell on Youtube. After playing several different versions – and crying at them all – I switched to Dire Straights, Queen, and even Bob Dylan and the crying stopped. It’s taken me a day or two to unpick this embarrassing reaction.

A teenage wedding

Chuck Berry’s song, written in 1964, full of optimism, started “It was a teenage wedding and the old folks wished them well” but now weddings for the young are much rarer. 

The Office of National Ststistics shows there were hardly any teenage weddings in 2022 compared to 1960. In the 1960s the most weddings were in the age range 20-24. Now, the most weddings are in the age range 30-34.

Housing the youngsters

Chuck Berry sings…

They furnished off an apartment with a two room Roebuck sale.

These teenagers in 1964 could afford somewhere cheap to live and buy a little furniture. Since then, the cost of setting up home has vastly increased. In real terms houses are now six times more expensive than in the 1960s.

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