Thinking about Architecture

Victory is ours! We recieved a positive decision from the Planning Inspectorate on our client’s appeal against refusal of planning permission for this humble infill building:

the two storey bit in the centre is ours…

After a planning process that was handled with a distressing mixture of deliberate vagueness coupled with an intense desire to control, we have won through – albeit at a cost of 7 months delay and additional fees from our client – the London Jewish Cultural Centre, for whom the new building will form the basis of a much needed  activity centre for local youth.

Once again, the combination of paranoid desire for power, coupled with second rate thinking and institutional incompetence has been the dominant theme in our interaction with the public planning system.

Knowing that although this seems to be the depressing norm, the process can be attended by rationality, good humour and shared concerns for the public good, as other (rare) experiences have proved, only makes it more galling to go through.

[UPDATE: article in the Hampstead annd Highgate Express, 4 Feb]