Anthony Daniels

I see that the architect, Richard Rogers, is to retire at the age of 87. This is an excellent thing, of course, but unfortunately it comes seventy years too late. Rogers has done as much as anyone to make the world a little uglier (and locally, much uglier); in that sense he has been very successful.
Of course, he is not the only architect whose life would have been much better spent doing nothing on social security than in employment. I will mention in this connection only another two, Norman Foster and Elizabeth de Portzamparc. I name them because I happened to pass through Nîmes the other day, and I never cease to wonder at the effectiveness of their subversion of beauty there. But if I had to award the palm, it would be to the female of the species.

One of the characteristics of their type of architecture is that it is always expensive financially while cheap aesthetically. The architects have the sense of economy of Louis XIV and the taste of the magpie. For example, Elizabeth de Portzamparc’s Musée