Simon Jenkins blasts 'devil' architects, but Prasad has the last word…

Architects were blamed for most of the evil in the world by a ranting Simon Jenkins at the Royal Town Planning Institute annual lecture last night (20 February).

The cultural commentator, Guardian journalist and former deputy chairman of English Heritage smattered his speech with swipes at 'stupid planning' and bolstered his calls for a more robust system with a series of assaults on architects.
 
In his speech at the UCL's School of Oriental and African studies, Jenkins said: 'The reason 'planning' failed in the '60s, '70s and '80s was that your profession [the planners] was not powerful enough and it was also on the side of the devil – the architects – who shouldn't be trusted with anything.
 
'Architecture is the only profession I know which will work for any dictator anywhere in the world, including China.'
 
He went on: 'Your job [as planners] is to stop them building things which reflect their own glory when we want buildings in context. More London [on the South Bank near the Tower of London], is a series of glass boxes, designed by Norman Foster, that are so hostile to pedestrians that nobody would want to go there.
 
He then brought up the issue of 'icons' and architects and politicians alleged fixation with them.
 
'[Today's buildings] are objects in space and are almost nothing about the street. Foster claims his buildings are about people – they are not. Richard Rogers claims his buildings are about context – they are not,' he said.
 
'I've just seen the plans by Urban Splash in Liverpool – a huge slab in front of the cathedral. Can we not do better than that?' he added.
 
Jenkins concluded his talk by suggesting architects and developers were not asking people what they actually wanted and that the planners' role should be as some sort of mediator between 'democracy and economics'. Again he held architects responsible for most of the so-called 'mistakes'.
 
He said: 'There were professional errors in places like Moss Side - where people were shipped out like war refugees - that nobody has been found guilty of.
 
'The RIBA should have a "truth and reconciliation" on this.'
 
However, Jenkins did not have it his own way. RIBA president Sunand Prasad, who was sat in the audience, fired off a stinging defence of the profession, saying that his analysis 'didn't stand up.'
 
'You are wrong to say the public is on one side and the architects and greedy developers are on the other side, with the planners in between. It is not like that and there is no such thing as public consensus. It's more complex.
 
He also said that if Jenkins thought architects were unpopular – which Prasad argued they weren't according to a recent Mori poll – he should look at how journalists were perceived…