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With another Wimbledon over, plus the Euros football, sports fans and the wider public have now turned to the excitement of the Olympics in Paris. It’s the excitement, in terms of our relationship with time and distance, that I want to contemplate here. Let’s start with time.   I’ll never forget my astonishment when a past… Read more: Space, time and sport

I cannot imagine what James Brindley would have made of Tom Weston. Brindley was of course one of the great pioneers of the English canal system. Gutsy and determined he was a civil engineer of extraordinary talent. Innovation in pursuit of problem solving was his stock in trade. He was creative and imaginative. And a… Read more: WAF 45 Our Canals: A Rich Heritage

The wonderfully acerbic and erudite Francis Golding, sadly no longer with us, once said during a design review for a proposal in close proximity to St Paul’s Cathedral ‘Norman, why would you put one of your worst next to one of Wren’s best?’  One of Foster’s ‘worst’ can, of course, be assumed to have been… Read more: WAF 49a Stansted’s Misery

                    Image from 2017 Nov/Dec Time magazine Clearing out a cupboard the other day, I perchance found a Time magazine featuring ‘The 25 best inventions of 2017’ amongst which was a Tesla Model 3. That year Tesla manufactured 100,757 cars. Production thereafter was exponential until 2024:… Read more: WAF 52 Car Magnates and Architecture 18.03.25

It was the penultimate evening of 2024, the last of our guests had departed, and I had just settled down to start reading a very welcome Christmas present – Michael Sandel’s Democracy’s Discontent – when an SMS popped up on my iPhone:  Hi Paul. This is Sukh from the LBC.  Then that little message that… Read more: WAF 50: A stitch in time…….

My daughter-in-law, a pharmacist, was aghast when I explained how the construction industry operates, particularly in the context of ‘Design and Build’ and our lax controls pertaining to specification, quality, monitoring, and control. So, with the publication of the Grenfell Inquiry’s Phase 2 report on 4 September, I thought it useful to view our culture… Read more: WAF 48b: Lessons from Pharmacists

The spectacle of so many of the so-named ‘core participants’ seeking, during their evidence, to blame others presented an all too unedifying spectacle during the Grenfell Inquiry proceedings. As far as architects are concerned, the position of Studio E is of particular importance. In this respect, the following denouements from the Inquiry’s Executive Summary to… Read more: DEZEEN: Grenfell Tower Inquiry – Lessons for architects

In this view from the UK, Paul Hyett reflects on the world, the US Presidential election and the architect’s duties. European Movements The light of western democracy may not yet have dimmed but it is certainly flickering, and the closing quarter of 2024 will have profound impact on its political, social and economic direction for… Read more: Consequential Questions (the need for truth)

The old adage ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ is often thought to be an ancient Chinese proverb attributable to that most veritable of philosophers Confucius, but it seems that the phrase is of much more recent origin, and its credit to Confucius not only unfounded but also mischievous. Jack Trout, author of the… Read more: WAF 42 ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ 26/2/24        

‘I’ve brought a crate of Christmas Cheer’ said the Murphy’s driver as he struggled through the door bringing three bottles of very fine brandy ‘for Mr Price’. I thanked him and thought no more of it until Cedric, upon returning to the office after a good lunch expressed his extreme displeasure. After reprimanding me for… Read more: WAF 41: ‘Take a Letter……’ 22 Feb 2024

It is understood that there is growing interest in an experiment to alter the format of a traditional football game, i.e. 90 minutes split equally into two 45-minute halves with a 15-minute half-time interval to a single, 60-minute game without an interval, but played on the basis that when there is a break in play,… Read more: Potential implications upon Stadia Design of playing a single 60-minute game without a half-time interval, on a ‘stop – start’ basis.

I had an Erno Goldfinger experience to round off this summer. Not like the occasion when, telephoning his office, he was answered by a young architect imitating his Hungarian accent: ‘Goldfinger speaking’. The great man allegedly replied ‘This is Goldfinger and you’re fired!’.  Nor the occasion (as reported by John Grindrod in his brilliant book… Read more: 230919 WAF 38: Goldfinger speaking…

The milkman was once an essential service available to all households but by 1995 doorstep delivery had declined to just 45% of the retail milk market. Today it is a mere 3%, and still falling. Our milk came from Bartonsham Dairies located alongside the east bank of the river Wye, just south of Hereford. As… Read more: 231019 WAF 39

So, here’s a complex and controversial set of issues: Presenting recently for the American news channel MSNBC, Johnathan Capehart described a recent decision by Republican appointed Justices in the Supreme Court of America that found in favour of a web-site designer who had refused a commission from a same-sex couple. The Court decided that forcing… Read more: 30718 WAF 37: Designing to order…

In our imagination, as one more frequently associated with a destruction of books which started with the burning of ‘un-German’ books in Berlin’s Bebelplatz Square in 1933 and ushered in some 12 years of uncompromising state censorship, Adolph Hitler had established, at the time of his death, a formidable personal library. The conclusion of World… Read more: 230625 WAF 36 Read on……!

Dame Judith Hackitt was awarded an honorary fellowship at the RIBA last month. Now a household name within the construction industry, the impact of her report ‘Building a Safer Future’ has been profound: it is no overstatement to suggest that the new Building Safety Act, which came into force this month, is built almost entirely… Read more: 230521 WAF 35 – Game Up!

Some 20 years or so back news cameras caught the moment a scaffold collapsed in Knightsbridge, central London. Not an uncommon occurrence, but one not commonly ‘caught’ on T.V., so, as no-one had been injured, what could have been a tragedy made for some very entertaining viewing on the evening news. It had all started… Read more: 230416 WAF 34 – Send that email back……!

It seems that an awful pox has enveloped large parts of the housing stock of our nation. Across the entire land, be it large city or small town, older Victorian stock, or the newer housing estates of the early and middle 20th century, that pox is everywhere to be seen. Indeed, barely a street has… Read more: 230222 WAF Feb 2023:  A Pox Across Our Nation

Paul Hyett challenges design leaders across the globe — regardless of their political context — to meet the real needs of our planet and its peoples. The Scene Luton airport, just after midnight, awaiting a family of Ukrainian refugees, my friend stooped to chat to a thin, hooded person slumped in a corner. The Man “Mick,” just… Read more: Infra-Structure and Safety Nets: Our Duty to Provide Resilient Security

I gave a talk at an international conference last month entitled ‘We’ve Been Sold a Pup’…. It caused an extraordinary stir and, to my surprise, split the room into two apparently irreconcilable factions, more of which later herein….    The term ‘Sold a Pup’ alludes to a swindle. It comes to us from English Medieval times and… Read more: 221109 – WAF November 2022: ‘Sold a Pup…’

Paul Hyett reflects on IT’s distortion of time, interval and distance. Can design benefit from its impact? The Old Rules: Where and What?  Since time immemorial, technology has had a huge impact on  the where and the what of architecture and building. From the  earliest days of urban settlement, beyond any Stone Age decision to bunch… Read more: Honey, We’ve Shrunk the World

The following article was published in Dezeen, the online architectural magazine, on 14 June 2022 the fifth anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire.  https://www.dezeen.com/2022/06/14/architecture-education-has-shifted-away-from-fire-safety-experts-say-on-grenfell-anniversary/

Standing at our local bus stop the other day, I pondered the miserable structure that purported to offer shelter from the heavy rain blowing in on the prevailing wind. Worse still, its gutter-less roof pitched south-west towards the road so the water sheeted down and puddled around our feet. With its uncomfortable sloping bench seat… Read more: Craftsmanship and QA

Published in World Architecture Festival Q3 2021 If you have yet to make your first post-Covid visit to another country, let me forewarn you: from start to finish you will be challenged. There’s no doubt of course that we had become accustomed to easy inter-country and inter-city movement, but what I have just been through… Read more: Safely back home

Published in World Architecture Festival Q4 2021 It’s astonishing that colours seem to have all but vanished from our roads. I mean proper colours like reds, greens and yellows, or those lovely deep maroons and blues once favoured for larger sedans. Everywhere you look nowadays, be it on the motorways or in the side streets,… Read more: Colour on our streets

Published in Design Intelligence magazine, Q2 2022 ‘You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today’. Never were those words of Abraham Lincoln more prescient than now…. For the architect the terms professional and authority are synonymous with responsibility. The former establishes the obligation, the latter facilitates its dispatch. In its narrowest sense… Read more: Responsibility

Re-examining the tenets of interpersonal responsibility Written by Paul Hyett and published in Design Intelligence magazine, Q2 2021 “I did not like the tone of your letter — please don’t ever write to me again.” So wrote avant-garde architect Cedric Price to Pat Enright, then a director of Murphy, the builder responsible for constructing the… Read more: Professional Interaction: a Higher Calling

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Re-examining the tenets of interpersonalresponsibility Written by Paul Hyett and published in Design Intelligence magazine, Q2 2021 “I did not like the tone of your letter — pleasedon’t ever write to me again.” So wrote avant-garde architect Cedric Price to Pat Enright, then a director of Murphy, the builder responsible for constructing the new InterAction… Read more: Professional Interaction: a Higher Calling

Published in Design Intelligence magazine Q1 2021 Paul Hyett reflects on three challenges facing RIBA’s new president and Britain’s architectural profession: Brexit, The Grenfell Disaster’s Insurance Impacts, and COVID-19. Simon Allford, the recently elected 60th president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, faces greater challenges in terms of scale, breadth, and complexity, than any… Read more: The view from here: ‘Cometh the hour, cometh the man’.

First published in Design Intelligence 23 Dec 2020, by Paul Hyett THE WORLD WE LEFT BEHIND If Christopher Wren had walked into my father’s new office, he would have felt very much at home. Albeit a small practice, like architects’ offices of all sizes across the country and around the world, the basic tools of… Read more: Pace and Place, Planet and Purpose: Reinvention Required

Originally published in Panstadia magazine, Q4, 2017 I get mighty irritated by fans who struggle to get out and take a pee during soccer games. Unlike American venues UK soccer stadiums were not designed for this: we have narrower tread depths and the assumption is that spectators will sit tight during play and not disrupt… Read more: All Change?

Originally published in Panstadia magazine, Q2, 2017 In Beijing in early June to give a presentation entitled “Smarter Buildings, Better Profits” I came across the term “B2B2C”.  A little research revealed that B2B2C is one of over 1 million acronyms held on the ‘Acronym Finders’ website. Those which comprise both letters and numbers often become… Read more: China and B2B2C

Originally published in Panstadia magazine, Q3, 2015 Frei Otto died in March 2015 at the age of 89. What is incredible, when considering his place amongst the truly great names in architecture and engineering, is not so much the contribution that he made in terms of creating a whole new language and form for buildings, but… Read more: FREI OTTO – Impact and Inspiration

Originally published in Panstadia magazine, Q1, 2015 Paul Hyett of Vickery Hyett explains the importance of designing host stadia that are conducive not only to the global sporting event but more importantly to their local community; reflecting their environs. Music, Food, Language, Poetry, Literature, Song, Dance, Clothes and Furniture: these are just some of the… Read more: Expressing ‘Collective Identity’

Originally published by World Architecture Festival, May 2020 Here, in an increasingly beleaguered Britain, many analogies have been made between Covid-19 and World War II:  ……the biggest threat to our freedom since fascism; the virus personified as a hidden, ruthless and cruel enemy random in its attacks; the impact on our economy, manufacturing output, distribution… Read more: Proscription, Prescription, Liberty and Freedom

Originally published by World Architecture Festival, April 2020 It is an extraordinary coincidence that two of the past buildings of Paul Hyett Architects – both featured as building studies in the Architects’ Journal – should have been indirectly involved in the tragic events surrounding the Grenfell fire. The Fire Research Testing Station, completed in 1995,… Read more: Responding To Emergencies

Originally published by World Architecture Festival, October 2019 Ever heard of Run? You should have, especially if you are either in Real Estate or American. And if you are in American Real Estate and you don’t know about ‘Run’ then shame on you…… The account of Run was just one of many fascinating stories that… Read more: The Worst Ever Land Deal and Design Intelligence

Originally published by the Design Intelligence Institute, 2020 Paul Hyett shares musings on life, togetherness and technology in the United Kingdom. We are indeed living through incredible times. Aside from the seismic socio-political and economic changes that were already rocking the stability of our western boat, we are now in the midst of an unprecedented… Read more: Redefining Crowds, Space, Time – and Buildings?