The Secret Life Of Buildings

[poliphilo]

Tom Dyckhoff is a limber elf with a Tin-Tin quiff. He wants an architecture that puts people first and he disapproves of the work of contemporary masters like Gehry, Liebeskind and Hadid because it doesn't. I'm partial to the odd Liebeskind myself, but I take his point. He is good on malls- how they are built to make us buy- and how it serves this purpose for them to be maze-like and full of razzle-dazzlement. He describes your typical mall as "Gehry, dumbed down". In spite of putting the knife into Gehry he ges an interview with him. Gehry says "Hell, it's not as if I'm going to fill your cities with Bilbaos" (or words to that effect) "If I live to build 25 I'll be lucky."

Last night's show was the third in this series.