The RIBA are holding a hustings in one of the most interesting constituencies for pollsters in the country - Oxford East. The seat is thought to be winnable by the three main political parties Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat and was highlighted today at a meeting with YouGov chief Peter Kellner as a seat to watch out for on the night, particuarly as the recent advances that the Liberal Democrats have made with today’s YouGov poll showing Conservatives on 33%, Liberal Democrats on 31% and Labour on 27%.

And today is the last day you can register to vote.

Details of the debate if you would like to attend:

General Election Hustings Debate: Architecture and the Built Environment

Tuesday 27^th April 2010, please arrive by 6:15pm for a 6:30pm start

Council Chamber, Oxford Town Hall, St Aldate’s, Oxford OX1 1BX
Philip Waddy (Chair), Chair of RIBA South Region
Ed Argar, Conservative candidate for East Oxford
Sushila Dhall, Green candidate for East Oxford
Julia Gasper, UKIP candidate for East Oxford
Dr Steve Goddard, Liberal Democrat candidate for East Oxford
Andrew Smith, Labour candidate for East Oxford. 

Come and pose questions to candidates from these political parties about the future of the built environment and the issues which underpin it, from housing and planning, to climate change and government procurement.

Free event, booking essential. To book email RIBA South

With a week that sees the publication of all the manifestos and the start of the leaders TV debates, it is full steam ahead for the election. So far Labour have used their manifesto to focus on ‘a future fair for all’ with pledges for targets for affordable housing, green jobs and high speed rail as well as confirming their commitment to architecture and minimum design standards for all public buildings. The Conservatives published their hardback tome to focus on the economy, dealing with the deficit and changes from central targets to a localist approach, for example, local parents and community groups able to set up their own schools. And the Lib Dems today focus too on the idea of fairness, costing their proposals with savings they identify so that they can reduce class sizes,  tackle the carbon targets by loans for energy performance for homes and lowering VAT on home maintenance and repair.

Labour manifesto
Conservative manifesto
Liberal Democrat manifesto

Let us know what you think by posting comments here.

The RIBA has been testing out candidates views with hustings in Brighton and Bristol. In Brighton candidates debated how to deliver for Brighton balancing the needs for conservation and preservation and the increasing requirements for more development of new homes and the need for retrofitting and green measures which might change the look and feel of Brighton as a city. Candidates were challenged as to which cities were their inspiration - they ranged from Copenhagen, Sydney and Amsterdam to Sutton and BedZed but none were as bold as to suggest that Brighton itself was their inspiration!

In Bristol aboard the SS Great Britain candidates from the Bristol West seat focused on housing too - how to deliver affordable and social housing in Bristol. What to do about the need for retrofitting the cities homes and non domestic buildings, thoughts on environmental standards and the role of local communities in development.

Listen to the audio of Bristol Hustings.
To download the download the mp3 (96MB, 1hr 45 min), right click and select ’save target as’ then save as mp3.  

Next up Plymouth on Friday 16 April. Email publicaffairs@inst.riba.org for more information.

Before an election time the final pieces of legislation need to debated in a much shorter time -  this is termed wash-up. The RIBA has been an unlucky loser in the process as the digital economies bill amongst others is to be debated on Tuesday during the time when our architecture spokespeople were due to be answering questions from architects and others in the built environment industry.

Please post comments of questions you would have liked to ask the three parties here.

The RIBA’s election season got underway last night with the RIBA West Midlands question time debate “Buildings Matter”, held in conjunction with partners form the construction industry. Staking a claim for David Dimbleby’s crown was RIBA regional Chair Dhiran Vagdia, who chaired a lively and wide-ranging debate between the three main parties. Dhiran was joined on the stage by Labour candidate for Birmingham Erdington Jack Dromey and two candidates vying for the Solihull seat – the sitting Lib Dem MP Lorely Burt and Conservative candidate Maggie Throup.

The underlying theme for the evening was the economy: how and when to cut public spending and the merits of “growing Britain out of recession”; pleas from the floor to provide economic stimulus with a cut on VAT for refurb and a general feeling that the UK had to invest in improving its skills base in order to come out stronger from recession. Localism and the role of government was touched on too – Jack Dromey arguing that the Conservatives housing and planning proposals would spark nimbyism, whilst Maggie Throup countered that her party’s plans would encourage greater community buy-in for new development. Meanwhile, Lorely Burt set out the case for a National Infrastructure Bank and her party’s plans for cutting the deficit.

All in all a great taster for what is to come. Next up is the RIBA’s hustings in London on April 6th, followed by two events in the Westcountry; Bristol on the 9th and Plymouth on the 16th April. For further details on the RIBA’s election activity and information on how to get involved, visit our website at www.architecture.com/manifesto or follow the RIBA Twitter stream at http://twitter.com/riba

How we encourage, coerce or insist that homeowners improve their homes to help the UK meet our carbon targets is an issue that seems to be gaining pace with politicians and those of us lobbying them. All three parties have committed to a variety of loans and ways of paying so that we make improvements to our homes which currently account for 28% of the UK’s total carbon emissions. And yet no party seems to be proposing enough to tackle the situation on a large scale. The RIBA, in our manifesto, has called for the next Government to retrofit 4 million homes within the lifetime of the next parliament. The latest Government announcement last week appears to say it will meet that commitment by eco-fitting seven million homes by 2020. It’s clear that to get people to take up any kind of retrofit offer however, we will need a combination of carrot and stick.

The ‘Cut the VAT’ coalition (RIBA is a member) proposes a cut in VAT on home maintenance and repair to 5%. The coalition asserts that by lowering VAT, more homeowners will take up the offer of eco-fitting their homes particularly if at the same time they are putting in a new kitchen or bathroom. A new report commissioned by the coalition reports that a cut in VAT would create more than 24,000 jobs in the construction sector, as well as an extra 31,000 other new jobs in the wider economy in 2010 alone and contribute more than £1.4 billion to the UK economy in 2010, rising to £17 billion by 2019. So the drop in VAT could be the carrot. But there might need to be a few sticks as well. This week the UK Green Buildings Council called for mandating for higher levels of energy efficiency for homeowners carrying out extensions (consequential improvements) and for properties to be upgraded relating to their Energy Performance Certificates. Both measures are certainly the stick.

The RIBA is hosting a hustings in London on 6 April, come and pose your questions to the architecture spokespeople of the three main political parties. More details.

At times like this cash really is king and according to Business Link, not doing the basics such as a regular cash flow forecast increases the chance of business failure by 45%. 

Ten tips for financial health: 

1. Cash flow and financial planning should be on your management meeting agenda’s every time. 

2. Regularly update your cash flow forecast. 

3. If you have a conflict in choosing between increasing profits or increasing cash, take the cash route. 

4. Watch your borrowing covenants carefully so you know when/if you are likely to be in breech. 

5. If you have a review with your bank or investors, prepare thoroughly. 

6. Keep your bank informed in advance of getting into difficulty. 

7. Consider all alternative sources of finance. 

8. Keep in touch with potential funders before you think you might need them. 

9. If your business survival is under threat, think of assets that can be sold, new injections of cash and take professional financial and legal advice. 

10. If you are cash rich, consider ways of using the funds for the long term benefit of your business. 

You can read my personal blog at http://finance-director.blogspot.com/

 John Toppin at www.nomizon.co.uk 

 James Cooke at www.jamescookecoaching.com

Palladio 500 Exhibition

The exhibition has now closed in Madrid and the drawings are safely back in their boxes.

So here concludes our Palladio Blog. Its been a long journey. We’ve been working on Palladio since 2006, four years!

Here are some handy stats for the tour:

Miles ‘trucked’: 4390 Miles, 10 flights to and from four top European destinations

I’m sure everyone has by now heard of Google’s announcement that they may ‘leave the Chinese market’. Although it is not clear what is fully meant by this at this time, it is a situation which poses many ethical questions for all foreign-owned enterprises currently undertaking work in China or similar political contexts.

Google claims that their period of reflection is as a result of what they believe to be state-sponsored manipulation of their Googlemail application. This somewhat ignores the overwhelming animosity that the company received in the West prior to entering the market in early 2006. This was in response to the company’s apparent decision to comply with Chinese censorship legislation requiring it to hide search results from a variety of different subjects.

This is a dilemma that certain architectural sectors have had to deal with many times in the past. One may, possibly naively, assume that, as a liberal profession, the position of the architect may be not to engage with the dictator or the authoritarian regime, but I think we would be wrong. I am specifically reminded of Foster and Partners’ recent works in many questionable democracies on the central Asian steppes.

An interesting case in point is in fact the company I now work for, Ove Arup. The firm has been a market leader in Hong Kong for decades, but was also one of the first of the foreign practices to use this foundation to enter the mainland market. The first mainland office opened in 1984 in Shanghai and remained a lone outpost until quite recently. It was only upon China’s succession to the WTO in 2000 that the practice initiated a series of new openings along the eastern and southern seaboards. So, why the delay?

One could argue that this was because the country at this point received the international ’seal of approval’ - a collective decision had been reached to work with the state, putting other pressing rights issues on the backburner. The Peoples’ Republic gained full legitimacy at this time - for the first time more countries recognised the PRC over the ROC as the ‘real’ China, Beijing was awarded the Olympics. I think it is actually  more simple than this even. Although the morality of such a decision is ambiguous, the economics are not. China is too big a market to ignore and it was at this point that the scale of development became too large not to engage.

I heard recently an extremely interesting analysis by the eminent historian of political government Peter Hennessy on BBC Radio. In this piece he described the government here as a, “tyranny by any other name,” and took the stance that companies should never, “dicker around with tyrants, however important they are in the world.” Although I must say that this utopian and principled position is morally appealing it is not, as I have described, realistic in the world that we inhabit. It is the received opinion that liberal democracy won the cold war. This is clearly not true. Of the CIS states today, only those on the Baltic could be described as fully functioning democracies. And China has only continued to grow. Do we ignore these billions of people?

The common comparison, made by many wishing to disengage, with the economic blockade South African apartheid regime in the 1970s and 1980s is, in my opinion, both unfair and unhelpful. Any blockade would today be unilateral, many of these states are members of the WTO and active members of the international community. They cannot and will not be frozen out. We no longer live in a world dominated by the postwar allied powers and have, realistically, no choice, economically and politically, but to engage due their sheer power and influence. I believe the arts and architecture in particular, are therefore extremely relevant as ambassadors for change in these lands.

As a result of the political stability that many of these regimes provide (regardless that this may be to the detriment of civil rights), there is an opportunity for economic and civic development that will improve people’s lives. Architects are at the forefront of this change. They are a medium for the physical transformation of the world in which the citizens of these states live. One could therefore argue that they have a responsibility to be there, to enable change.

So. Should Google pull out? I’m not so sure. Maybe they should never have entered the market in the first place in order to comply with their mantra, ‘don’t be evil’. But they did, and they are now here. This changes the situation enormously in my opinion and loads upon them more responsibility due to their adopted role as a stakeholder in Chinese society. Maybe their responsibility is to stay? Maybe we should ask the shareholders…

The RIBA has called for an ambitious and effective international response to climate change, to be agreed at the 15th United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties in Copenhagen, Denmark, 7–18 December 2009.

See the RIBA’s climate change policy.

Well I’ve just returned from an interesting weekend in the city of Foshan. I was invited by my boss, Jane, to attend the annual architecture forum in her home city of Foshan. This is a city of a few million (small in the Chinese context), situated about three hours north-west of Shenzhen.

It was great to get out of the city and see some more of the region. What most surprised me was the urban environment. Shenzhen merges into Dongguan, which merges into Guangzhou which merges into Foshan. Guangdong Province is a sea of dense urban sprawl - the world’s factory floor.

Foshan was a delight, however. As it was Jane’s home town she took us to a great local noodle shop, although to be honest I can’t describe the joy I felt when presented with the Swissotel breakfast buffet! A proper English Breakfast, with baked beans.

My room on the forty-sixth floor had a fantastic view of the city laid out below. Foshan is an ancient city and although now much smaller than its neighbour Guangzhou, the two maintain a rivalry as to which is the birthplace of Cantonese culture.

Unusually for traditional Chinese cities, Foshan has no urban centre, but instead a string of neighborhood clusters organised around the many waterways that intersects the urban fabric. This gives the city a smaller, more human scale that is both unusual and at risk of being lost forever in the contemporary Chinese developmental context.

Arup were presenting a recent project in the city - the Culture Mall. This project is massive by European standards and designed to equip the city with the cultural capital in museums, auditoria and the like to enable it to compete both nationally and internationally. The form of the project was inspired by the unique urban fabric of the city and is such extremely fitting in its exciting and eclectic design.

The forum was an interesting opportunity for me to see the kind of work going on in the city and it was extremely impressive to see the focus the city and it’s government were putting on the implementation of good design principles. This does not mean, however, that I was overly impressed with all of the projects. It was clear to me that good design in this region seems to be dominated by a few select firms which sadly means that the majority of developments are made up of buildings - not architecture. Some may argue that this is the norm in most of the world and I would agree. The fundamental difference is that here in China the scale is so different and the amount of construction is so huge that this situation can have a much larger detrimental effect on the urban environment due to the sheer greater number of users involved.