Artlog

Jonathan Glancey: Frozen skyline as architecture works out how not to come to a halt in the recession |

by lacey / about 1 month ago / Source: www.guardian.co.uk

“In the last recession, 40% of architects lost their jobs. Are they prepared for this one? And how will the crunch affect our once-booming cityscapes? ‘I didn’t lose any work in the first recession I experienced,’ says Zaha Hadid, ‘because I didn’t have any work.’ This was the early 1970s, the time of the three-day week, when the lights of Great Britain Ltd appeared to be switching off for good. ‘I was drawing with freezing cold hands in rooms lit by candles. It seems almost unbelievable now. If I learned something, it was that anything can happen. We’re doing well today, but this is partly because so many of our projects are in places like Dubai, which seem immune from recession. But you never know.’

You certainly don’t. Last week, Frank Gehry’s first major project in Britain was ditched, making it the first big victim, architecturally, of the credit crunch. Plans for a dramatic development of 750 flats facing the sea at Brighton were dropped when the developer, Karis, failed to find fresh funds, three months after Dutch bank ING pulled out. If Gehry – creator of the famous “Bilbao effect”, by which thrilling architecture triggers urban regeneration – can be tossed aside by recession-wary banks, what about less celebrated architects?...”