[Question Liberal Authority]

I agree with him on all the architecture stuff.

Turns out, it's an enormous solar oven. Without air conditioning, you could literally cook hot dogs in the place just by setting them on the window sills. So the entire building is air conditioned to the max 24 hours a day, 365 days per year.

In principle, I am in favor of "eco-friendly" architecture, but in actual practice, anything designed to make a politician feel good will probably have negative unexpected consequences.

The best arbiter of how "eco-friendly" something actually is, is cost. The less something costs, the less land, labor and capital it took to produce that thing. So you could create an "eco-friendly" building simply by asking for the one which would cost the least to build and maintain for 20 years, than you could with 10,000 pages of regulations about window panes and toilet seats and such.

[La Lydia]

Referring to a proposed modern extension to the National Gallery: "What is proposed is like a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend." Prince Charles

"It would seem, however, that the emergent climate-change agenda seems to have offered licence to another generation of architects and designers bent on further divorcing us - through random and untested building shapes and types - from our deeply-rooted connection with Nature's ordering systems which remain true to the rule of climate and season." Prince Charles

"Why, I must ask, does being 'green' mean building with glass and steel and concrete and then adding wind turbines, solar panels, water heaters, glass atria - all the paraphernalia of a new "green building industry" - to offset buildings that are inefficient in the first place?" Prince Charles

"You have to give this much to the Luftwaffe: when it knocked down our buildings it did not replace them with anything more offensive than rubble. We did that." Prince Charles

One of my favorite architecture quotes, but not Prince Charles: "In my experience, if you have to keep the lavatory door shut by extending your left leg, it's modern architecture." Nancy Banks Smith