Simon Allford says female colleagues ‘irritated’ by criticism that male-led practice was appointed to women’s prison project
西蒙·奥尔福德(Simon Allford)对反对AHMM重新开发伦敦北部霍洛威女子监狱的批评者进行了回击。
They argued that the opportunity for reimaging the future of one of Britain’s most famous jailsshould have gone to female designers.
But Allford said the women in his office working on the project were riled by the claims.
AHMM, whose four founding directors are men, was chosen by Peabody in 2019 to design 980 homes at the site which closed five years ago as part of a Ministry of Justice strategy to sell off prisons in central London. The scheme, which is due to go in for planning before the end of the year, also includes a ground-floor community facility called the Women’s Building.
Helen Aston, a senior lecturer at Manchester School of Architecture, said earlier this year it was “dismissive, arrogant, and patronising” and “a totally lost opportunity” that the project was not being carried out by a female-led practice.
Sarah Wigglesworth建筑事务所的创始人Sarah Wigglesworth说:“女性应该设计和建造这座建筑。这将增强一代建筑专业人员的能力和技能，并表明建筑是一个可行的，甚至是可取的职业，为女孩和妇女。”
Sarah Akigbogun, vice-chair of Women in Architecture UK and founding director at Studio Aki, called it “another example of the marginalisation of women”.
But Allford told Building Design: “A number of the women architects who work on the job find that criticism deeply irritating.
“The fact they happen to work for a practice that was founded 30 years ago by four men but that is now an employee-owned trust – the fact they get criticised for that and they are dismissed as servants to the practice is something a lot of them take umbrage with. And I share their concern.”
He said the AHMM scheme would “create a whole piece of London that was never in London” because the city grew around the walled prison which was surrounded by fields when it was built in the 1840s.
In aninterview with Building Design to mark the start of his two-year stint as president of the RIBA, Allford also defended his practice’s appointment by Stanhope to design a major new healthcare campus opposite St Thomas’s Hospital in Lambeth.
该计划包括拆除位于盖伊和圣托马斯基金会(Guy’s & St Thomas’Foundation)土地上的两座现代主义公寓楼，这引发了强烈抗议。它们是1957年的坎特伯雷住宅——被比作勒·柯布西耶的联合公寓——和邻近的1964年的斯坦盖特住宅。与之相邻的1974年安永总部贝克特之家也将被翻新。尽管二十世纪协会呼吁保护这些人，但这些人都被豁免列入名单。
Feilden Fowles’ studio on Royal Street and Waterloo City Farm would also go. Building Design’s newly crowned Architect of the Year designed its headquarters and the farm as a meanwhile use on the site in 2018.
Asked whether he could justify knocking down fine modernist buildings and people’s homes, Allford said: “One’s not knocking down people’s homes. One’s looking at buildings and sites and opportunities… With every site you assess what can be kept, what can’t be kept.”
他补充说，目前还没有做出任何决定。他说:“在美丽新世界的战后时代，整个社区都被清除了。”“现在不可能了。我们正处在一个更加协商的时代。这样就好多了。设计师必须更加努力地思考，我们所做的一切都必须是合理的。不是每个人都会同意这个结果，但它经过了一个民主的过程，有很多磋商和测试，没有什么是注定的结果。”
>>Interview | Simon Allford: ‘Architecture will emerge stronger’
贝克特之家和圣托马斯医院由YRM设计，其主席是奥尔福德已故的父亲大卫·奥尔福德。
Allford said: “My father designed St Thomas’s so I’m pleased we’re not knocking that down.”
AHMM is designing two “lab-enabled” office buildings, Piercy & Company is designing an office building and Henley Halebrown is designing a block of flats, while Cobe and Morris & Co are working on the Becket refurb and Feilden Fowles will be designing affordable workspace under the adjacent railway lines.
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