Stirling Award

Barajas Airport in Madrid won the RIBA Stirling Prize last night in a glitzy ceremony at the Roundhouse in London. Richard Rogers Partnership, which designed the building, collected a well deserved cheque for £20,ooo. Very nice.

Interestingly enough, the Guardian ran an article on Saturday listing the previous winners of the prestigious award.

The article focused on the problems encountered with the new buildings. As one architect reported, some of the previous winners are not even fit for their purpose.

Take for example the Lord’s Media Centre -  the BBC correspondent, Christopher Martin – Jenkins claims it is so bright you can’t see your laptop.

Perhaps Richard Rogers Partnership should hand the £20,000 to their client to help pay for the cleaning of the glass.

Housing Crash is coming

House prices have once again risen in England and Wales by 0.5%, however the overlying trend for the year shows that house prices have dropped by 0.6%.

 

Most experts are expecting a slow down in the market or a levelling out. However a book by Fred Harrison claims that a property crash will happen in 2010. Entitled ‘From Bust to Boom and Back‘, Mr Harrison identifies an 18-year property cycle which has recurred with remarkable regularity and similarity in different parts of the world under different political, economic and cultural conditions.

In an interview on Radio 5 this morning, Mr Harrison claimed that the recent property rise in London and the South East is ‘the second ripple effect’ and a crash is sure to follow.

Not all is doom and gloom, the book does provide solutions to preventing a decline in the market, by adopting various theories from past economists.

The claim of a crash has been strongly rejected by various property professionals claiming that the demand for housing is  simply too high, along with a low interest rate and a stable workforce.

Realistically everyone in the industry believes that the market will slow down, what has to be seen is whether this slow down will lead to a lack of confidence and a crash.

Enjoy your weekend!

IOS/OAS Winners

British Land won the prestigiuos award for best Office Developer of the Year, whilst ProLogis was awarded the best Industrial Developer of the Year. The awards were presented to Boris Johnson at the London Hilton organised by the Property Week

The Red Book’s Red Book

The RICS Red Book aims ‘to ensure that valuations produced by members achieve high standards of integrity, clarity and objectivity, and are reported in accordance with recognised bases that are appropriate for the purpose.’

A guide book has been recently released to help surveyors through all the detail included in the Red Book

Guess what colour the clever people at the RICS decided for the book..

The book is available for £24.99 through the RICS bookshop

Price of loyalty

Our friends in Luxembourg have now found that you can not pay some people more money solely based on longer service. The Guardian quite rightly points out that this will have ‘a potentially huge impact on public sector employers, including the civil service, where wide differentials based on length of service are more common than in the private sector’.

Whilst the court ruling found that there were circumstances where greater experience meant a person could undertake their duties better and therefore warranted higher pay, this was not always the case. Employers would have to justify paying higher salaries for more experienced staff.

Looks like they have opened a family sized can of worms…

Tolworth Bridge

Tesco have submitted a ‘green’ planning application for the development of the former Ministry of Defence site in Tolworth. As reported by Property Week today, the proposal includes for662 new homes, half of which will be an affordable quota, as well as some community failities.

The proposal includes for a ‘green bridge’ linking Tolworth Broadway and the new development situated on the opposite side of the A3.

We can only guess what makes the bridge ‘green’. Recycled carrier bags perhaps?