Death Star Two

My regular readers (and you have grown from being a mere football team in number to rival the attendance at a village match in bad weather - in Scotland) will recall that outside the media field I'm also interested in design, urbanism and architecture.

Which moves me to cite the architect of the Death Star (illustrated above, and with luck to rise from the sands of Ras Al Khaima), Rem Koolhaas. I like the way he compares architecture and television.

"There are heartfelt efforts by local architects to work with traditions. There is also a quasi-Islamic aesthetic by Western architects to give their work an Islamic look, which I find quite embarrassing. I see many of these buildings not having a long life. One thing that must be realised is that architecture today doesn’t have the same pretence of eternity that architecture used to have.

Al Jazeera is an interesting way to illustrate my point. Television is a tool invented by America but nobody doubts that Al Jazeera is Arabic, has an Arabic message and conforms to Arabic values. Architecture is the same way. Once it is inhabited or shaped by local conditions, it acquires that character."

The takeaway (now pinned up and in 72pt bold): Once it is inhabited or shaped by local conditions, it acquires that [local] character.