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Qataris support Rogers’ Chelsea barracks design
Amar Singh01.05.09
The developer behind the controversial Chelsea barracks scheme today confirmed its “wholehearted commitment” to the architect Lord Rogers' plan, despite opposition from Prince Charles.
Project Blue — made up of Qatari Diar, the property development arm of the Qatari Royal family, and Christian Candy's CPC Group — announced it had written to Westminster council to reaffirm it commitment to the design.
The council is considering a plan for the Ł1 billion site submitted by Qatari Diar in February. Last month it emerged that Prince Charles had written to Qatari Diar stating his opposition to the “modern” design and suggested it replace Lord Rogers with the architect Quinlan Terry.
A spokesman for Qatari Diar said: “We were concerned about misleading reports and rumours and wanted to give a public affirmation of our wholehearted commitment to the scheme.”
Last week, Lord Rogers, 75, spoke of his frustration. He said: “We have worked for two and a half years on this project. Now it's suddenly all up in the air because of the Prince. He's a very important man, you know.”
Reader views (2)
Mr H.I have you actually even looked at the project? Its design is incredibly relevant and used bang upto date technology to invest in its future stake in design and is incredibly sympathethic with its layout. The truth is that charles just simply isn't willing to except the future and unfortunately he's finding it very hard to except that most people actually do prefer clean spacious modern design over dark dank boxes. What we really need to do is embrace our climatic design ideas and applied them with modern techniques to strike the occasional balance, it's just such a shame that someone who essential could help us develop is so struck by their own issues that their holding future developments back.
- An Actual Brain, the moon
well if your insist on building such yawningly bland modernist clap trap what do you expect 'lord' rogers ?
- H. I. Rise, London
