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The influences of twee Americana, glassy towers... and snails
Peter Murray12 Aug 2009
The list includes a number of Prince Charles's favourite architects but his desire to return to traditional styles may yet be thwarted.
Almost every current approach to urban planning and architecture is represented - except for the hi-tech approach of Rogers Stirk Harbour.
Top of HRH's list will surely be Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, leaders of the "New Urbanists" - a movement espoused by the Prince. They create a range of rules to which all buildings have to conform. Their buildings reflect a romantic vision of suburban America, twee with white porches and pastel, but not very Chelsea.
Demitri Porphyrios is one of the Prince's favourites. His buildings are generally classical in design with columns and pediments and he espouses "traditional urban planning". But here he is teamed up with Allies and Morrison, whose architecture is made up of simple rectangular buildings in the Modern style. They worked together on the master plan for the area around King's Cross, but Porphyrios's influence is hard to see. Will he be able to make his presence felt in Chelsea? Robert Stern used to design buildings with columns and traditional features, but now he runs one of America's largest and most successful practices designing glass skyscrapers as well as grand houses that look as if Sir Christopher Wren had a hand in them.
Chelsea residents will be familiar with Paul Davies's architecture since he designed the Duke of York shopping centre on the King's Road. He's teamed up with engineer Alan Baxter who is also an expert in conservation - they could form a middle ground that bridges the gulf between modernists and traditionalists.
Sir Jeremy Dixon and his partner Ed Jones were responsible for the restoration of the Royal Opera House and they excel in the insertion of modern architecture into traditional buildings, but their most recent tour de force - Kings Place at King's Cross is a modern glass building the Prince definitely wouldn't approve of.
Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios is one of the greenest architectural practices around. It has also won the Stirling Prize for a modern housing development in Cambridge and lots of student housing schemes that are unlikely to go down well at Highgrove.
Terry Farrell is a master-planner who understands the history of cities and his analysis of the site will no doubt please HRH, but his architecture may not. He has already upset the residents of Chelsea with his proposal for a 39-storey tower at Lots Road. Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands is responsible for one of the best bits of "modern vernacular" architecture in London - a terrace of houses at Coin Street on the South Bank. Squire and Partners has become known for clean-lined, white Modern buildings which will be softened by Kim Wilkie's landscapes. Wilkie is one of the country's best landscape architects whose work feeds off the history of a place but is modern in its interpretation.
The firm Charles will find hardest to accept is probably Hamiltons Architects. The practice is just completing a striking 43-storey tower at Elephant & Castle and has recently won planning permission in Hammersmith for an office building shaped like a large snail shell.
While Qatari Diar, the developers of Chelsea Barracks, will surely take note of the furore around Richard Rogers's proposals (that were actually much better than they were given credit for), they are a commercial company who need to make a financial return on a site they paid too much for. So the Prince's views will not be the only ones taken into account. The Amir of Qatar, to whom the Prince wrote to complain about Lord Rogers, is carrying out acres of development in his own capital city of Doha - only a fraction of it would find favour with Prince Charles.
Peter Murray is chairman of the New London Architecture centre where people can find out what is happening in architecture and development in the capital. He is also director of the London Festival of Architecture 2010.
