When some 700 people throng the auditorium at Earl’s Court to hear a debate about whether eco houses are ugly, then a frustrated tree-hugger like myself may feel that we are halfway to heaven, not that I plan to share my Elysium with Germaine Greer in ranting mode if I can avoid it.
When some 700 people throng the auditorium at Earl’s Court to hear a debate about whether eco houses are ugly, then a frustrated tree-hugger like myself may feel that we are halfway to heaven, not that I plan to share my Elysium with Germaine Greer in ranting mode if I can avoid it. Her views on domestic architecture, like those of most radical intellectuals, seem to be strictly bourgeois and conventional, so that, despite her passion for this particular campaign, she is becoming the Jeremy Clarkson of architectural criticism.
Greer was opposed in the debate by the architect Bill Dunster, designer of the pioneering housing complex, BedZED, at Hackbridge, Surrey, for the Peabody Trust, and several (but not nearly enough) subsequent projects of lesser size.
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