Architects rail at secret contest for Boris’ 2012 tower

Architects expressed outrage this week after it emerged that Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, had bypassed the official public procurement process to find a designer for his £20m tower on the Olympic park.

The Greater London Authority has not yet published a tender notice in the Official Journal. Instead, it has approached 30 practices directly. These include Marks Barfield, Carlo Ratti and Foreign Office Architects.

Roger Hawkins, director of HawkinsBrown, said: “This is incredibly ill-considered. There should have been an open competition over a longer period.”

Piers Gough, director of CZWG, said the process was a “huge disappointment”. He said: “This kind of commission should be open, with the best idea winning.”

The GLA has responded that this is merely a “scoping exercise”. A spokesperson said: “Once the winner is chosen, procurement for the design, construction and project management will follow EU regulations.”

It is understood that Johnson considered a public competition, but instead set up an advisory panel to select a shortlist. The panel includes Julia Peyton Jones and Hans Ulrich Olbrist, who worked for the Serpentine Gallery, as well as Sir Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate, and Sir Stuart Lipton, the former chair of Cabe.

Sunand Prasad, the former RIBA president and a member of the Mayor’s Architectural Advisory Panel, questioned why there was no architect on the panel.

The tower is to stand outside the stadium and may contain the Olympic cauldron.

A spokesperson for the RIBA questioned the project as a whole. She said significant thought would “need to be given as to whether such a structure is the most appropriate way to commemorate the 2012 Games”.

Lawyers who have seen the commissioning document for the 70-150m tower said there was “no clear reason” why the competition was not published in the Official Journal.

Shortlisted designers will present their ideas before Boris Johnson and Tessa Jowell. It is thought the winner will be announced in two weeks.

The artist Paul Fryer designed this bid, entitled Transmission, despite not being invited to tender, when he heard about Boris's secret approach to an elite group of architects. Designed to be clad in stained glass and built from steel, it is Fryer's personal contribution to Boris’ search for an iconic tower. Other bids have not yet been revealed.