Design body softens stance on Allies & Morrison's designs after architect submits revisions
The government's design watchdog has softened its stance on Allies & Morrison and RPS Burks Green's designs for the 2012 media centre buildings.
Following Cabe's Olympic design review panel's savaging of the original designs, the architects took the scheme back to the drawing board.
The results are “encouraging”, says Cabe, with the international broadcast centre designs showing a “more rigorous and considered facade strategy” and the main press centre's external detailing showing “promise”.
Cabe's Olympic design review panel also praised a new design for the media centre's car park, which will now be clad in perforated metal to give the building a “distinctive identity”.
The comments are a sea change from Cabe's review of 23 April, when it labelled the buildings' architecture as “extremely weak” and slammed the international broadcast centre for its “extraordinary banality”.
In the wake of that humbling review, architect Allies & Morrison reviewed the cladding scheme for both buildings and has made improvements that have found favour with the design quango's review panel.
The review said: “We believe that the revisions to each of the three main elements now demonstrate a continuity of design thinking across the site. With the appropriate planning conditions in place we believe the revisions create the potential for a viable design outcome, both during and after Games.”
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