Engineers must stand up to architects with knighthoods, says Shuttleworth
Ken Shuttleworth urges engineers to ‘find a new Brunel’
The elevation of the architect over the engineer is to blame for today’s cities being full of unsustainable buildings, Ken Shuttleworth told engineers and students at Imperial College.
Architects are able to get away with their “orgy with glass” because engineers have lost their voice, he said, delivering the Worshipful Company of Paviors’ annual lecture on Tuesday.
The founder of Make urged engineers to “find a new Brunel” who could represent them on television and push an environmental agenda.
“In the 19th century the engineer was king,” he told the audience. “Then architects took over and design became paramount which led to this orgy with glass.
“If the engineer says ‘you can’t have this much glass’ he is sacked and replaced. Engineers need to become more assertive and tell architects what to do.
“Find the best engineer at speaking and put them on TV. Plenty of architects have knighthoods and get on TV. You need a new Brunel to promote engineering,” added Shuttelworth, who spent 30 years at Foster & Partners.
Questioned about the sustainability of Make’s plan to demolish part of the 1980s Broadgate Centre, he said conversion simply wasn’t possible.
Its £340 million replacement was London’s first sustainable office project which tried to reflect the “death of bling”, he added.
“Buildings aren’t built to be monuments. They are commodities that are built to be demolished,” he said.
“London has so many historic buildings and if you can’t knock anything down the city will stagnate. Sense has to prevail. Keep what you can keep and what works and if not, do something better.”
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Readers' comments (35)
It is the callaboration of all involved in buildings that leads to better places to live and work. I Have delivered many great sustainable buildings but these can only be achieved with architects who have real will and not just crushing Egos. More quality professionals, like Ken, lead to better buildings.
Talk about pandering to your audience.... most of these comments are ridiculous, especially someone who wants to be seen to be leading the architectural profession. I seriously hope for Ken's sake, they are taken out of context. BD, can you please print the transcript?
Well said irene.
I dont get it. Should we as architects not be leading the design process and coming up with a concept that drives the scheme forward whilst working with our engineering cousins. This guy is living on an Ego he created at F&P and has not delivered under his own guise.
how does one join the Worshipful Company of Paviors?
i too would like the transcript, and the reporters notes too, and while your collecting all the data to for us to decide if this is true or not, could you post any recordings, references, and emails between the relevent parties....
how dare BD publish anything without providing their readers full proof they are not publishing lies and edited quotes!!!
seriously irene, i bet your fun to work with
“Buildings aren’t built to be monuments. They are commodities that are built to be demolished,”
Clearly wrong here, So the pyramids in Egypt are not monuments and they are meant to be demolished, I think not, that would go against the whole reason the Ancient Egyptians built them. Not sure we need a load of names in Engineering as we do in architecture sometimes I think that is the main problem we have with architecture that these people that have made a name for themselves have too much of a voice. So much so we end up with too much of the architecture people don't want, 60's concrete ghetto's etc. I mean this call for 'sense' by shuttleworth is basically a call to just 'let me tear down whatever I please so I can toss up some ugly looking monstrosity for which I will be paid handsomely and everyone else will hate'. We did that in the 60's and lost too many beautiful buildings, now it sounds like he wants to do more of it, a kind of just so let me 'make' loads of money that's all I care about approach.
is this directed at foster and rogers?
sour grapes?
backwards and forwards like a shuttlecock....
Ken Shuttleworth clearly needs that engineer thats 'good at speaking' to speak for him.... dear oh dear...