The age of ostentation is over

摘要

When I first saw the plans for the new Centre for Music on the site of Powell and Moya's old Museum of London, I thought immediately that the photomontages of the proposed building looked unrealistically utopian, a bit like the plan for an opera house which was going to be built next door to the Houses of Parliament. The project was priced at £288 million, but I have grown sceptical of the first pricing of building projects from Long and occasionally bitter experience with capital projects. There is an inevitable tendency for projects to be underpriced at competition stage, possibly because if the real price were named, the project would be stillborn.