Leader British architecture needs to find a middle ground between iconic and uninspiring, says Kieran Long

摘要

We should be grateful that Make's proposed 'iconic' cylindrical residential tower in Leeds has been canned (seepage 5), if only because it has the worst name in the history of branded buildings - the 'Spiracle'. (I know in biology it's a term for some kind of gill, but it sounds like an unhappy conflation of'spire' and 'oracle' that Tolkien might have come up with on a bad day.) But this cancellation, as well as providing evidence of the nervousness in the residential market right now, shouldn't mask the fact that Carey Jones is carrying quietly on with the rest of the mixed-use project. On the one hand, this decision shows that the money is no longer in residential for developers, on the other it proves that there is money around, for the time being, for retail and office building of modest ambition.