Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Fly Con

I see yet another seedy and shabby part of Kent is to get an 'iconic building' in the hope that it will do for the area what the Ted Turner Centre has so far done for Margate (i.e create a lot of jobs for architects, consultants, estate agents and property speculators).

According to a report on the BBC's website, this time it's the Isle of Sheppey that's going to benefit from funding to the tune of £37m. It's all based on the island's, um, famous connections to the birth of the aircraft industry, so maybe it stands half a chance of taking off. Although given the track record of iconic buildings in Kent, I wouldn't be surprised if it's still taxiing down the runway 20 years from now.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jonathan Meades excellent program a couple of weeks ago hit the nail on the head. The episode was called 'On The Brandwagon'. I hope they show it again.
Although the producer concentrated on the obvious examples of 'iconeration' (duh?) i.e. Liverpool. Manchester, Bilbao, the programme makers tore the process to shreds.
Emailing the producer Martha Wailes at www.jonathanmeades.com might pique their interest to make follow up programmes exploring the issue in more depth.

Richard Eastcliff said...

You can see a summary of the programme in which Meadesie banged on about regeneration and the need for everyone these days to build a '3D logo' here.

Anonymous said...

Dont forget the lovely lawyers in that list Eastcliff old chum, ahh lawyers dont you just love um.

Richard Eastcliff said...

Lawyers, eh! Don't talk to me about lawyers! I had that Victor Mishcon on the phone once, wanted to let me know that his client would take a very dim view of what I had said about him on the tellybox. Told him to bog off. Cost me £20,000, but it was worth it!

Anonymous said...

There is only one thing worse than being talked about - and that is NOT being talked about - or so they say