We have allowed this political interference

From Alan Holmes.

YOUR editorial (JEP 7Jun) is without doubt the true and very sad final Last Will and Testament to the complete and utter failure of what was promised to the people of this Island to be ‘world-class cutting-edge architecture’ by the various interfering elements of our so-called government.

It simply breaks my heart to have to view each morning the amorphous mass that is now there, but is also increasing on a daily basis for all to see.

At the time that I nominated the truly awful structure – and I make no apologies for this, as it absolutely deserved it – that gained the dubious honour of being given the 2008 Carbuncle Cup for the most ugly building in Britain I really believed we as an Island would learn from this mistake.

But no, courtesy of Planning and former Deputy Guy de Faye, we now have Carbuncle 2, the new Energy from Waste plant.

This makes Carbuncle 1 – courtesy of Senator Philip Ozouf, who was in charge and approved the scheme at the time – pale into insignificance. If anyone should doubt the validity of this claim take a stroll to the seafront at the Dicq.

Why, we must ask, has this all been allowed to happen? Well, there are some very simple key points, like no initial master plan – and please do not let anyone write in to say there was, as any so-called master plan came long after the work on the Waterfront had started – no long term foresight and overall objectives as to what we actually wanted our Waterfront to become, just piecemeal development, something that everyone knew from the outset would be a recipe for disaster.

Anyone who has travelled this planet, I am sure, could name numerous brilliant examples of successful waterfront developments that got it right.

Perhaps the single most deadly factor of what has happened on this brand new area of land is the dead hand of political interference, with people making major planning and design decisions who simply are incapable of knowing the difference between a ‘pediment’ and a ‘pedicure’.

This is why we have buildings that assault our senses and make us want to scream.

Believe it or not it is a natural human ability (for most people, that is) to know what is architecturally pleasing to the eye and what is not.

A very simple guide to good architecture is that you should want to look at a building each and every time you pass by, even perhaps stopping in awe of it, whereas on the other hand one simply wants to look away and perhaps try, like a bad dream, to make out it does not really exist.

Many years ago the States of Jersey commissioned a document called the Downey Report. This set out key objectives with regard to the ‘views’ (read site lines) among many other things which should be retained from the central town district, in other words to continue to link the town with the Harbour or, as we now call it, the Waterfront.

This report, like the many thousands of similar such documents, was ignored by the ‘we know better brigade’ and the resultant disaster is there for all to see. Will lessons be learned?

I seriously doubt it. Will we be proud of the end result? I seriously doubt it.

Are we all culpable in this disaster? You bet we are, purely and simply for allowing it to happen in the first place.