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Environmental group says the plan will create a legal headache for any government pushing ahead with airport's expansion

Environmental activists have invited some of the UK's leading architects to design an "impenetrable fortress" to be built on land earmarked for the third runway at Heathrow.

Greenpeace plans to build the winning design at the centre of the site where airport operator BAA hopes to construct a £7bn runway and a sixth terminal.

The charity bought the parcel of land last year and then distributed ownership to more than 60,000 supporters around the world.

Organisers say the small individual plots will create a legal headache for any government trying to push ahead with the expansion plans.

The Sheet Architecture News Activism, Air transport, Airline industry, Architecture, Business, Climate change, Environment, Greenpeace, guardian.co.uk, Heathrow third runway, News, UK news

The Manchester United football star plans to build an eco-home which closely resembles that of the Teletubbies . . .

Manchester United star Gary Neville has revealed plans to build an underground "eco-bunker" (above) at his home in Lancashire. Locals have already dubbed it Teletubbyland (top). Artists' impressions of the £8m zero-carbon development, designed to merge seamlessly with the surrounding moorland, resemble something between a futuristic hobbit hole and the hideout of a rural Bond villain. The architects, meanwhile, have compared it with Skara Brae, a neolithic settlement in Orkney. Whatever inspired this hillside hideaway, its similarity to the Teletubby residence is hard to deny. Rumours of a plan to build a vacuum-cleaning dog named Noo-Noo are so far unconfirmed.

The Sheet Architecture News Architecture, Carbon emissions, Carbon footprints, Celebrity, Energy efficiency, Environment, Features, Football, Green building, Homes, The Guardian

An engineering firm reckons that rebuilding the palace could make Her Majesty much greener. But why stop there?

A nefarious plot to destroy Buckingham Palace has been exposed, but it's not the work of terrorists, anarchists or extremist property developers. No, this one comes from an engineering consultancy. Before the capital goes on high alert, Atkins, a design and engineering group, weren't actually intending to carry out this plan. In a none-too-serious assessment of the building's green credentials, rather, they dropped the hint – or was it a gauntlet? – that the Queen might be better off with a new London eco-crib.

Atkins's proposal was part of a fanciful survey by Construction Manager magazine into how much it might cost to rebuild British landmarks. It concluded that you could build a new energy-efficient replica of the palace for a knock-down £320m (Stonehenge would be £815m, but it's hard to see how you could make a collection of stones any greener). Among other improvements, the report suggested replacing the palace's 760 sash windows with double-glazed replicas, and installing photovoltaic panels, ground-source heat pumps and masses of insulation. With such changes, the royal carbon footprint would be 400 tonnes of CO² lighter every year, it estimates, and the palace's £2.2m utilities bill would be slashed by 90%.

According to a bemused Palace spokesperson, there are currently no plans to raze the Queen's London home –it is a Grade I listed building (is the Queen allowed to destroy those?). The spokesperson also pointed out that the Royal family's green credentials were actually pretty decent already, thank you. In a recent (proper) energy audit, Buckingham Palace was rated a "C" (A being the highest and G the lowest) – very good for a hulking 18th-century pile. It's had a CHP (combined heat and power) unit since 1995, it uses water from a bore hole in the garden to cool the wine cellars and for some of the air conditioning, and some of the skylights are actually double-glazed. Although, that's nothing compared to Balmoral, which is powered by its own hydroelectric plant.

But more interesting than assessing the greenness of the Queen is the prospect of a new Buckingham Palace. A replica would be 10 times more expensive than the original, says Atkins, since the craftsmen and artisans required for the job are now highly-paid specialists, rather than jobbing joiners and plasterers. And that's using a concrete and steel frame and off-the-shelf materials, rather than proper stone. But why build a replica? Despite the palace's history, it's not really much of a building, architecturally, is it? Originally the home of the Duke of Buckingham, it was bought by George III in 1761. Since then, a number of architects have tried to improve it, including John Nash, Edward Blore and finally, Aston Webb, who gave it the neoclassical makeover we all know. Nikolaus Pevsner accurately described it as "a large and rather stiff country house" – surely not the right image for a forward-looking monarchy. Why not do something a bit more urban and up-to-date instead?

The obvious problem with building any state-of-the-art eco-palace, though, is the heir apparent. Given Prince Charles's views on architecture, he probably would rather build an exact replica than anything else. On the other hand, we could give it to Richard Rogers as payback for the Chelsea Barracks scheme, which was so roundly scuppered by the Prince's intervention last year. Or put it out to competition. Just think what a decent architect could do with £320m and a prime 40-acre site. But who could or should design such a residence? To the wrecking ball, citizens!

The Sheet Architecture News Architecture, Art and design, Comment, Culture, Design, Environment, Green building, guardian.co.uk, Heritage, The Queen

Hull and Portsmouth could be dramatically remodelled, suggests report

Hull could be transformed into a Venice-like waterworld and Portsmouth into a south coast version of Amalfi, engineers and architects have claimed in a study of options for developing Britain's coastal cities in the face of rising sea levels.

The Institution of Civil Engineers and the Royal Institute of British Architects yesterday warned the future of cities including London, Bristol and Liverpool was at risk from seas which the Environment Agency predict could rise by as much as 1.9m by 2095 in the event of a dramatic melting of the Greenland ice sheet.

The report, Facing up to Rising Sea Levels. Retreat? Defence? Attack?, suggests swaths of Hull and Portsmouth's city centres could be allowed to flood over the next 100 years and large parts of the populations moved out.

In a model that explores managed retreat from the coast in some areas, Hull's historic city centre would be limited to an island reached by bridges and Venetian-style water taxis, while in Portsmouth large parts of Portsea island would be given back to the sea while new "hillside living" developments would be built on densely packed hillside terraces, akin to the towns of Italy's Amalfi coast. "The scenarios we have created are extreme, but it is an extreme threat we are facing," said Ruth Reed, Riba president. "Approximately 10 million people live in flood-risk areas in England and Wales, with 2.6m properties directly at risk of flooding."

Other options include building out into rising waters using piers and platforms to create new habitable space – a strategy known as "attack". In Hull this could involve floating disused oil rigs up the Humber and reusing them for offices, homes and university buildings, while in Portsmouth two-storey piers could be built with the lower tier used for traffic and the top tier used for pedestrian space.

Architect David West, one of the report's author's, admitted the proposals were "blue sky thinking" and uncosted, but said they had the potential to relieve pressure for housing on inland sites. "I think the concept of arriving at Hull as if you were arriving at Venice airport and taking a boat into the city is really exciting."

The proposals were met with scepticism in Portsmouth. "A retreating coastline in this area would have a significant detrimental impact on the internationally designated harbours," said Bret Davies, a coastal strategy manager at Portsmouth city council.

The Environment Agency's coastal policy adviser, Nick Hardiman, warned that extending into the sea was likely to be too expensive and structures were not likely to be sustainable.In the next financial year the Environment Agency will spend £570m on building and maintaining flood defences.

The Sheet Architecture News Architecture, Climate change, Communities, Environment, Flooding, guardian.co.uk, News, Sea level, Society, UK news

• Letters and seminars pushed 'traditional' view
• Campaigners seek release of all correspondence

When Gordon Brown was campaigning to become prime minister in the early summer of 2007, he announced that he wanted to build more than 100,000 homes in 10 carbon-neutral ecotowns to create a "home-owning, asset-owning, wealth-owning democracy".

Royal aides looked on intently at the rapidly changing political landscape, and, eager to keep the Prince of Wales involved in the environmental issues of the day, seized their chance to influence the highest profile policy of the new Labour administration.

They moved fast. On 28 June 2007, 24 hours after Brown moved into 10 Downing Street, senior aides at one of Prince Charles's charities dispatched a letter about ecotowns to Hazel Blears, the Salford MP whom Brown had the day before promoted to secretary of state for communities and local government with responsibility for his town-building policy.

Dr Steven Parissien, the director of education and skills at the Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment, Charles's architecture and planning charity, wrote to Blears inviting her to its one-day symposium, Creating Eco-Towns.

It was to be more than a talking shop. Parissien made clear that the event would make the case that ecotowns should follow the model of Poundbury, the controversial neo-Georgian village built to Charles's vision in Dorset.

"The aim of the event," he told Blears, "is to frame a positive way forward to respond to Gordon Brown's recent, and extremely timely, call for the construction of new ecotowns throughout Britain, using the model of HRH the Prince of Wales's development at Poundbury in Dorset."

Two days later, another letter was dispatched to Blears, this time from Hank Dittmar, the chief executive of the foundation and an aide to the prince. He promoted the prince's view, vigorously disputed by many architects, that new towns should be built using "traditional" styles.

Dittmar asked Blears to consider the findings of a foundation research paper on increasing housing supply by building "mixed use, medium density settlements to traditional patterns" and requested a meeting with her "to explain the principles and tools promoted by the foundation which can deliver better, more inclusive neighbourhoods and town centres".

The letters, bearing the prince's heraldic badge, were effective. Yvette Cooper, the housing minister, agreed to speak at the seminar, while Blears invited Dittmar to join a "stakeholder reference group" which her department was assembling for the ecotowns project.

Evidence of the lobbying efforts emerged from a series of requests under the Freedom of Information Act from the Guardian to Whitehall ministries asking them to release correspondence from Charles and aides at his architecture foundation. It revealed that in the last three years, Charles wrote to ministers in at least eight government departments, and his aides were willing to engage with ministers on overtly political matters, often with success.

Campaigners for the abolition of the monarchy believe that ministers are likely to give a letter from the prince's charity almost equal weight to a letter from the prince himself. They believe that all the correspondence should be made public.

"The charity is little more than a soapbox for his views," said Graham Smith, campaign manager for the Republic campaign group. "It promotes his world view, which is quasi-environmental feudalism."

The departments refused to release the letters received from Charles, citing the need for the heir to the throne to be aware of government business and to be able to communicate with ministers on it confidentially.

In the past, Charles is reported to have told Tony Blair that farmers were being treated worse than black and gay people. He also allegedly told the prime minister he was destroying the countryside and urged him to drop the ban on fox-hunting. In another letter to Blair, he urged the government to do more to help families fleeing Robert Mugabe's brutal regime in Zimbabwe. His former deputy private secretary, Mark Bolland, has described how he saw "on many occasions … letters which, for example, denounced the elected leaders of other countries in extreme terms".

But the departments did release letters from the foundation, which revealed its lobbying of Andy Burnham, then chief secretary to the Treasury, Patricia Hewitt, then health secretary, and ministers at the communities department, the Foreign Office and the culture department.

In February 2008, Dittmar met Lady Andrews, the undersecretary of state with responsibilities including planning and planning inspectors, when they discussed opportunities for joint projects. In a follow-up letter Dittmar offered to run seminars for civil servants and planning inspectors using prince's foundation projects as examples of best practice. He also suggested a joint research project into what prevents the wider use of the prince's favourite planning techniques, and a research project to quantify how much time the techniques could save. He concluded: "I am very enthusiastic about your department and the foundation working together on these initiatives."

In May, Professor Anthony Hopwood, the chairman of the foundation, wrote to Andrews following a visit by her and senior civil servants to Poundbury. He sought to arrange a seminar for her and senior staff which would be led by Léon Krier, the prince's favourite planner.

He concluded: "It is my hope that the above will result in a more in-depth understanding of the work that the foundation does and the possibilities that it offers for developing a more sustainable and people-centred view of urban planning and design."

Dittmar said today: "As an independent charity, the prince's foundation occasionally exercises its right to communicate with government and others on built environment issues. This is a common activity for charities, and we neither do it on behalf of HRH the Prince of Wales nor ask for his approval before doing so."

What the charity wanted and what it got

Political background In 2007 Gordon Brown announced plans for 10 ecotowns across England with a promise they would be carbon-neutral.

What the Prince's Foundation wanted To persuade ministers that the settlements should be like Poundbury, a town in Dorset built to neo-Georgian designs approved the prince.

What happened Yvette Cooper, the housing minister, agreed to address the foundation's Creating Eco Towns symposium, and Hazel Blears, the communities secretary, invited the foundation's chief executive, Hank Dittmar, to sit on a stakeholder reference group for ecotowns.

Political background In early 2007 Patricia Hewitt, the secretary of state for health, gave the green light to seven new hospitals at a cost of £1.5bn.

What the Prince's Foundation wanted To encourage NHS trusts to use a planning technique favoured by the prince that it had pioneered, called Enquiry by Design.

What happened In January 2008 the foundation produced a design briefing for hospitals based on Enquiry by Design, which was to be used by the Department of Health as best practice guidance.

Robert Booth

Freedom fights: Act's history of controversy

The secrecy surrounding the Prince of Wales's letters to ministers is the latest controversy to hit the freedom of information legislation.

Labour politicians brought the Freedom of Information Act into life in 2005, but complain that they have not reaped the full political credit for introducing greater transparency into government.

Instead, they grumble that ministers have been criticised for concealing information that many thought should really be made public, or have been on the receiving end of flak when embarrassing secrets have been disclosed.

The saga of the MPs' expenses was a prime example of how political reputations were damaged. MPs, backed by ministers, fought tooth and nail to block freedom of information requests. In the end, MPs were ordered to disclose the details of their expenses, but when MPs came to publish the files – after they had been leaked in full – they were accused of engaging in a cover-up as they had blacked out what they believed to be sensitive parts of their claims.

Many government departments have been accused of using bogus arguments to hide information deleterious to their interests. Ministers have resorted on two occasions to deploying their veto, which overrides all independent decisions on the release of information, to stop disclosures. The first, in February, related to the decision to invade Iraq; the second, last week, to cabinet discussions over Scottish and Welsh devolution in 1997.

Delay is the act's biggest problem, with members of the public waiting months and even years for documents they had asked for. Much of the responsibility for this lies with the information commissioner, the independent regulator who adjudicates whether public bodies are entitled to keep requested information under wraps.

Figures produced by the Campaign for Freedom of Information in the summer showed that the public had to wait more than 18 months on average for the commissioner's verdict. One decision took more than three years to deliver.

The campaign's director, Maurice Frankel, said: "Overall the act has been a good thing. It has been heavily used by a wide range of people and is an increasing part of public life." But he said Labour ministers had damaged themselves by mounting an unsuccessful attempt to restrict the public's use of the act and for taking eight years to implement it after being elected in 1997.

Robert Booth and Rob Evans

The Sheet Architecture News Architecture, Art and design, Ecotowns, Environment, Gordon Brown, Hazel Blears, Labour, Monarchy, News, Planning policy, Politics, Prince Charles, The Guardian, UK news, Yvette Cooper

Astronomer Stuart Clark joins us in the studio to look at the latest thinking about the effects of variations in solar activity on the Earth's climate. Dark matter gets a mention too.

Over the coming days he will be conducting question-and-answer sessions on Twitter - both on solar activity and dark matter. Follow him at DrStuClark and post your questions using the prefix #AskDrStu. (2:00)

There's a new BBC TV series starting this week called Paradox. Its writer Lizzy Mickery comes into the studio to tell us about the challenges of getting a drama based on science onto prime-time TV. (12:10)

In the newsjam we look at a new drug hailed as the "female viagra" and Nasa's announcement that its LCROSS probe found water on the moon. (15:30)

Duncan Clark from environmentguardian.co.uk responds to the s*** storm of blog comments arising from last week's podcast on eco-myths. Who'd have thought people could get so excited about nappies? (23:25)

Steven Levitt talks about his controversial views on geo-engineering, expressed in his latest book SuperFreakonomics. Hear more of that interview in the Guardian's The Business podcast. (26:15)

All the way from Denmark, Dr Rachel Armstrong discusses living buildings and metabolic materials. She is giving a Lunch Hour Lecture at UCL this week. (30:15)

We finish the show with more music ... the winner of Discover Magazine's "evolution in two minutes or less" video competition. (33:15)

Science correspondent Ian Sample lends us his wisdom in the pod. We promise to give it back soon.

WARNING: contains strong language.

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Subscribe free via iTunes to ensure every episode gets delivered. (Here is the non-iTunes URL feed).

The Sheet Architecture News Archaeology, Architecture, Astronomy, BBC, Climate change, Copenhagen climate change conference 2009, Editorial, Environment, Geo-engineering, guardian.co.uk, Medical research, Nasa, Particle physics, Physics, Reproduction, Science, Sexual health, Space, Technology, Television, Twitter

Campaigners denounce Grimshaw's green credentials as 'laughable' as practice set to be named third runway designer

From its opening in 2001, the Eden Project in Cornwall has come to exemplify the fightback against global warming – and its designer, Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, has basked in the green glow of a reputation as one of the country's most sustainable architects.

But environmental campaigners today branded the firm's green claims "laughable" after it emerged that the practice led by Grimshaw, the president of the Royal Academy, was set to be named lead designer of Heathrow's £8bn third runway expansion. The project will allow an extra 350 flights and transform Heathrow into the single biggest emitter of CO₂ in the UK, according to Greenpeace.

Grimshaw's selection has yet to be formally announced by Heathrow's operator, BAA, but rivals for the job have been privately informed by the client that the firm has won the contract, the architecture newspaper Building Design reported today. That was confirmed by competing architects, as environmentalists pledged to take direct action against Grimshaw in the coming weeks to try to persuade the firm to stand down from the job.

"Grimshaw trades on its reputation as a green architectural firm," said Leo Murray, spokesman for Plane Stupid, the anti-aviation protest group.

"They celebrate the Eden Project and are a founder member of the UK Green Building Council. They are a prime target for us because they are exactly the kind of firm that could back off because of the danger of reputational damage."

A spokeswoman for Grimshaw today declined to comment on the criticisms, stating: "We can't confirm or deny any involvement". BAA also declined to comment, stating that it would formally announce its selection in the near future.

The firm was defended by the UK Green Building Council, an alliance of architects and building services companies, which said Grimshaw "is in many ways at the cutting edge of sustainable design, as confirmed by its involvement in the Eden Project".

"The firm's involvement in a controversial aviation project has to be seen in the context of the UK's overall carbon budget," said John Alker, spokesman for the council. "If this is going to bust those budgets then we need to direct our anger at the policymakers involved. Where does this stop? Should we be protesting against the people that pour the concrete for coal-fired power stations?"

Today, campaigners against the third runway planted an orchard on land required by BAA for the expansion, which they have acquired in a bid to block the plan.

Actors Alison Steadman and Richard Briers were joined by the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, and the poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, as well as local residents to plant trees on the land purchased by Greenpeace earlier this year.

"The government is absolutely wrong to stubbornly push ahead with a third runway at Heathrow," said Clegg. "How can Gordon Brown go to Copenhagen and credibly call for big reductions in carbon when he has such a dire environmental track record at home?"

The orchard includes a Cox's apple tree, sponsored by David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative party, which has pledged to scrap the third runway if it wins the next general election.

News of Grimshaw's selection comes amid a campaign by Plane Stupid aimed directly at architects who work on aviation projects.

The campaign group hijacked the Architect of the Year awards at the Intercontinental hotel at Park Lane last week when two activists dressed in evening wear took to the stage and tried to give a spoof award to Pascall and Watson, a firm of architects who work at Heathrow.

They tried to give the firm the "we don't give a shit" award "in recognition of their 50-year aviation portfolio, which includes expansion at Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Birmingham, Manchester, Dublin and Abu Dhabi airports". There was applause from some architects in the room as the protesters were bundled out.

The Sheet Architecture News Architecture, Art and design, Carbon emissions, Environment, guardian.co.uk, Heathrow third runway, News, UK news

With its rippling facade and vast green roof, Chicago's Aqua Tower is a revelation. It's also the tallest building in the world to be designed by a woman

Jeanne Gang spent her childhood holidays out on the road with her family, looking at the bold new bridges and roads springing up across America. Her father, a civil engineer, also took her to natural wonders like the Grand Canyon and the towering rock formations of the Great Lakes in Michigan.

Gang grew up to be an architect with her own practice, Studio Gang, and now elements of what she saw on those road trips have come together in her first skyscraper, the Aqua Tower, a $308m (£188m) addition to downtown Chicago's architectural splendours.

The Aqua Tower, rising up in a dance of ever-changing concrete forms, is very different from its neighbours. Seen from the sidewalk, it really does have the look of a multi-layered Lake Michigan rock formation, albeit one that towers above the city. This is a Chicago landmark that has broken out of the city-wide straitjacket of right angles and smooth surfaces – as if Gaudi had taken up skyscraper design, or a spinning ballerina had morphed into a building.

It all began three years ago at a dinner following a Frank Gehry lecture in Chicago. Gang found herself sitting with architect and developer James R Loewenberg, who asked her to take a preliminary design for his Aqua Tower and make it sing. She jumped at the chance. After all, at 819ft, the Aqua Tower would be the world's biggest skyscraper designed by a woman (or, to be more precise, the tallest building in the world designed by a female-run architectural practice).

Skyscrapers are traditionally seen as an expression of overbearing male libido, a sort of mine's-taller-than-yours competition. So, even today, it is a surprise to find a woman building so swaggeringly high. (Zaha Hadid currently has skyscraper projects in five cities, but none completed). Gang politely dismisses such hackneyed assumptions. She is, after all, part of a team. "Our working method is very collaborative. Having said that, at least half, maybe more, of the staff here are women. I just think it's natural. I've always wanted to build. I was encouraged to make and repair things by my parents. But OK, I can't hide the fact that it's great to have done a skyscraper, even if I never do one again."

Gang, who wanted to be an engineer before she decided on architecture, grew up in a small town near Chicago. She says she thinks of the city as a mountain range rising up from the flat Illinois plains that flank Lake Michigan. "When we got the commission, we were partly thinking of building a mountain. But, being steeped in engineering, I also saw the project as a work of urban infrastructure. The tower is a machine plugged into the city – working for people – as well as being a kind of peak, or rock formation."

Behind its weaving balconies, this 82-storey residential and hotel tower is a largely conventional building. Conventional in plan, that is, but unexpected in terms of form, and laced through with amenities and luxuries. Although it opens in the middle of the worst recession to hit the US since the 1930s, most of its 740 flats have been sold.

From its waltzing balconies, the tower offers fabulous views of the city and its other skyscrapers, of the recently completed Millennium Park, and, of course, of Lake Michigan. It also boasts a swimming pool, sky gardens, a library and a billiard room. Meanwhile, an eight-floor terrace projecting over the entrance offers a running track and open-air hot tubs. The tower's garden roof is Chicago's most extensive.

Yet, despite this rippling tower's presence and sparkle, and the fact that it will bring Studio Gang international attention, it is not really the building this young Chicago practice wishes to be judged by. In fact, nearly every other project in its 35-strong office is low-key by comparison. Most are for public clients, none of them underpinned by skyscraper budgets. "I like different types of work," says Gang. "I don't want to be pigeonholed."

After training at the University of Illinois, then in Zurich, then at Harvard, Gang worked for Rem Koolhaas – an architect for whom the extraordinary is commonplace – on several key commissions, including the exquisite Maison à Bordeaux, a three-storey house for a wheelchair-user, crowning a hill that overlooks Bordeaux.

Gang set up on her own in Chicago in 1997, when she was in her early 30s. The fledgling studio's first project was putting a roof over the 1,100-seat bowl-shaped theatre of Rock Valley College in Rockford, Illinois. Inspired by nature and her knowledge of engineering, Gang came up with a six-piece steel roof that opens, in 40-ft triangular sections, like a giant flower in fine weather.

A tower that's bird-friendly

In Chicago's impoverished south side, her practice has built a much-admired community centre for foster children, and is working on an environmental centre, which rises in a happy weave of recycled materials from a site – part industrial wasteland, part natural wilderness – close to a Ford assembly plant. Gang likes working within an astute economy of means and materials. "Because of the nature of the sites and limited budgets, we're making the building out of what's available locally," she says. "We're like birds making nests."

As it happens, Gang is immensely fond of birds. In the design of the Aqua Tower, she has paid careful attention to the way birds see – or don't see – sheer glass walls, helping them to avoid fatal collisions. (A building with a complex facade is much safer for them, as are irregular window bars; birds pick up on the irregularity.) In her office, Gang has a number of bird's nests lined up on a window sill; she says she admires their spare, essential beauty.

Studio Gang is on to something here: a creative fusion of nature, found materials, inventive engineering, structural economy, and a matter-of-fact environmental awareness. And, of course, style. Even if the Aqua Tower, the glamorous, dancing skyscraper that will make Jeanne Gang an international name, is not typical of her studio's work, it is a mighty bird's nest of sorts, an urban rock face for people with a fondness for heights to nest in. Infused with a big mid-western spirit, Gang's architecture promises to soar in the coming years, whether built close to the ground and down to a budget, or 82 storeys up into the skies above Chicago.

The Sheet Architecture News Architecture, Art and design, Chicago, Culture, Editorial, Environment, Green building, The Guardian, Travel

Renovations to attract tourists to Akapana pyramid may end in building being removed from UN list of archaeological treasures

As with all makeovers, it seemed a good idea at the time. The village of Tiwanaku in the Bolivian Andes reckoned it could attract more tourists by giving an ancient pyramid a facelift.

Workers plastered the Akapana pyramid – one of the biggest constructions in South America which predates the Incas – with adobe to make it look more impressive.

The problem, according to some experts, is that the new look is an archaeological travesty which could cost the pyramid its UN world heritage site designation.

Rather than clay bricks, the original construction, of immense spiritual significance for the Tiwanaku civilisation, is believed to have used stone.

"They decided to go free-hand with the design. There are no studies showing that the walls really looked like this," José Luis Paz, who has been appointed to assess damage at the site, told Reuters.

Officials from the UN heritage agency, Unesco, are due to visit Tiwanaku to determine if its main attraction should be removed from the list of world archaeological treasures.

It was included in 2000 because its ruins "bear striking witness to the power of the empire that played a leading role in the development of the Andean pre-Hispanic civilisation". The Tiwanaku civilisation, which reached Bolivia and parts of Peru, Argentina and Chile, existed from 1500BC to AD1200. The pyramid was thought to have been built between AD300-700 .

Paz, who heads excavations at the site, said the adobe not only looked wrong, its weight risked collapsing the pyramid. Thousands of tourists pay $10 (£6.50) each to visit every year and the people of Tiwanaku, he said, hoped to swell the revenue with a "more attractive" structure. Staff from the state National Archaeology Union (UNAR) did the renovation.

The motivation may have come from guides such as the Lonely Planet which noted the original Akapana pyramid, ransacked and eroded, "was in a rather sorry state".

Authorities defended the renovation. "The UNAR has restored the original form the pyramid had," the culture minister, Pablo Groux, told Reuters. "If we look at pictures from five years ago, there was just a hill there. What we can see now is something close to what the construction originally looked like."

He said Tiwanaku would not lose its world heritage status because the government halted the makeover earlier this year when told to do so by Unesco.

"The inclusion in the list of world heritage sites involves regular checks, because some places may lose the essence of why they were included in the list. In the case of Tiwanaku losing that title is unlikely," he said.

The Sheet Architecture News Archaeology, Architecture, Bolivia, Environment, guardian.co.uk, News, Science, Travel, United Nations, World news

Ecohomes need not look like the fallout from a science-fiction writer's nightmare. Some architects are sticking to traditional values

Think of environmentally friendly houses and what do you imagine? Probably a futuristic-looking house bristling with wind turbines. But these days it can be something more low-key as well.

From the outside, Raven Housing Trust's flats look like new versions of Victorian houses. The only hint that they are something special comes in the photovoltaic panels on the roof and the larger windows to maximise natural light.

These homes in South Nutfield, Surrey, are the first social housing properties to meet level five of the six-step code for sustainable homes, which the government uses to rate the credentials of green housing. Green features include a wood-chip-powered biomass boiler, a ventilation and heat-exchange system, low-flow taps and rainwater harvesting.

"People think environmentally friendly design will be wacky, with wind turbines on the roof and so on, but we wanted to make these homes look like any other," says Raven development manager Pete Trowbridge.

Meanwhile, Gentoo Homes housing association has taken a German design standard and tweaked it to meet north-east England tastes. Passiv Haus homes are so well insulated that they would not normally have chimneys, but Gentoo is putting on fake ones to help the homes blend in with their surroundings in Tyne and Wear. The bathrooms will have radiators; though not, strictly speaking, necessary, they at least provide somewhere for residents to hang their towels, says Allan Thompson, operations director at Gentoo Homes. "You have to make small concessions so it is not too radical a move for the great British public," he explains.

Out with the old?

But some architects think a new, greener mindset should be accompanied by a new aesthetic. Bill Dunster, who designs housing schemes without fossil fuels like BedZed and RuralZed, says green designs that ape old styles are a form of retro-escapism. "The language of the contemporary vernacular is different," he says. "We need to recognise that and embrace the reality of 21st-century life and the environmental challenges we are facing. Using traditional materials but a modern aesthetic is the way forward."

In Suffolk, Orwell Housing Association has doffed its hat to traditional building methods while using a rather unusual material - hemp. The highly breathable "Hemcrete" is sandwiched between panels, creating a structure that regulates temperature very well. Architect Cathy Hawley says the way the homes are clustered in small groups reflects the barns and 1950s council houses nearby, while the houses themselves are a pinky brown, a more low-key version of the pink renders used on the county's thatched homes. But the traditional theme stops there, as the buildings have greater amounts of glazing to the south to make use of natural heat and light from the sun. "They don't look like new-old houses," she says. "But I don't think we have made a complete break with the past."

In Milton Keynes, architects have designed homes that can be styled to suit any neighbourhood. The homes, designed by Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners for a government competition to build a home for £60,000, are made of panels using old phone books as insulation with breathable glues. The Milton Keynes homes look fairly contemporary but a version of the design, built as a show house elsewhere by developer Wimpey, was given a brick and block skin for a traditional appearance. "We don't believe there should be a fixed aesthetic," says architect Ivan Harbour. "You should have a good system that allows buildings to be well built and insulated and perform well."

As the pressure mounts to make our new homes greener, it is not yet clear whether the modern will win out over the traditional. But if today's homes are anything to go by, the green homes of the future may well come in all shapes and styles.

Weblinks

Bill Dunster: zedfactory.com
Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners: richardrogers.co.uk
Raven Housing Trust: ravenht.org.uk
Orwell Housing Association: orwell-housing.co.uk
Gentoo Group: gentoogroup.com
Ritches Hawley Mikhail: rhmarchitects.com

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