Severe weather warning

Climate change is bringing more rain, more wind, more chaos. So why are
architects planning for a future in which we bask in eternal sunshine?

Jonathan Glancey
Monday August 21, 2006
The Guardian

It is nearly always a lovely day in Architecture World. Happy, shiny,
gym-fit young people, living today's latte-fuelled, urban 24-hour
lifestyle, stride through sparkling, quango-approved "regeneration"
utopias. In these illustrations, it never rains. The wind never blows.
Snow is an alien concept. Personally, I would sooner trudge through
Magnitogorsk in the depths of a Siberian winter, or paddle through the
backwaters of Dhaka during the monsoon, than even begin to imagine
myself as part of this evenly lit, rictus-grin world.

....

One answer is that all too many architectural drawings are churned out
through standard-issue software programs, so that every scheme looks
much of a muchness. (As, often, do the finished products.) Another is
that architects and developers are optimists through commercial
necessity. They have something to sell, and just as we wouldn't shell
out good money for brand new cars spattered with mud, so we expect new
buildings to be Daz-clean. Buildings, though, often look and feel their
best when put to the test by nature.

cont'd....
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1854751,00.html