Good for Griffin. I think it is possible to understand a lot about sites without visiting them – providing one wants to understand contextual factors and has ideas about how they should figure in the design process.

Probably not. I point to Foster because of his undoubted design talent. When both client and designer for a Thames-side building one could expect him to do a really good job. I will see if I can find a photograph and comment further on what merits cause célèbre status for Thames-side design. My hunch is that his heart is in the right place but his head in the wrong place. This fits with your comment on the nature of the architect’s role. But it is a self-chosen role and Utzon showed how to step outside it, as have many other architects.

Wealthy developers certainly do not guarantee a good scheme.

Perhaps the experience of the planners with approving highrise developments may be part of the problem as London has historically been a low rise city as you say. Going highrise and skyrise presents significantly different issues. Accelerate the rate of development and the quantum of changes to the skyline and you can start to understand the difficulties they might have in understanding the cumulative impact on the skyline and thames side experience.

Architects by the nature of their role usually only consider one site (and often one building)at a time. Perhaps they too are not so experienced with the (relational rather than qualitative dimensions) new nature of the development of the London skyline and waterfront?

It would be interesting to know if insights from the planners from cities which are traditionally or predominantly highrise could assist. Of course it would be important to understand the impact of different topographies and city types. (ie New York is a grid city and Surfers Paradise is a strip city. Both of them have a predominantly flat topography.)

Compare Canberra by Bernard Maybeck [ http://ced.berkeley.edu/cedarchives/exhibitions/items/show/210 ] with [ http://nga.gov.au/federation/Medium/26286.jpg ] Canberra by Walter Burley Griffin.

I agree! I cycled another stretch of the Thames recently (Vauxhall to Putney) and was, as politicians say after a natural disaster, ‘shocked and horrified’ by the low standard of most of the architecture. Foster’s offices and the adjoining housing are a case in point: his designs have the sleekness of Sony’s hi-fi equipment but this is not what the Thames needed and they look more like old hi-fi kit in a municipal dump than gleaming goodies in a shop window. Maybe the Thames frontage is not quite as bad as the road into Athens from the old airport but it is in the same league. Yet the developers were wealthy, the planners well-qualified and the architects talented. Whatever went wrong?

I love the idea of working ‘from the bottom up’ – from chair design to city design – and in fact one could put the brilliant Tadao Ando in this category (since he began as a wood-worker). Amazing that Griffin did this. Was his plan well-adapted to local circumstances? I admit to disapproving of the fact that he disobeyed the First Law of Site Design: visit the site and consult the genius of the place.

Of course there is a long history of these skills in scale transfer in evidence in Robert Adam and Leonardo, so it is entirely doable. Walter Burley Griffin was almost a master of the chair and the city. [ http://www.griffinsociety.org/images/1605-01_0208_CafeAustralia.jpg ]

Yes, 3 dimensional design is very important.

I was not thinking of 3d design as a software course. Heatherwick studied three dimensional design at Manchester Polytechnic and at the Royal College of Art. The curriculum seems to hover between sculpture, ceramics, furniture design, jewelery and product design.
One of my criticisms of the kind of design programme I have long taught on is that they proceed from big ideas to small ideas. This is a perfectly OK thing to do but there is an equally good case for working from small ideas to big ideas and I believe that some projects and some designers are better suited to this approach. I have not read about how the Shanghai Pavilion was conceived but guess that the ‘master plan’ was the last thing to come into being.
The Woolwich ferry is a pleasure to use either on a bike or when there is no queue. The view is great and the boatmen are friendly. One is taken back to the days of Joseph Conrad. – as on this video after the first two and a half minutes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o56RT31Fnic

It seems the Farrell scheme is one a much smaller scale than the earlier 80s masterplan by Rogers.

Yes, 3D visualisation skills would certainly be useful in the context of the LA institute’s ideas competition for the Royal Docks. But architectural and landscape skills are still necessary for the ideas before you come to presenting them. [ http://worldlandscapearchitect.com/the-royal-docks-ideas-competition-announced/ ]

Tom Hardwick’s Shanghai UK pavilion is so compelling it would be worth a flying to Shangai just to touch it! [ http://www.archdaily.com/58591/uk-pavilion-for-shanghai-world-expo-2010-heatherwick-studio/ ] Although it is amazing to think what it would have been like if it was made of plant matter which would ripple in the breeze and perhaps even had a perfume?