STARCHITECT

We Have a Starchitect

Yes, I know it's a horrible word, and it's usually applied to the likes of Richard Rogers and I M Pei, but it's beginning to feel appropriate for Biba Dow, our Project Architect. Biba has just been shortlisted for Women In Architecture's Architect of the Year award, with a big feature in the Architects Journal. She has been nominated for the Garden Museum, whose extension and refurbishment she has designed, but apparently the journal are featuring us as a current project. We are very happy that we picked Biba several years ago from the competition that we held to get an architect for the Project. I was part of the panel alongside Dan Cruikshank, Maeve Kennedy of the Guardian, and George Ferguson, ex-President of RIBA (and at that point future Mayor of Bristol, now past Mayor of Bristol). We were struck by Biba's enthusiasm for the Victorian building, and the relish with which she wanted to make a new building that would respond to Street's masterpiece. What we all remember is that she said that the Victorian building hid great treasures behind an austere facade, and that she wanted to build a jewel-box of an extension that would signal to the visitor the joys that awaited them inside. What wasn't obvious then, but has become so over time, is Biba's complete understanding of the social purposes of the Project, that this building can be transformative in the life of this community. We aren't just tarting up a church and building a posh extension, but starting off a Project that will give the people of  North Paddington somewhere they can be proud of, a focus for art, culture and heritage in their neighbourhood, and a thing of beauty that they can claim as their own. Biba has been committed throughout to our insistence on co-creation wherever possible, so that local people have a stake in this building, while of course maintaining the integrity of her own artistic vision. It's a very exciting process, and it's great to have someone like Biba involved, who is really good at engaging with ordinary people and helping them to catch the vision.


The Other Starchitect

There was a racehorse called Starchitect, who was about to achieve the biggest success of his career in a valuable handicap at Cheltenham in the autumn, when sadly he fell and was killed. A horrible occasion. Awful for everyone connected with the horse, including the trainer, David Pipe (who a friend of mine tutored through his A levels, many years ago). National hunt racing always carries that danger; if they are going to  jump fences then the risk is always there. It sickens you with the game when it happens, but we all know that horses jump and race for fun, not because humans force them to. It is incumbent on the humans connected with horse racing that they create the best possible conditions for the horses.


Dope Testing Regimes

Now in British horse racing a horse will be disqualified if a dope test reveals anything "other than a normal nutrient". There was a recent case when a horse of the Queen's was disqualified after being fed some dietary supplement that the manufacturers claimed was perfectly innocuous but which turned out to contain prohibited substances. That regime has the benefit of clarity, even if it may seem draconian, and is based on a sense of human responsibility for what is done to the animal. Other sports are much less clear.

The case of Chris Froome's asthma inhaler is a sad one. I do not believe Froome to be a doper, or a cheat. He is clearly the outstanding stage racer of his generation, and one of the finest of all time (even if rather uncharismatic). I suspect, though, that he and Team Sky have used the rules to gain any possible advantage. Froome has returned an "adverse analytical finding" with a higher-than-permitted level of the anti-asthma drug Salbutamol. The rules permit cyclists to use Salbutamol, but only up to a certain level  (and only by inhalation) with a doctor's note. Froome has that doctor's note. Hence he has not been disqualified, or suspended, and is now trying to explain how he might have returned an elevated level in a test if he had been using within the limit. It  is generally held that using Salbutamol would give no advantage to anyone without the asthmatic symptoms, but there is a suspicion that it might, which is why there is a permitted limit.  Now my problem with this is permitting the use of Salbutamol at all. Apparently it is quite common, because we are told that many endurance athletes, cyclists among them, experience asthmatic symptoms at the peak of their performance. Asthma is regarded by the authorities as a normal complaint, the medication of which should be permitted to elite athletes. Now, pardon me, but I don't think that what has been described is asthma at all. Asthma is a horrible condition, which afflicts many people in their daily lives (and killed a teenage member of my congregation a couple of years ago). When elite athletes are cycling or running faster than the rest of us, their bodies have a lot of responses to that stressful exercise, like pain, exhaustion, lactic acid buildup, and apparently difficulty breathing. It has long been said that the best cyclist is often the one who can bear the pain best, and that's part of the sport. You don't become asthmatic only under conditions of great physical effort, so I'm afraid that I would say difficulty breathing is a result of great effort just like pain, which the athlete has to put up with. I find it hard to believe that someone who is asthmatic in daily life would actually find themselves in elite sport. The problem is that cycling (like athletics, which has a much worse problem with doping) permits the use of substances "other than normal nutrients" and has always done so; the anti-doping regime seeks to codify which abnormal substances may be permitted.

Athletes fall foul when the regulations change. Hence Maria Sharapova's suspension. She had used Meldonium for years, because it was permitted and was believed to enhance performance. She certainly didn't have the sort of heart condition which is the only good reason for using it, but she was able to get a doctor's note. So she used it, and was careless enough not to notice when the rules changed and it ceased to be permitted. Tough luck. She was clearly gaming the system. My sympathy and admiration  for Froomey is immense, but I fear he may be in the same boat.