Toilet humour

What’s on the minds of building.co.uk readers? Well the challenge of coming up with nicknames for buildings always gets you lot tapping away. Last week, a seven-star hotel planned for Dubai did not disappoint – 13 of you suggested names, including the “Orchid”, the “Fly Trap” and the “Urinal”.

Closer to home, we decided to dub the design for the UK’s first vertical theme park in Birmingham “the Tripod” (pictured). But one reader, Ian, offered the soubriquet of “Bog Brush” – unlikely to be copyrighted by the West Midlands tourist board.

There’s also a lot of hot air on the discussion boards – that is, comments about wind power. The renewables issue is definitely dividing our online readership.

“Turbines may look pretty but are they effective?” asks John Park about Marks Barfield Architects’ plan to cover London with 600 of them. “When such projects are dreamed up, will the dreamers please provide a carbon dioxide emissions balance sheet along with images of the pretty views so we can see the complete picture?!”

A similar view was expressed in response to a story on the Building website’s new sustainability channel. News that the man who installed the first domestic turbine in London was less than impressed with its performance was music to the ears of Ronald Russell. “Finally someone who can admit that some green ideas just don’t work, and continue with those that do,” he wrote.

A defence was put forward by Tony Day, a professor of energy engineering at London’s South Bank University. He wrote: “While Mr McCarthy’s experience shows that very small domestic turbines may have some way to go before they are viable, it is misleading to suggest that all urban wind installations will fail.”