More Focus – Page 306

  • Features

    The enchanted forest: Vallecas-Pau in Madrid

    2007-06-29T00:00:00Z

    While Madrid’s new Vallecas-Pau suburb waits for its trees to grow, it has been fitted with portable tower parks. They look like this …

  • Features

    Government backs crane campaign

    2007-06-29T00:00:00Z

    Building’s campaign to make tower cranes safe has won the support of a key Whitehall figure: Lord McKenzie, the minister for health and safety, as Dan Stewart found out. Buoyed up by this ministerial backing, we’re taking our demands to the Strategic Forum …

  • Sydney Pollack
    Features

    Director’s cut

    2007-06-29T00:00:00Z

    When Sydney Pollack first saw the Bilbao Guggenheim, it moved him to tears. The great director tells Martin Spring how it also inspired him to make his first documentary – a journey into the mind of its creator, Frank Gehry

  • Features

    Dans army

    2007-06-29T00:00:00Z

    These days the Territorial Army isn’t so much about playing at soldiers as training them for actual combat. Still, it finds time to run ‘executive stretch’ weekends, where future managers find out a little about leadership. Dan Stewart joined a group from the construction industry for two days of fake ...

  • wind turbine
    Features

    Sustainability glossary - any suggestions?

    2007-06-25T15:11:00Z

    Don't know your PVs from your EPCs? If no send in your suggestions for Building's new sustainabilty glossary

  • Peter Hain
    Features

    Goodbye Mr prescott, hello…

    2007-06-22T00:00:00Z

    On Sunday Labour will elect its new deputy leader. Of the six candidates, only two have garnered the support of the three major construction unions: Peter Hain and Jon Cruddas. Cruddas tells Mark Leftly why he is still the outsider and Hain talks tough to Dan Stewart. Portraits by ...

  • Savill Garden visitor centre in Windsor Park, Berkshire, by Glen Howells Architects
    Features

    Cost model: Visitor centres

    2007-06-22T00:00:00Z

    Visitor centres give clients and their designers a great opportunity to make an architectural statement. At the same time, a lot of functions need to be squeezed into compact buildings. Neal Kalita of Davis Langdon examines how style and function can be reconciled

  • Features

    In times of famine

    2007-06-22T00:00:00Z

    In the second part of our shortages series Katie Puckett examines how the ever-increasing demand from Asia and Europe is pushing the price of raw materials sky high

  • The Lighthouse: code level 6
    Features

    … and cut!

    2007-06-22T00:00:00Z

    The politicians may want to reduce domestic carbon emissions to zero, but it’s the physicists and engineers that will decide whether it can be done. Thomas Lane took a trip to Watford to look the latest technology in the latest prototypes

  • Features

    Might as well try and catch the wind

    2007-06-22T00:00:00Z

    Micro-turbines may be the height of fashion, but are they any good? In the third part of our series on renewable energy sources, Alistair King finds out more

  • Rab Bennetts of Bennetts Associates
    Features

    The ultimate networking event

    2007-06-22T00:00:00Z

    More than 200 attend Building’s reception for decision-makers in government and industry

  • Features

    Safer Skyline is now backed by 20 of Britain’s top 30 contractors and housebuilders

    2007-06-22T00:00:00Z

    This is in addition to the 65MPs who support us …

  • Workers
    Features

    Is the business of recruitment corrupt?

    2007-06-19T14:52:00Z

    Some construction companies are accusing the recruitment industry of holding them to ransom, but is it simply doing the best for employees?

  • Baroness Ford
    Features

    Should English Partnerships clamp down on buy-to-let?

    2007-06-15T10:56:00Z

    EP decided to curb buy-to-let sales on some of its sites recently. Should it be trying to buck the market?

  • Features

    Tile-effect cladding

    2007-06-15T00:00:00Z

    Plastic building products manufacturer Stormking has launched a tile-effect cladding panel suitable for off-site housing applications.

  • Features

    Westfield at White City: Westway to the world

    2007-06-15T00:00:00Z

    Need any more evidence of Westfield’s massive ambitions? How about these 14 cranes looming over west London, and the huge mall rising around them. Or the fact that it ditched its contractor to take on this monster of a project by itself.

  • Features

    Reasons to be fearful

    2007-06-15T00:00:00Z

    So, developers are racing to pour money into City offices and regeneration megaprojects, tender notices are flying out for vast school and social housing renewal programmes, work is threatening to start on the Olympic venues, the mighty Thames Gateway is looming … and everyone is getting worried.

  • Features

    The mighty bouche

    2007-06-15T00:00:00Z

    Janet Street-Porter is renowned for having an opinion on absolutely everything and it seems the construction industry is no exception.

  • Features

    Who’s getting their hooks into you?

    2007-06-15T00:00:00Z

    As order books grow to unfeasible lengths, firms are increasingly desperate to recruit. Unfortunately, they’re all fishing in each other’s pond, with increasingly evil results.

  • Features

    Country focus: Czech Republic

    2007-06-15T00:00:00Z

    A thriving economy and the biggest residential boom since the Velvet Revolution are driving the Czech market, report Miroslav Vasko and Pavel Cermák of the Prague office of EC Harris