You couldn’t make it up. In a coup of events almost Shakespearian in complexity, this week sees a number of conflicting interests aired in the high court. Property tycoons Nick and Christian Candy are £81 million out of pocket after the Qatari royal family – who back their property company – withdrew a planning application from Westminster council for a development containing luxury apartments and affordable flats to be built opposite the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, last summer.
Lord (Richard) Rogers, who designed the complex of 548 flats, claimed that planning permission was about to be granted when Prince Charles wrote a letter to the Emir of Qatar concerning ‘one more brutal development’. To make matters murkier, residents living on or near Sloane Square had opposed the development, but many relented when its scale was altered. A spokesman for Clarence House has claimed that Prince Charles, who is a friend of the Qatari royals, would have taken tea with them anyway, and has the right to express his opinion on any matter he chooses. Well, yes, but…
It is not for nothing that I have often expressed architecture as politics in stone, that I have oft unravelled the ways one cannot disentangle the material “stuff” of our lives from broader social and global issues. It is true that very few “ordinary folk” would have gained ground from these new apartments, even the so-called affordable ones. And with what earnestness do we love to hate the big bullyboys of property development. But given the track record of the Prince of Wales on such matters, his attachment to the Old and constant trouncing of the New, I can’t help feeling that, on this occasion, all concerned have been sold down the river, washed out to sea on an oleaginous tide of vested interests that include privilege, favour-trading and royal friendships. In this instance, I hope the Candy men win and I finish this post with an admonition from the Bard himself: as flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport…(King Lear).
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