Prince’s Foundation takes the heat

A government commission is examining whether Charles’s architectural activism violates Britain’s rules. In Britain, Prince Charles has often been attacked for his strong advocacy of traditional architecture and town planning. Modernists have resented his point of view. Critics of the monarchy have objected to the very idea that an heir to the throne should involve himself in public issues. All of this ratcheted up in August when the Charity Commission announced it is investigating whether the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment is acting, in effect, as Charles’s “private lobbying firm.” The government regulatory agency asked the foundation to explain its relation to the Prince of Wales, amid concern that the foundation had exceeded its prerogatives as a registered charity by reportedly trying to influence a number of planning decisions. The Charity Commission launched the inquiry after receiving a complaint from Republic, an anti-monarchy group. This came shortly after The Guardian, a British newspaper, reported that in 2005 the prince had tried to persuade the developer of a 560,000 sq. ft. office and shopping complex next to London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral to drop the project’s modernist architect, Jean Nouvel, and instead employ one of the more traditional designers preferred by Charles. The prince apparently was concerned about the new complex’s effect on the landmark St. Paul’s, designed in the 1670s by the great Christopher Wren. Republic also accused Charles of “single-handedly destroying” the planned Chelsea Barracks development in London — 548 apartments in steel and glass towers — by complaining to the site’s owner, the Qatari royal family, about the “modernist” look of the buildings that architect Richard Rogers was proposing. The prince called the design “unsympathetic and unsuitable” and suggested that the Qatari ruler consider an alternative design by the classicist Quinlan Terry. In June the owner abandoned the Rogers plan, and is seeking another designer. Ten firms are competing for the job, including several well known to new urbanists, such as Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company, Porphyrios Associates, and Robert Adam Architects, but not Quinlan Terry. The 10 will be pared down to three in October. Charles’s popular support Though disenchantment with Charles runs strong among architects, elsewhere the prince enjoys support. Georgine Thorburn, chairman of a citizens’ organization known as Chelsea Barracks Action Group, said thousands of people had demonstrated “unstinting opposition” to the Rogers plan. Their opposition, rather than the prince’s intervention, was the main reason the project was abandoned, she said. The Guardian said Charles uses employees of the foundation to “regularly scrutinise plans by major architects working on some of Britain’s biggest building projects.” The central question is whether the prince has overstepped any legal bounds, through what The Guardian described as his “close involvement in the management of the foundation.” Hank Dittmar, an American who is the foundation’s chief executive — he previously led Reconnecting America and chaired the board of the Congress for New Urbanism — denies there has been any breach of the charity law. The foundation “is an independent charity,” Dittmar was quoted as saying by The Guardian. “We value the Prince of Wales’s presidency of the organization and his vision, but we take our own decisions.” The foundation has four core activity areas: education (seminars and workshops that teach place-making skills); projects and practice (developments in partnership with the private sector and public agencies); strategic initiatives with major policy partners; and “design theory and networks” (developing and disseminating examples of using innovation and tested tools to build successful communities). Across the United Kingdom and the world, the foundation has 25 projects under way.