“Unfortunately we also await the inevitable uninformed drubbing of Prince Charles, his foundation and all five connected firms.”

I penned those words in the full expectation that there would be “Consequences“  for Charles continued advocacy of architecture as a living environment as opposed to the prevailing position of architecture as “Art”!  But even I was totally unprepared for the blistering barrage of bile and sheer bloody-minded spite.

The first salvo was a seemingly harmless article in The Telegraph. Inspired, perhaps, by Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, the Prince of Wales has created “an eccentric tribute to the stars of his own universe“. A none too subtle hint that that Charles is not like you or I, he is, quite frankly, a bit odd, a total whack job no less.  Think cabbages!

The second salvo was an all-out assault on the success, viability and even safety of  his Poundbury project in the Gaurdian: “Cracks appearing in Prince Charles’s dream village in Poundbury”

• Residents complain about poorly-finished homes
• Alleys and corners fuel petty crime, say locals

This is followed by a litany of discontent and allegations of total disillusionment by the inhabitants and pronouncements of the imminent disaster it heralds,  This is strangely at odds with Simon Conibear, Poundbury’s development manager, assertion that Poundbury had been “an overwhelming success among the people who live here” and pointed to a survey by Oxford Brookes University that showed 86% of residents were glad to have moved here. Read more…

MARG British Royals Architecture, Prince Charles, Prince of Wales

Image from TRF avatar collection

Well it’s two for two with Prince Charles versus ‘Monstrous Carbuncles’ and, having successfully weathered the anger, spite, outright bile and downright slander of the vanquished, we now look to the future.  A future in which the developers have drawn up a shortlist of ten architectural firms who have been asked to submit  new master-planning plan for London’s Chelsea Barracks redevelopment site.  Five of those firms have links to Prince Charles.

We await the final presentations from all ten firms with barely suppressed anticipation!  Unfortunately we also await the inevitable uninformed drubbing of Prince Charles, his foundation and all five connected firms.

MARG British Royals Architecture, Prince Charles, Prince of Wales

 In a recent article in ’Autopia’, Tony Borroin posited the extreme notion that Prince Charles would become the first carbon neutral Monarch.  It, and related eco matters have been exercising the “Grrrrrrrr .  .  .  .  the Royal Family are absolutely the bigest eco-wasters of all time” Piety Brigade.

Click to see the image at Wired.com

Each and every appearance by the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall is scrupulously turned inside out, upside down and thoroughly shaken to ensure that every single possible carbon toe-print has been exposed,  trumpeted from the banner headlines of the leading rags and mags.  Their subsequent ringing and stinging denunciations of Charles  have all the  the stirring righteous rhetoric of a 19th Century Preacher exhorting sinners to repent!

Well now it’s official, Charles really does practice what he preaches, which is a damned sight more than the aforementioned journo’s and most of their trusty disciples.

MARG British Royals Environment, Prince Charles, Prince of Wales

Click for the article at the Daily Mail

 Twentyfive years ago Prince Charles, in a fit of righteous indignation, condemned an architectural plan for being, in his words, “a monstrous carbuncle on the face of an old friend”,  thus enraging the Royal Institute of British Architects, who angrily bit back at anyone  having the temerity to question their architects’ view of the future.  A future that seemed to be a cold, soulless, glass and concrete skyscraper jungle dwafing the people who had the misforturne to actually live their vision.

In the intervening 25 years it seemed like a sort of armed neutrality had been achieved.  RIBA, in a grand gesture of “forgiveness”, and in the totally baseless belief that his teeth had been pulled rendering him somewhat harmless,  invited Charles to be the Keynote speaker at their annual bash.  But Charles neither wanted nor needed their forgiveness.  He was hot on the trail of the Chelsea Barracks Project and engaged in a verbal tussle with Lord Rogers (the architect of the aforementioned carbuncle debacle), a man whose architectural style had not, and still does not, thrill Prince Charles at all. Read more…

MARG British Royals Architecture, Prince Charles, Prince of Wales

 Earlier this month on a on a visit to Scotland the Duke and Duchess of Rothesay conducted two very different engagements in one day with projects dear to their hearts. At the launch of an eco-friendly education centre Charles took the opportunity to share the difficulties of being an unwitting trailblazing eco-warrior. Long before most of us ‘Boomers’ had given a passing thought to the ramifications of oodles of chemical “improving” our veggies . . . we were just happy to cut down on the slugs and weeds and chopping down any old tree for no other reason than it was in the way. 

Meanwhile Charles, the budding environmentalist, was taking a hiding to nothing with the abuse heaped on his unsuspecting head.  That he finds it in him to share about “the enormous degree of   abuse” this engendered with any degree of equanimity and come out the other side with wit and humour to encourage his fellow gardeners and budding environmentalists says a lot about the man he has become.  That he and the Duchess then proceeded to “get down and dirty” planting trees is just the cherry on top of the icing on the cake!

 Their other engagement that day was what is fast becoming their best double act, a morale-boosting visit to the troops.  In this case at the Black Watch’s Barracks at Fort George to greet the families of Black Watch, 3rd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland (of which Charles is Royal Colonel), who left in March for a six-month tour. Read more…

MARG British Royals Duchess of Cornwall, Duchess of Rothesay, Duke of Rothesay, Environment, Military, Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, Scotland

From the TRF avatar collection

Click for the article at the Daily Mail

 It is a little difficult for many to reconcile the picture of Prince Charles the “Conservationist” with Prince Charles the “Dalek” . . . . . . Exterminate . . . . . . exterminate, well you get the picture.  Yet we live in a world where the delicate balance of our eco-systems are at war with man, and man’s strokes of sheer genius in pursuit of greater excellence often leaves us just plain gasping for air.

Grey Squirrels, that “cute” factor is right up there with all and every animated Disney animal character ever lucky enough to make it on screen but, and this is a biggie, Grey Squirrels aren’t.  Cute that is.  They are in fact vermin and the reason they are disease carrying deafforestation  ambassadors is because they just plain don’t belong there!  Some budding mensa candidate decided they would look just loveryly in the garden and imported them to populate said garden, now known as Desolation Downs.

Much the same thing happened with Possums in New Zealand, where the only good one is road-kill, and in Australia they are cute and protected and they belong !

 Charles is telling us a few home truths.  and it seems he is more than ready to front the unpalatable truth.  Being a tree-hugger means making some hard choices,  and if we don’t try and redress the balance there really wont be an awful lot of trees left to hug!

To read more about Prince Charles’s opinion about the environment in general and grey squirrels in particular, see this thread.

MARG British Royals Animals, Environment, Prince Charles, Prince of Wales

 Over the last several years we have been hearing a lot about Prince Charles and who he is. It is almost as if he had just sprung onto the world stage full grown, as it were. It seemed we as if we had forgotten that a very young looking Prince Charles “arrived” on the adult stage on his investiture as Prince of Wales.

Since that day his almost every move has been photographed and filmed, his behaviour analysed and critiqued to an impossibly high standard. We see him headlining around the world as a visionary; a trailblazing organic farmer, eco warrior, and entrepreneur.

And here we all are playing catch-up, trying to figure out who is this man who will, barring death, become the next King of Great Britain? We let ourselves be distracted by the culture of youth, celebrity, the look, the deeply superficial yardsticks (or metre-sticks?) by which we, in this brave new millennium have found ourselves bogged down.

Charles? A man who once joked on camera that he talked to his cabbages. Personally I think he may have been talking about journalists, but maybe that’s just me thinking he may have inherited more than a little of his father’s infamous wit. So maybe we could just start with a little light background.

Is all this eco-friendly, carbon-footprint, clean green, environmentally friendly, visionary stuff the thing of which spin is made, the hook on which to reinvent himself? This Daily Mail article gives a whimsical insight into the genus of “Charles: the Man and His Dreams.”

For more information about Charles’s many interests, see the threads about his involvement in architecture, environment, religious tolerance, rainforests, alternative medicine, charitable causes, organic farming, Duchy Originals, and Poundbury.

Photos from the TRF avatar collection.

MARG British Royals Prince Charles, Prince of Wales