Leading article: May the V&A boxes tumble and prosper

Sunday 19 May 1996 23:02 BST
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It didn't take them long. No sooner had the Victoria and Albert Museum unveiled its plans for a remarkable extension, designed by a young American-Polish architect called Daniel Libeskind than the usual suspects got on their soap boxes to condemn it.

In case you haven't seen them, Libeskind's plans are for a building which breaks most boundaries of traditional form. It most resembles a jumble of boxes tumbling down into the pavement, yet suspended in mid-air.

Brian Sewell, the Linford Christie or outrage and indignation, was quick off the blocks. Bemoaning the lack of the comfortable classical logic of columns pediments and pilasters, Mr Sewell, populist polemicist and sometime art critic, ran it down as "as architectural absurdity masquerading as a museum wing".

If Mr Libeskind is feeling short of friends he shouldn't worry. We think the plans are great and we would love to see his stunning building built. We need more architecture of this kind - the aborted plans for Cardiff opera house spring to mind - not more Sewellian columns.

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