The Venice Architecture Biennale takes place every two years with exhibitions in spectacular settings including the national pavilions in the Giardini (gardens), displays by selected practices in the sixteenth-century arsenal, and other cultural institutions scattered around the city.

Timekeepers Square is sensitive to the heritage of its Salford city centre location, but gated aspects of the scheme may prevent integration, finds Murray Graham.

When is it appropriate to build tall? The location of tall buildings, or by common definition, buildings comparatively taller than their surroundings, should ideally be driven by: a location’s physical capability to absorb height; and, the location’s relevance or importance as a location within an urban environment. Tall buildings should tell you something about a city; they are the punctuation marks upon a City’s skyline, the clefs and codas of its symphony. But to achieve this ideal, a City needs a composer or an author, a single, unifying body or policy document to shape its skyline in a strategic way.

Heritage issues are rarely far away for the property industry, and strategic development in my experience seems particularly vulnerable to its ‘charms’. To a large extent, that arises strategic sites naturally being situated on greenfield and settlement edge sites, close to small to medium sized settlements. In a landscape scattered with prominent ancient churches, country houses and their parks and gardens, listed rural farmhouses, and village cores designated as Conservation Areas, heritage, and in particular the setting of heritage assets, can have a major impact on development potential and risk.

Iceni Projects secured unanimous support from Portsmouth City Council for the mixed-use redevelopment of the former Troxy Cinema site in Fratton.

Election Day has arrived, and the Iceni Projects Alternative Manifesto promotes a change in the way planning decisions are made. Heritage is so often part of a planning decision, and its ubiquity could present a challenge to the planning promises of the main political parties. Is a step away from the traditional approach to heritage the answer?

Following over a year of consultation, this week sees the formal announcement from Ed Vaizey and Sir Laurie Magnus of the English Heritage split. This has not been widely trailed in the press, so for those who have not been aware of the plans – judging by a show of hands at a construction industry event recently you are in the majority – they boil down to the formation of a new standalone charity to care for the National Heritage Collection (think Stonehenge, castle ruins up and down the country and archaeological sites spread far and wide), and the continuation of the advice giving organisation as a non-departmental body. Rather confusingly, the charity will be known as English Heritage, with the advisory body becoming Historic England.

Recent decisions by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government have caused a bit of a stir, and raised questions about the application of policies in the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) regarding degrees of ‘harm’ to heritage assets.