Journalists should be more objective

With regard to your recent Vox Pop (DW 15 December 2005), I would leave behind lazy journalism led by relentless PR people. There were an awful lot of pages in 2005 that displayed lazy, automatic writing in the design press.

PR people enjoy too much influence on what is published. Whenever there is a PR person employed by a client, it is followed by a barrage of interviews, photographs, articles, and so on, in the press.

It does not necessarily reflect the priority that I would give to coverage. I think that design journalism should take itself more seriously and exercise more critical independence.

I would definitely take with me, into 2006, Jean Nouvel’s extension of the Reina Sofia Museum of Modern Art in Madrid. I cannot remember being so excited by a piece of architecture as I was when Jean took us on a tour of the nearly finished building.

And, if you go and see Reina Sofia, I suggest you stay on the seventh floor of the Hotel Puerta America. This is not PR, it’s merely self promotion!

Ron Arad, Ron Arad Associates, London NW1