Designs ignore climate

AS an architect, I am dismayed in the design of the latest spate of high-rise accommodation projects in Cairns.

The developers, in some instances, appear to be ignoring the basic design principles for living in the tropics. Those principles being the incorporation of recessed balconies, wide overhangs and weather hoods into the design for protection from our tropical elements.

Instead, presumably to gain more internal floor area, they seem to be opting for full glass curtain walling, which may be OK for office buildings, but will, quite apart from the negative effect on the architecture of our city, mean excessive use of airconditioning with resultant high running costs for the occupants and a strain on general energy usage. Bob Cleland, Cairns City 1721: Sir Robert Walpole is appointed first lord of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer, effectively Britain’s first prime minister. 1922: Joseph Stalin is appointed general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. 1975: Russian Anatoly Karpov, aged 23, becomes world chess champion when American Bobby Fischer fails to show up for their match in Manila. 1996: FBI agents hunting for the Unabomber arrest former maths professor Ted Kaczynski (above) in a cabin in the Montana wilderness. 2007: A French V150 train breaks the world speed record for conventional rail trains, reaching 574.8km/h. 2013: The royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse gets underway in Melbourne.