Despite an award-winning body of work including houses, churches, galleries, museums, hotels and a bridge across a lake, strictly speaking we were wrong to describe the designer John Pawson as an architect (“The ultimate urban space man”, New Review, last week, page 35). Section 20 of the Architects Act of 1997 prohibits anyone from using the title unless they are registered with the Architects Registration Board.
A review of Peter Wadham’s book on climate change, A Farewell to Ice, contained this statement: “Without the albedo effect of ice – by which it reflects solar radiation up to 10 times more effectively than open water – we have entered a negative feedback loop.” Curious as it may seem in this context, we meant a positive feedback loop. As the US National Climatic Data Centre demonstrates, a negative feedback loop diminishes the effect of its own output, while a positive magnifies the effect (New Review, 21 August, page 35).
The Picasso Portraits show, which opens on Thursday and runs until 5 February, will be at the National Portrait Gallery, not, as we said in “Picasso’s lover at heart of historic UK collection of his finest prints” (News, last week, page 17) the adjoining National Gallery.
Write to Stephen Pritchard, Readers’ Editor, the Observer, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU, email observer.readers@observer.co.uk tel 020 3353 4656
