Airport architects share blame for climate crisis
I very much enjoyed Rowan Moore’s Guardian Weekly article on mega airports (Sky temples, 10 January). While I appreciate where the architects are coming from when they say it is beyond their power to redesign international travel, if they are any good at their job they will have a big impact. Well-designed terminals with an excellent customer experience will only encourage people to travel by air more often.
While architectural firms that have signed up to the climate pledge can push for energy-efficient concourses etc, there does seem to be an overriding conflict of interest – one that clients and architects alike may want to avoid. It is perhaps akin to vegans designing abattoirs on the basis that they can’t stop people eating meat so they may as well design them as well as possible.
Realistically you would suspect that vegans aren’t that committed to their beliefs: their heart won’t really be in the job of getting more cows turned into burgers, or potential sabotage lies ahead. Perhaps the architects Grimshaw were actually fighting for the climate when they created the 20-minute walk times at Istanbul airport!
Robert White
Sutton, UK
Modern minimalism has no religious meaning
The article on minimalism by Kyle Chayka (10 January) draws on religious concepts in the use of words and phrases such as “epiphany”, “maybe we should abandon them [the trappings of civilisation] in order to seek some deeper truth”, and “thinking about what makes a good life”. However, by locating minimalism in the present he fails to see minimalism’s long ancestry. Monastic vows of poverty, chastity and obedience are minimalist in essence; and these are predated by the desert hermits of Christianity.
The key difference between these religious minimalisms and modern secular minimalism is that of intent. Religious minimalism looks outward to a spiritual reality beyond the individual, while secular minimalism is limited to the individual’s ego.
Carol Woollard
London, UK
• It is ironic that your article on minimalism runs over six pages, even if two are mostly empty. Surely less would have been more.
John Finley
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Modern warfare is robbing children of their youth
I was perusing Nesrine Malik’s column (10 January) that alludes to Operation Desert Storm – about her schoolmates in Sudan, recent refugees from Kuwait – when I was struck by the incongruity of the one girl’s shout: “The whole world is going to get messy!” And I puzzled with myself: kids don’t talk like that. But that’s the point, isn’t it. A cynical wisdom was suddenly pounded into them via Shock and Awe.
Children need a childhood, with a future to believe in.
RM Fransson
Wheat Ridge, Colorado, US
Your recipes seem geared to the Notting Hill crowd
Your recipe No 52 requires venison mince (15 November). In No 47 Thomasina Miers uses fregota (or maftoul) and ‘nduja paste (11 October). In recipe No 46 (4 October) she suggests purchasing cream from “a small local dairy”.
I doubt whether the exotic ingredients that Miers favours are available in most of the countries where you circulate. Is Guardian Weekly still an international news magazine or is it aimed at the inhabitants of Notting Hill Gate?
Michael Scott
Lautoka, Fiji
Focus on minor royals is out of tune with the times
Your 17 January issue featured five pages on the trivialities of a third-tier royal and two pages on one of the defining moments of the 20th century. Given the rise of antisemitism, perhaps five pages on the meaning of Auschwitz would have helped.
Thomas Klikauer
Sydney, Australia
Australia fires demand that we take urgent action
Nature is reacting, and we must react with empathy (3 January). Forget partisanship, forget ego, unite and act for our planet, or perish having destroyed that which we love. Never has inaction been a greater crime.
Dennis Carter
Kyneton, Victoria, Australia
