'You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time'
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
BRIGHTON MARINA PUBLIC INQUIRY
CONSULTANT ADMITS 'MANIPULATION'
Under cross-examination at the 2009 Brighton Marina Public Inquiry, Explore Living's planning consultant Richard Coleman admitted 'manipulation' of the above montage from the planning application. It purports to show what the massive 28-storey tower would look like from a point just 117 metres away, but an unmanipulated image would only have shown the lower stories. Such manipulated images of the tower have been widely reproduced in the developer's brochures, planning documents and newspaper articles. Mr Coleman insisted that the manipulation of the tower was acceptable because it had been mentioned in the planning application.
The cross-examination had begun with Mr Coleman - an urban design expert with an impressive CV - agreeing that accuracy and attention to detail were important in his work. Apart from the manipulated tower image, in other views of the development he admitted pairing gloomy midwinter 'before' photographs with attractively lit, subtly reframed midsummer 'after' montages, and he acknowledged that camera position or orientation, which he had previously claimed were identical, had in fact been shifted.
Denying that the intention was to deceive, he said that they were all innocent errors, that he had not noticed them until the planning application had been submitted and that he had not considered it necessary to admit them to the Council. He said that they did not affect his judgement that the Marina was currently an 'urban desert' and that the proposed city-scale towerblock development would have a substantial, beneficial impact on the appearance of the seafront, even though it would obliterate many views of the cliffs and the South Downs National Park.
Wide-angle images, which contravene the Landscape Institute's guidelines, fill page after page of the 'visual impact assessment' in Explore Living's planning application supporting documents. They make monstrous new skyscrapers seem distant and unobtrusive, and make a cramped shadowy housing estate look spacious and bright. Professional photographer Michael Perris says 'The use of a wide angle lens was highly inappropriate and renders useless the images for the intended purpose of providing an accurate illustration of the visual impact of the development. For an apparently experienced photographer of architecture to not know this is inconceivable'
Not only are the images used throughout the developer's visual impact assessment utterly misleading, but their attempt at justifying the destruction of and sea and cliff views is pure gobbledygook. Example: for view C40 (see below) where a priceless coastal view has been totally obliterated they say, "The development celebrates and landmarks the important Marina district of the city, changing the cliff views with their poor foreground into a qualitative extension of the city's townscape"
cliff views from seafront near Lewes Crescent (detail of current view courtesy Michael Perris)
The truth is that the beautiful cliff view in this picture would be obliterated by a grotesque wall of buildings.
the above view after 'improvement' by the developers (detail from planning application)
