Last thing Mumbai needs is Trump Tower: British architect

Former Bristol mayor and well-known architect George Ferguson slammed the Trump Tower coming up in Mumbai observing that the city needs to look at its own history and architects.

At the ongoing 'Architectural Convention' themed on 'Connecting Histories' here, Ferguson on Thursday showed audiences an article titled "A kick up the dockside" in a local newspaper which he wrote way back in 1980s after a working trip to the US, in which he had written about US President Donald Trump, then a real estate tycoon.

The article appeared five years after the opening of the Trump Tower, a 58-storey, 664-foot-high mixed-use skyscraper, in New York City.

"I wrote about a developer who I said we should not follow his example, a certain Donald Trump who is the 'epitome of greed and vulgarity and everything that we should not admire back in America'. I later met a young Donald Trump in Mumbai at a conference. He was saying he wanted to bring a Trump Tower to Mumbai and I said the last thing that Mumbai needs is a Trump Tower," Ferguson said at the convention organised by Credai Bengal and Indian Institute of Architects (IIA).

Ferguson, the first elected Mayor of Bristol, said: "What it (Mumbai) needs is to look to its own place, own history, own architects and its own developers to do something to learn from the best parts of Mumbai rather than try to be somewhere else. Sadly, they are building a Trump Tower in Mumbai."

Ferguson is noted for his leading role in the regeneration of the Bedminster area of South Bristol.

In 1994, he bought the last remaining major building of the old Imperial Tobacco Raleigh Road estate for 200,000 pounds to save it from demolition and regenerate it.

In the 1990s he developed the 'Tobacco Factory', a multi-use project, catalyst for the regeneration of South Bristol and a model for culture led city regeneration.

Talking about the project, Ferguson lamented the "loss of attraction of the street (culture) due to contemporary development".

--IANS

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