Donald Trump is a builder. He builds towers. He builds hotels. He builds golf courses. He wants to build a 2,000 mile wall between the US and Mexico. So, with the nomination tantalisingly close for the Republican frontrunner ahead of the South Carolina primary, what do Trump’s towers tell us about Trump the politician? It helps to look back to his youth in an affluent development in the borough of Queens in 1950s New York. He rarely talks about his background; to do so would call into question the all-American myth of the self-made man. In fact, his fortune is based on his father’s suburban empire. Fred Trump was a developer, too, starting with modest family homes and expanding into supermarkets and large residential complexes for the working and middle classes. They are not architectural masterpieces but they addressed the nation’s postwar housing shortage and have become part of the fabric of New York. But Trump Jr’s eyes were on the big city — the Manhattan skyline across the water. More On this topic IN Opinion By 1983, and not yet 40, he had completed Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, his best known building. The 68-storey mirror-glass edifice contains the studio where The Apprentice reality TV show is filmed and culminates in Mr Trump’s own penthouse. Adorned with gold and marble, it looks like Saddam Hussein went on a shopping spree with Liberace. At the foot of the tower is the Trump store, where fans can buy merchandise including a “Make America Great Again” baseball cap (price: $25). To make way for its construction, Mr Trump demolished the handsome Art Deco Bonwit Teller department store. He promised to donate its bas-relief carvings to the Metropolitan Museum of Art but it turned out they were too expensive to remove so they were smashed to pieces on site instead. Twenty-five years later, he had perfected the Trump formula. The 64 featureless storeys of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas are clad in reflective glass coated in a skin of precious metal and crowned with an illuminated Trump sign. As a metaphor, could a gold-plated mirror topped with the developer’s own name work any better? Very different is the Trump Taj Mahal hotel and casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, its onion domes and ogee arches stuck incongruously on to a modernist slab. In the old world, things shrink to a more modest scale. The Trump International Golf Links outside Aberdeen features a clumsy pavilion akin to the mating of a McMansion and a strip-mall funeral parlour. Mr Trump recently lost a long, acrimonious battle to stop a wind farm being erected near the course. The irony of the developer objecting to tall structures was presumably lost on him. His biggest building is Chicago’s 98-storey Trump Tower. Designed by the same architects as the world’s tallest tower, Dubai’s Burj Khalifa , it has a re­semblance in the sculptural massing, the setbacks and streamlined corners. It is Mr Trump’s best building but still marred by its massive sign: The Donald is always present, even when he is out. But Mr Trump’s buildings, unlike his father’s, have failed to make any architectural contribution to the cities around them or address social needs. Instead they pop up like middle fingers disdaining their surroundings. They are less architecture than marketing, with the Trump sign the most important component. Despite his appeal to legions of voters, his buildings do nothing for anyone but the super-wealthy who can afford the penthouses within. And despite his vaunted success as an entrepreneur, his businesses have been subject to a succession of high-profile failures and bankruptcies. He has proved too big to fail. He builds big but often it is other people who pay. At least he is consistent: his wall on the southern border is to be paid for by the Mexicans it is intended to keep out. The writer is the FT’s architecture critic Letter in response to this article: ‘Middle finger’ challenge is part of Trump’s campaign / From Dr Stephen E Roulac Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2016. You may share using our article tools. Please don’t cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web. Source link

©Bloomberg A construction site in Luanda, capital of Angola An overhaul of Angola’s energy sector poses a test for Trafigura’s close-knit relationship with the west African country, as the Opec member restricts spending and forges ties with rival trading houses during the prolonged oil slump. In the past year energy bankers say Angola’s cash-strapped state oil company, Sonangol, shunned a $500m fundraising at Puma Energy, a fast-growing fuel retail and storage business it has invested in with Trafigura. More On this topic IN Commodities This comes as Trafigura and other Puma shareholders look at different options to fund the company’s expansion, bankers say, with public listing in London or elsewhere, among options being examined. Vitol, the world’s largest independent oil trader, has also broken into Trafigura’s near-monopoly over the supply of diesel, gasoline and liquefied petroleum gas into Angola, signing a deal to import refined fuels. Angola is a lucrative target for trading houses which can import lower quality fuels to African countries where standards are not as high as in Europe or North America. While sources close to Trafigura say the longstanding relationship with Sonangol remains strong and that it remains the biggest importer of refined fuel into Angola, the moves illustrate how one of the industry’s most enduring relationships is evolving as Luanda tackles the first prolonged oil price downturn of its post civil war era. Puma, which bought the UK’s struggling Milford Haven oil refinery last year and converted it to a storage terminal, approached its shareholders in late 2015 with a plan to raise $500m to fund further expansion during the downturn. While Trafigura and Puma’s other big shareholders agreed to back to deal in proportion to their stakes, Sonangol did not, leaving the company $150m shy of its target. Sources close to Trafigura say Sonangol backs Puma’s strategy and gave its blessing to the fundraising even though its stake was slightly diluted. Sonangol paid $500m to boost its holding from 20 per cent to 30 per cent in 2013, a deal that placed a $5bn valuation on Puma. Sonangol said it remained “committed” to its investment in Puma and “continues to be a major shareholder” with representatives on the board. Trafigura declined to comment. In an effort to save cash Sonangol has been cutting back elsewhere. It recently suspended work on a new oil refinery in the port of Lobito and a new fuel storage terminal it was building north of the capital Luanda. Sonangol’s decision to award Vitol a one-year deal, which started in January, to import gasoline and liquefied petroleum gas is also being scrutinised by rivals in the industry. “It’s a fundamental change,” said one oil industry executive. “The Angolan business was once the cornerstone of Trafigura.” France’s Total, one of the largest oil producers operating in Angola, has also signed an initial agreement with the government in Luanda to explore setting up a forecourt business in the country. Currently all petrol stations in the country are controlled by either by Sonangol and Puma subsidiary Pumangol. Angola, which vies with Nigeria to be Africa’s largest oil producer, lacks local refining capacity to meet its own fuel needs. The country’s fuel imports have increased fivefold in the last decade as demand increased after the end of the civil war. They reached almost 110,000 barrels a day in 2016, according to Citac, a London-based Africa energy consultancy. Sonangol said all fuel supply contracts were “awarded on a tender basis” and confirmed Vitol as one of its suppliers. Angolan president José Eduardo dos Santos appointed his daughter Isabel dos Santos as head of Sonangol in June as part of a dynastic shake up of the country’s chief revenue source. The entire board of Sonangol was fired at the same time. Manuel Vicente, who ran Sonangol between 1999 and 2012, had long been seen as the most likely successor to President dos Santos, but the elevation of his daughter has made her favourite to succeed her father, who first came to power in 1979. Named by Forbes as Africa’s richest woman, Mrs dos Santos has faced scrutiny of her wealth, which includes a 25 per cent stake in Angola’s largest mobile telecommunications company Unitel. After spending the past year working with western consultants on a plan to transform the country’s oil industry she has vowed to increase transparency and improve governance at Sonangol to boost profits. “Investment is being re-evaluated or reassigned because of more limited funds,” said Elitsa Georgieva of Citac. In Angola, Trafigura established its grip on fuel imports through DT Group, a joint venture with an investment group founded and chaired by powerful local businessman Leopoldino Fragoso do Nasciment. More commonly known as General Dino, he was once an adviser to the President and served on the winning side in the civil war, which ended in 2002. General Dino’s investment vehicle, Cochan, has also put money into Puma alongside Trafigura and Sonangol. Cochan controls 15 per cent of Puma while Sonangol has built a 30 per cent stake in the company. Trafigura owns about 49 per cent. As Trafigura’s has grown its global oil volumes to more than 4m b/d a day and its direct business with Angola has become a smaller proportion of its trading operations after it expanded in Russia, Asia and the Americas. However, it still has a strong position in the country from years of investment in infrastructure. In 2015, chief executive Jeremy Weir and the senior management group steered Trafigura to its strongest trading year on record. Profits in the first half of the 2016 financial year were boosted by the reversal of an impairment on a dormant Angolan iron ore mine following a deal with Luanda. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2016. You may share using our article tools. Please don’t cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web. Source link

Procurement campaigners have criticised two English councils over a controversial new framework which charges suppliers an annual fee of £1,000 Russell Curtis, a director of architect-run procurement service Project Compass, said the East Sussex and Surrey county councils framework could yield an estimated £250,000 from consultants over its lifetime, and warned it could set a ‘dangerous precedent’ for other clients. The three-year agreement covers a range of projects in East Sussex and Surrey, and will engage up to 40 suppliers of multidisciplinary and other built-environment services. Individual companies selected for the contract must pay an annual fee of £1,000, while multidisciplinary teams are liable for a £6,000 yearly charge – despite no guarantee that any projects will be awarded through the framework. Curtis, who is also a director of London practice RCKa, said: ‘The imposition of annual fees with no guarantee of work sets a dangerous precedent. While the councils involved may well anticipate a significant spend across the life of the framework, there is no guarantee of this, and added to the burden of tendering in the first place it will certainly put many smaller consultants off applying.’ Read more at https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/competitions/councils-blasted-over-pay-to-work-framework/10015238.article?blocktitle=News-features&contentID=13634