The Art of Deception: Overdale Hospital Impressions

JEP letter well worth reading by S.R.. 

As a courtesy, unless approval is given, I will not give the writers name.

I WAS interested to see the artist’s impression drawings of the new hospital at Overdale published in the JEP, an impression taken from the submitted planning application now before the planners.

I sincerely hope that no one is deceived by the apparent subterfuge that these artistic impressions convey, and the somewhat delicate-coloured sketches with the buildings’ apparent relationship to the adjacent trees. These hulking, brooding, monstrous buildings are approximately 166 metres long by 100 metres wide and nearly 30 metres high, the average height of a ten-storey building set about by the arboreal tree growth making it look so delicate.

The trees, if genuinely drawn to the same scale as the building rendition, shall have to exceed 15 metres in height or be nearly 50ft high. They would need to be giant sequoias – as in the California Redwoods – to be in the same scale as the buildings shown.

Moreover, in an attempt to minimise the impact of this building, to put it into some local perspective (an overall size by the way, around six times the gross volume of Hue Court), the artist has drawn it from an angle and distance above the roof of around 20 metres, thus attempting to minimise the impact, a view incidentally that we shall never see unless we are in a drone.

I just hope that no one is fooled by this gimmick, least of all our planners and indeed the planning inspector.