Students urged to boycott terror attack competition

A LEADING architect has demanded students boycott a Home Office competition to redesign a hypothetical terrorist bomb site.

Piers Gough said the contest fostered a "culture of fear".

In a brief, written by the Royal Society of Arts and the Royal Institute of British Architects, students are asked to come up with a scheme for a fictional public square which has been attacked by suicide bombers, leaving 500 dead and 1,500 injured. It asks them to rebuild it to withstand future attacks by limiting the amount of glass and masonry cladding or by building barriers to car bombs.

The winner will receive a £2,000 prize but Mr Gough said it was an exercise in "the propagation of paranoia". "On no account should architects or students give succour to this," he said.

John-Paul Nunes, Riba's head of education, said: "This competition is about promoting good design, not creating a bunker mentality."