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Project Set-up
Some of the wealthiest industrialists and most powerful military men in the US may have discussed what to do next to Iraq when they gathered in London last month. But if they did, it was not the main purpose of their meeting. In fact, Ross Perot, representatives from Hughes Aircraft and Boeing, Sir John Grady, head of the RAF, the Duke of Kent and Charlton Heston met to discuss fundraising to build one of the most interestign projects to emerge from Sir Norman Foster and Partners' London office in recent years – the American Air Force Museum at Duxford. Today,the campaign to raise the £7.2m cost of building the museum is being lunched to the American and British Press.
While the stripped High-tech minimalism of Foster's buildings such as the Sainsbury Centre has led critics to compare them with aircraft hangers in the past, the irony here is that, where the reduced requirements of the brief for a real aircraft hanger – a single vast space, an all-encompassing envelope with no heating – has produced an entirely different kind of architecture, based on a much more complex geometry and formed from concrete rather than steel..
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