Or just quirky? His architecture has been described as both 'barmy' and 'brilliant', but Will Alsop insists that exciting people is essential to Britain's urban renaissance reports the Guardian.
Will Alsop used to be well known for failing to get his quirky, experimental building designs built. Now he is practically famous - not just as an architect but as a fashionable masterplanner, remodelling huge chunks of urban Britain in ways that will define our towns and cities for decades to come. Alsop, whose stardom has risen thanks to his prize-winning Peckham library in south London, completed in 2000, now lands prestigious building commissions - such as the Fourth Grace, the centrepiece of Liverpool's successful bid to become Europe's capital of culture in 2008. But it is his urban visions that may be his most enduring legacy. His blueprint for transforming Barnsley, in south Yorkshire, as a 21st century Tuscan hill town is the most discussed of these projects. Bradford is also about to undergo the Alsop treatment, as are large parts of Stoke-on-Trent, Manchester, Middlesbrough and Walsall, complete with a leather-clad hotel. read full guardian article and view the picture gallery
