Architect suspended after his design for £450,000 home cinema was ‘wonky’
An architect has been suspended from the profession after he left a multi-millionaire couple with an expensive ‘ugly duckling’ of a home cinema.
Daniel Marcal was hired to provide an ‘architectural jewel’ with a ‘high-end wow factor’, a court heard.
But banker Philip Freeborn and his wife Christina Goldie were left with a £450,000 glass box design that ‘could not be turned into a swan’.
The former Barclays Capital boss successfully sued Mr Marcal for £500,000 in 2019, arguing that tearing it down and starting again was the only option.
Now the Architects Registration Board has found Mr Marcal guilty of unacceptable professional conduct.
In their mind’s eye, the couple’s home cinema would be of a ‘sleek modern design’ that ‘floated’ in the roof space of the leisure room at their £7 million mansion in Barnet, north London.
But the project had gone ‘badly wrong’, with the addition of two extra steel columns not in the plans.
A High Court judge agreed, saying they had been left with a home cinema with a ‘wonky, industrial look’.
Mr Marcal, who ran his own practice and recently declared bankruptcy, argued the couple had approved all stages of the project and any perceived defects were within acceptable levels.
He also claimed he had felt ‘intimidated’ by Mr Freeborn while he worked on the design.
In his ruling, judge Martin Bowdery QC said the couple ‘were entitled to be outraged by what had been produced at great cost, which was not what they were expecting’.
After hearing details of the case, the misconduct tribunal concluded [Mr Marcal’s] failings ‘diminish both his reputation and that of the profession generally’.
He was spared being struck off the register and handed a 12-month suspension.
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