Opinion: as 2015 draws to a close, Will Wiles offers five New year's resolutions for architecture and design, ranging from less Zaha-bashing to abandoning the idea of favela chic.

For my last column this year, here's something different. Let's call these my New Year's Resolutions on behalf of architecture and design, the things I'd like to leave behind in 2016. Or, keeping it Dickensian, a blast of bad-tempered Bah Humbug to sign off for 2015. Ho, ho, ho!
Hadid hating
In 2015 Zaha Hadid was awarded the RIBA Royal Gold Medal, the first woman to do so unaccompanied. This, I think, completes her Panini album of architectural accomplishment with the Royal Gold Medal, Pritzker, Praemium Imperiale, Mies van der Rohe, Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. This will I'm sure have been a welcome note of cheer in what was otherwise a torrid 2015; the ongoing Tokyo stadium brouhaha, a lawsuit (settled) against a journalist, radio interviews abandoned mid-way, Chinese projects drying up. All this amid the now-familiar barrage of criticisms against the countries she works in and her buildings. In October, for instance, Stephen Bayley railed against her "intractable views, aggressive demeanour, lack of charm and ocean-going bitterness".
Does she deserve to be quite so hated"
ZHA's client list is sometimes unpalatable and its parametric ideology is indigestible. But does she deserve to be quite so hated" The atmosphere around her work has become poisoned wit...