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Letters

Wednesday, 21st November 2007

Readers respond to recent Spectator articles

Build on the past

Sir: Simon Thurley (‘Britain is being demolished’, 17 November) calls us to think again before politicians, short-term financiers and architects repeat all the mistakes we made after the war. I well remember as a student in the 1950s being exhorted by duffle-coated and starry-eyed tutors to ‘change the face of Britain’. Sadly, we have. And still we have not learnt the lesson.

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Dan Brown

November 25th, 2007 9:23pm

Perhaps this lack of integrity in modern building design and construction is due partly to the tragic manner in which our commercial and residential property is now largely regarded as a commodity.

Vast expanses of urban sprawl and suburban development are now covered in estates of houses and "executive" apartments, built flimsily in the pastiche or some pseudo-modern blandness. Little consideration is given to infrastructure, which often consists of a chain supermarket and smaller services; very often these developments are built in complete isolation, connected to town or city only by motorway junction or bypass.

Our capacity to exploit buildings for our financial gain is leaving us with cultural and architectural bankruptcy. Surely it is time to leave this obsession, emerge from making home improvements and calculating the percentage profit that has been made over the past 10 years, and actually create new buildings and cities that matter- buildings that excite and endure, external spaces that stimulate and bring us together. Inspiration is not so distant - visit Barcelona, Rome, Berlin.