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It is quite astonishing that Ruth Reed chooses to support CABE by arguing that ‘good design must not be determined … by arbitrary stylistic preferences’, but rather by ‘consideration of the aesthetic, future use, and technical ambitions and constraints of the client, site and brief’. Has she seen the approximately 50 new-build schemes selected by CABE for its recent ‘Building for Life’ awards? Judging by the published pictures (and my apologies to the architects if I’ve misinterpreted them), 20 have flat roofs, and 11 have untreated timber claddings. Flat roofs have much shorter lives and are hugely more failure-prone in the British climate than pitched ones; and untreated timber claddings look so dreadful within a few years of installation that most members of the public regard them as building failures. On what grounds other than ‘arbitrary stylistic preference’ were buildings with these features chosen? And do they not directly contradict the ‘technical ambitions’ of clients, who above all want long-lasting, trouble-free, low-maintenance buildings? If CABE (assuming it retains some sort of role) and the RIBA don’t descend from cloud cuckoo land and establish contact with the real world pretty quickly, the profession is in for a thin time.

Maritz Vandenberg

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