Thomas Carlyle famously argued that “the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men”. I’m not a big fan of this “Great Man” theory of history. Quite aside from the outdated gender politics, it glosses over the bigger, but sometimes less exciting historical drivers, like technological change and global pandemics. Having said this, there’s no doubt that individuals can still have a big influence on events, whether through their actions, reputation or simply by their force of personality.

Amid the general marginalisation of the architectural profession and wider political and economic turmoil, it’s therefore tempting to hark back to a time when the two most recognisable British architects of the past half century seemed to stand confidently astride national public life. When exactly Norman Foster and Richard Rogers achieved their starchitect status is hard to pin down (perhaps the 1986 Royal Academy exhibition?) but from the late 1980s through to the early 2000s, their prominence seemed to signify the wider importance of architecture in the UK. Rogers in particular was effective in pushing an architectural agenda in a political sphere – winning over and influencing unlikely allies such as John Prescott and Ken Livingstone.

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