Getting London in Perspective

This year’s festival of architecture, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the foundation of the Royal Institute of British Architects, has had the effect of demonstrating architects' vulnerability more than their confidence or dignity. Normally a profession would expect to mark such an occasion by stressing how its power and reputation have developed over the years to create its present position of public esteem, but in this case recent memories, repeatedly focusing on the failure of post-war architecture to fulfil its glorious promises, have all but destroyed the credit accumulated in earlier decades. Having asserted their role in making a better world, architects now find themselves challenged, at what should have been a time of triumph, by a disappointed public with the Prince of Wales as their standard bearer. Architects may be the scapegoats for wider ills but their willing participation in the transformations which are now found so appalling makes it difficult for them totally to duck the blame.