letters.

CLEAR REASONING

SIR: Would it be possible to receive a copy of Kenneth Frampton's article Seven Points for the Millennium (AR Nov) in a readable format? Frampton is one of the finest and clearest writers on architectural theory today but unfortunately the graphics overlaying the text completely obscured whatever it was he was trying to say.

It is a disservice to writers of the stature of Kenneth Frampton that several pages of text cannot stand alone. It is a disservice to a journal of the quality of the AR that 'eye-candy' appears more important than ideas.

Yours etc

MICHAEL MCCLELLAND, EDWIN ROWSE E.R.A. Architects, Toronto, Canada

We are very sorry about the presentation of Kenneth Frampton 's speech. The strange result was due to a most unfortunate combination of circumstances which will be avoided in future. The whole of the Frampton article (without background) is published on our website: www.arplus.com/maniffesto.html

EMERGING TRUTH

SIR: While browsing through the mostly excellent published schemes for the AR + D Emerging Architecture Award, I noticed that the images illustrating the project 'House and Stable, Colorado, USA' by Todd MacAllen and Stephanie Forsythe, looked suspiciously like photomontages, while the interior view appeared to be a CAD rendered image.

One of the criteria for entry was that eligible projects should be 'executed work'. As the published images of the MacAllen and Forsythe project do not convincingly show that it is a built scheme, I wonder whether it should have been chosen over some 800 other entries. Perhaps you can shed some light on this?

Yours etc

JOHN SYKES 

London

Mr Sykes is wrong. We did not print all the material submitted to us but some of the other pictures in the entry clearly show the building in the course of construction. P.D.

VITRUVIAN EXTENSION

SIR: In the January editorial Catherine Slessor was prompted to suggest the addition of 'restituitas' to the three famous Vitruvian categories, to represent the degree to which an architect's creation is ecologically responsible. However, if there is to be a division of the quality of architectural design into compellingly defined aspects, then for this specific issue the three categories can suffice, and it is in the first category that this issue is measured.

This is clear if the three are defined as, respectively, the relationship of the building (the modification of the environment) to its surrounding environment (eg it keeps out the wind and rain, and is not worn away by it =firmitas); the relationship of the building to the physical bodies of the people using it (everything from thermal comfort to the disposition of the people about it = utilitas); and finally the relationship of the building to the minds of the people using it (let's say 'aesthetic issues = venustas). So, ecological appropriateness falls within a broad interpretation of the first category, where the quality lies with the degree to which an intervention. in the physical environment is detrimental or beneficial to that environment alone (irrespective of benefits to the building users).

Much traditional vernacular building was environmentally sound, and it could be argued that a lot of its venusats is derived entirely from appreciation of its firmitas (though not always, even mud huts get decorated). There actually IS a problem with the three-category interpretation of architecture, but it is in the attempt to objectify the third category (crudely put, to state what is the correct style of design, the debate which has always dogged our subject), and it is an error inherited from the simple cause-and-effect rationalism of the past.

Yours etc

MICHAEL GREVILLE

London

MCKEOWN ALEXANDER IN GLASGOW

SIR: In Letter from Glasgow (AR December, p31) the housing project credited to Elder and Cannon is in fact by McKeown Alexander.

As a young practice this is our first major built project. The irony of the wrong name against the project is that it completely cuts across one of the intentions of Glasgow 1999 and Homes for the Future, i.e. to assist in the emergence of younger architects and designers within the city.

Yours etc

IAN ALEXANDER 

Glasgow, Scotland