ABSTRACT
‘If houses are badly designed — and there are good and bad schemes — it is surely not our fault but the architects’.’ This statement is quoted from a recent interview given by a former Minister of Housing to the magazine Building Design and represents a predictable official reaction to current problems in housing design. The Minister is expressing a point of view which has some justification — there are many depressingly badly designed housing schemes in existence. Nevertheless, his statement deliberately over-simplifies a complex problem and the former Minister knows this very well.
