Britain has had forty years of decisions that didn't think about that. Andy Burnham is from the north, ran a city, and made it work better. He is probably the only senior politician in the country who can stand in a room in Wigan and a boardroom in Canary Wharf and make the same argument land in both places.

My mum called Victorian buildings "monstrosities."

Her generation tore them down. Then spent forty years blocking anything new. While sitting on the housing scarcity that made them rich.

The British Library was derided when it opened. It went Grade I listed in under thirty years.

Build well. Build a lot. The least useful voice in that conversation belongs to the people who demolished the last lot.

Phil got up before dawn to watch the sun rise from the end of Southend Pier. He hasn't had time to do anything like it since. This is a blog about how that might change.

Architects’ salaries and fees have fallen dramatically in real terms since 2008, even as the number of architects has swelled. Are we spreading ourselves too thin, and chasing the wrong work? Maybe it’s time to ask the big question: what are architects really for?