The problem with the best building plots is that they almost always already have buildings on them. Rigorous building control makes cities hard places to build in, and the avid protection of the countryside makes it very hard to build in the middle of nowhere. So almost the only way to build something new is to demolish something else. But then, historic buildings, city districts and skylines are protected. So the solution is to demolish something that nobody likes. And that is, almost always, modernist architecture. Yet if we lose an entire strata of our history – as looks increasingly likely – we deprive the future of the possibility of judging for itself, and learning first hand from some mistakes, and some triumphs.

There is no doubt that modernist architecture can be hard to love, and hard to defend. Few people miss the sink estates, the monolithic offices on podiums that mercilessly broke up the ancient street plans of our city centres, the rain-stained concrete or the brutal multi-storey car parks. But that is not the whole picture. There are a few undisputed monuments, protected by listing and legislation, but we are in critical danger of losing other extremely fine buildings to bland commercial development, often far more aesthetically and intellectually impoverished than what it replaces.