Trads can’t break into best new buildings

Leading architects Robert Adam (pictured) and Quinlan Terry have launched a withering attack on the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), claiming that its list of Britain's best new buildings, which is published today, wantonly ignores classical and traditional buildings and that its judging panel is being run by a cadre of "style fascists".

"These awards are a con," says Adam, one of the country's leading classicists, who is currently working on more than 20 country houses. "They purport to be about architecture, but they are only about one kind of architecture. RIBA and the architectural profession are behaving like style fascists. This is a battle between building architecture that a professional clique thinks is right and producing buildings the public likes."

And Quinlan Terry, one of Prince Charles' favourite architects, says he has given up entering his buildings for the list, which includes Heathrow's Terminal 5 and a tiny beachside cafe designed to look like flotsam, because he knows they will be rejected on grounds of style. "I don't enter because it would be a waste of time," he said. "Anyway, RIBA's insistence on modernism is starting to look out of date. For the modern movement to get going in the 1950s they had to denigrate traditional architecture. People still say it is morally wrong to build a classical building and that modernism, which looks forward to the future, is classically correct.

"But people are now waking up to the fact that a lot of modernist buildings were awful. A lot more work goes to classicists now. We are building for rich Russians, but Mr Average likes traditional architecture too and wants a house with a pitched roof, a door in the middle and windows on each side - in other words, something that looks like a house."

RIBA's list of 92 best new buildings is important because it is widely considered to be a longlist for the Stirling Prize, Britain's most prestigious architecture award. RIBA denies the list is just for modernists like Richard Rogers and Norman Foster.

A member of the judging panel, Joanna Van Heyningan, claims the absence of the likes of Adam and Terry is a quality judgement. "There is no prejudice against classical architecture, there is a prejudice against poor architecture," she says. "This is a problem for people who have devoted their lives to one style of architecture because it has diverted them from pursuing quality."