Andres Duany rounds on British architects

American architect Andres Duany (pictured), who was one of the designers of Poundbury, the Prince of Wales's retro English town in Dorset, has launched an attack against modern British architects for pursuing “ego-driven" visions which have resulted in social dysfunction. While he does not name names, it is clear that he is pointing the finger at the likes of Richard Rogers and Zaha Hadid and their modernistic creations.

Speaking to the Guardian, he said: "It is inexplicable why architects and planners continue to pursue radical innovation as if it were 1945 every morning. Only architecture, confusing itself with fashion as a platform for cultural expression, continues to be avant garde, heedless of its cost overruns, social and technical dysfunction and widespread lack of popularity."

He cited "gratuitous shapes" in buildings such as winged roofs which quickly go out of fashion, "amazingly rude" colours on shop signs which "are just a vulgar way to attract attention" and civic buildings that "look common" when they should be grand. His intervention was timed to coincide with the unveiling of a masterplan for Hertfordshire, his most ambitious UK scheme yet.

However, Sunand Prasad, president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, said Duany was "living in another world". While conceding that the architects' craft skills and traditional knowledge had been swept aside too easily between the 1950s and 1970s, he said architects were now building the "highest performance" buildings ever.

"It is not so much the innovation and the ego that is causing the problem," he said. "It is the commercial pressure to build large on sites which can't take it; it is the haphazard development of towns and the widespread confusion over our democratic planning process."