The idea that British architecture has some identity, and is going somewhere, is a very 19th century and unBritish thought. 'Who are we, what is to be done?' - as Isaiah Berlin pointed out at the Architectural Association and elsewhere - such questions were asked by the Germans, Americans and above all the Russians, not the confident English. Today it's a journalistic query and, for anyone who has contemplated Marshall McLuhan's notion of the global village, a problematic one. In the 1990s an AA conference was dedicated to the question - 'Is there a Dutchness in Architecture?' - and I can remember answering, 'No, but there is a Remness,' and the same might be said for Britain. As the recent Stirling Prize showed, the jury could not quite decide whether Rem Koolhaas was a British architect because, although he sometimes lives, works and teaches here and certainly influences the scene, his office is in Rotterdam.
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