From the editor

摘要

The people's architect, Colin Stansfield Smith, died last week. It is sad news, as we mark not only the passing of a man, but of an ideal: architecture without vanity; the successful combination of common sense and good design; the local authority architect working on behalf of the public; property without profit-making; architecture for everyone. This ideal is the antithesis of Howard Roark, hero of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. In Stansfield Smith, we had not the singular artist, the starchitect, with his artistic conflagrations wilfully polarising public opinion. The work of his office was not grand designs, but good schools, built to last, and yet to inspire. His death has been described as the end of an era, of a time when architects commanded authority without courting celebrity. The architects of today are associated with the luxury property market and its fads, or with tiny flats hidden behind colourful cladding, of fairground experiments, or silly buildings on the TV; and design is valued for increasing the value of assets and investments - not for fulfilling a humanitarian need for quality buildings, space and light.