In October, we stayed in John Pawson’s Life House which he designed in remotest Radnorshire for what was Alain de Botton’s project, Living Architecture (de Botton is no longer involved with it). Over the years, we have stayed in nearly all their houses: not least they are inevitably, being new, much more disabled friendly than the Landmark Trust.

I felt that not enough has been done to consider the importance of his project in terms of introducing the idea of genuinely contemporary and adventurous architecture to a sceptical British public who are mostly fed a diet of Barrett homes and prefer to escape to the past for their holiday homes. So, I have written about it in this month’s The Critic and my article has just gone online in their December/January issue.

I can now publish my not very good photographs of it. It eludes photography being almost wilfully subfusc, adopting the language of local agricultural buildings, presumably in order to get planning permission:-

Weekends à la mode | Charles Saumarez Smith | The Critic Magazine