Architects or God?

It is hard for most architects not to harbour the idea that they are faintly God-like: cue image of William Blake's divider-wielding deity in The Ancient of Days. Architects are, after all, the nominal descendants of geniuses such as Alberti, Palladio, Hawksmoor, Lutyens, Le Corbusier and Aalto. And since the beginning of the 20th century, their role models have tended to behave with great arrogance.

When one of Frank Lloyd Wright's wealthy clients complained that a leak in the ceiling was dripping water on a valuable table, Wright replied: "Move the table." And when Sir Basil Spence made final checks on the fixtures and fittings of the University of Sussex campus in the 1960s, he suddenly began to smash light fittings with his walking stick. "Not what I specified," he barked. "Replace them!" In the early 1990s, Peter Rees, the City's planning supremo, attempted to check required design changes on One Poultry, whose architect was the famously imposing Sir James Stirling. "I've made the changes," Stirling growled, "and you don't need to see them."