Building Sights

Writer Beatrix Campbell visits the successful Byker housing estate in Newcastle, designed by Ralph Erskine in the early 1970s. It's an epic development - both monumental and modest, and Beatrix Campbell describes why it is such an ingenious design solution.

Stephen Bayley, curator of the Conran Design Museum opening in 1989 argues, in the face of popular opinion, that Alexander Fleming House (Erno Goldfinger, 1962) in London's Elephant and Castle is a building worth preserving in its original design.

First-year architecture student Sophie Hicks delights in the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, Sussex. Designed in 1933 by Erich Mendelsohn and Serge Chermayeff, the building is one of the finest examples of modern seaside architecture in Britain.

Editor of Blueprint magazine Deyan Sudjic examines Creek Vean in Cornwall. It is a house built in 1966 by Team 4, a group of young unknowns. Two of them are now Britain's best known architects, Richard Rogers and Norman Foster.