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.

Artist Bruce McLean attended Saturday morning classes at the Glasgow School of Art from the age of 6, and went on to study there in the 1960s. But it is only recently says McLean, that he has realised the influence Charles Rennie Mackintosh's building (1897-1909) had on him.

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.