Statement Concerning my role and aims in the Commission on Building More, Building Beautifully.

The architectural press has been predicting that I will use my position as chair of the above commission to impose a rigid stylistic conformity, and that my well-known love of the classical vernacular will become a kind of aesthetic dictatorship, compelling architects on pain of – of what exactly? – to build according to principles dictated by me.

            In fact, in conjunction with the government and the civil service, I am putting...