Ken Allinson's latest books – A Guide to London's Contemporary Architecture, and The Architects and Architecture of London – are available from many bookshops, including the RIBA and the Tate Modern. Alternatively they can be purchased from London Open House (who obtain a charitable contribution). Click on the image to be taken to the LOH shop page.

This is a typical map page, with the buildings described located by a number. The intention of the guide is to get people out onto the street and only accessible works are listed. Because fully detailed maps would take up lots of space and, arguably, still be les than adequate, the maps given the general location and references are given to Underground stations etc. near to the listed building and the presumption is that the users of the guide will have access to a standard A-Z street guide of similar (or perhaps use their mobile phone to access the same information).

Sometimes new and old are one and the same, or adjacent to one another. The principal aim of the Guide is to introduce the reader to the new, but the author feels that to walk by something old and of merit without it being pointed out is a diservice to the reader. On this page the recently refurbished Royal Exchange building (designed by Sir William Tite, 1844) is described. Historically, it is one of the most important buildings in the City of London and has now been turned into an up-market shopping centre with a restaurant and cafe – a fine place to sit and watch City life. Being located at Bank, it is surrounded by notable buildings by well-known architects: Lutyens, Hawksmoor, Soane, Stirling, Wren, etc.

The three custom-designed buildings erected here on Lime Street since the 1920s make a fascinating case study. Unfortunately, only one remains: the iconic '86 Building by Richard Rogers. Although it can no longer be called 'contemporary' in the sense of recent, the building is iconic and is given a full description that places the Rogers deisgn in the context of the previous – now missing – two older buildings. The Guide provides the background the extant building and illustrates it as an exercise in cultural continuity, realtive to which the massive stylistic differences between the three Lloyds' buildings are comparatively superficial.

Some recent buildings break the mould and exhibit something new – but in this case the facade panels hark back to the style of one of London's most infamous architects: Richard Seifert, who became notorious in the 1960s. Knowing this helps to appreciate David Walker's work into a large cultural context.

The so-called 'Gherkin' is one of London's most iconic buildings and a notable landmark ... and it sits adjacent to Richard Rogers' Lloyds building. But why does it have the form it does? And what has this got to do with RIA bombs and the dynamics of City planning ambitions to play a role on a global playing field of provision for firms providing financial services? In any case, what is the design all about? The Guide tells you all you need to know.

Occasionally, a large new City development commands everyone's respect. The building are good, but don't shout out their 'green' credentials. But it is the urban design that is notable. It works without drama and is an excellent bench-mark.

David Adjaye is one of London's most notable 'young' architects with an international reputation. His most recent work in London – INIVA – is also one of his best, exhibiting this architect's skill in handling a tight site and even tighter budget. But, very close, are notable works many visitors miss: the Amnesty HQ, Hawksmoor's Christchurch, the bizarre Village Underground set-up of old warehouse+old Underground train+ old containers, and one of London's first social housing projects. All this (and more) is in Hoxton, a strangely run-down and yet trendy and expensive part of London on the edge of the City. It isperhaps typical of a few 'edge' or boundary areas that get the visitor away from the City and the West End.

Will Alsop has had a chequered architectural career, but always seems to bounce back and surprise his critics. His works often appear bizarre in a magazine and yet make a lot of sense in the flesh – proof that one should always get out there and see the real thing, in the flesh. As a part of Queen Mary College, the building is also a part of a larger portfolio of buildings of interest in this East End university.

David Adjaye's Whitechapel Idea Store is both a disappointment and an exhilerating exhibition of what can be done. Located in the heart of a Bangladeshi community and on a street that hosts a famous and very old East End market, the building makes all the right moves but has been caught out by budget and managerial issues. Untangling all that is important to the building's enjoyment. This is the 'real' London.

Each principal London area that is covered by the Guide is given an introduction. Here, we have the West End, complement to the City and, in turn supplemented by the East End. The Guide gives you the information that makes sense of this areas, their development and nature as a location for current architectural works.

One of Whitehall's most notable and recent buildings is Portcullis House – perhaps one of the least understood or appreciate works of Michael and Patty Hopkins. To indertand it is to appreciate its context – particularly the Houses of Parliament and the adjacent former London police building designed by a man who was once one of the most famous and radical of London architects: Norman Shaw.

retail design has something like a four-year life-span, if itis lucky and the guide generally avoids this rapidly changing scene. But some buildings have to be noted. This is one: Foster's work for Asprey, the famous shop in Bond Street. But if you make the trouble to go there, why not visit Pall mall, the street of London gentlemen's clubs, or places such as a small urban square hidden off Oxford Street, by Fletcher Priest?

People flock to Oxford Street in their millions. But just off this street are notable architectural works. This page illustrates a few – including Butterfield's remarkable neo-Gothic work, All saints, Margaret Street. Further east, in Bloomsbury, is somethign very different: a recent work by Allies & Morrison for the City Lit, an educational institute. The page also illustrates two older works by seifert in this area, and the offices of the world-famous engineers, Ove Arup.

Foster's notable Great Court at the British Museum is another design with an historical context which makes sense of what is happening. Without appreciating that context one will miss the point of much of what is going on.

Some parts of London are instances of major urban redevelopment. We all know about Docklands, but fewer people know about this east-west corridor with major developments at each end.

Marlebone is one of London's more famous and established areas, still partly residential, but where one finds harley Street (with its consultant doctors) and remarkable new schools such as this one. It is also where the BBC is located, an institution that has long been famous for its patronage of the arts and has been undergoing some major building changes for some years.

Some smaller projects hide away and most architects miss them. they might read the magazines but never get there – in which case they might miss this small gem in one of London's older districts near to Kings Cross. This is also the are that has the famous brunswick square development, a notable 1960s/'70s project that has recently been redeveloped and entirely altered in character.

The Thames has been described as the 'life-blood' of London. And so it has been. But it has also been an open sewer at one time in its life. Now, it has been recalimed and rediscovered and one can walk for miles along its embankments, seeing its bridges and the many interesting buildings along its length. This page introduces a section of the Guide that covers this topic.

One of the notable developments along the Thames is by Norman foster and sits adjacent to his studios. Nor far away is another riverside development by Allies & Morrison.

The Chelsea Art School – housed in an old army facility – is one of London's better known and larger art schools, sitting opposite the old Tate Britain building. It is fascinating for its architectural mix 'n' match qualities.

Opened in 2000, the Tate Modern has been a remarkable success story. Making sense of that story is, in part, to put the development in context and relate it to what is currently going on in the area – developments such as that undertaken just to the south by Allies & Morrison, and by Will Alsop. Of the lesser known works there is the Jerwood. And, on a more social level, visitors going here should not miss the Borough Market – that is what London is about: its vitality.

From 1986-200 London was without its own government, having being ended as too left wing by Margaret Thatcher's right-wing national government, then in power. And then the left-wing returned under Tony Blair and it was decided to have mayorial elections and to provide London with oa new City Hall. Of course, this had to be funded privately, as such things are these days and a developer on the south bank of the Thames, at More London, cannily won a competition to provide this building. It is designed by the office of Norman Foster but (like the Gherkin) was under the design direction of one of Foster's partners, Ken Shuttleworth. A trade magazine publihsed an interview with Shuttleworth and the outcome was that he left the Foster practice and set up on his own (as MAKE). Meaanwhile, City hall – designed as a 'transparent' building with public access – slowly closed itself in and introduced more and more security. But one can still enter parts of it and, on some special occasions, walk down its rather spectacular inner ramp. One could say that it is all rather mad, but it does have bravura.

The section covering buildings in the former Docklands is given an introductory section that locates developments such as the 02 Dome and the 2012 Olympics in context.

Among the things to see in the former Docklands it is Canary Wharf that stands out as the 'flagship' of redevelopment. Here, Foster's Jubilee Underground station is very impressive, especially at rush hour. But there are also developments in the area such as Container City – a deliberately under-played scheme whose developer was charged with providing low-cost space for creative types and turned to using old containers.

The Greenwich Penninsula is another key area to Docklands redevelopment. Its principal feature is the 02 Dome, but there is also housing there, much of it designed by the late Ralph Erskine. The area is very near to the historic heart of Greenwich, where Christopher Wren designed a famous hospital and where Blackheath Park is located – home to the Observatory and its recent addition by Allies & Morrison.

The Greenwich Observatory in Blackheath Park, at Greenwich, is one of London's principal tourist attractions. It is a terrific place to visit for fine views down from the hill toward Canary Wharf and west London. But new parts have been added to the Observatory by Allies & Morrison – which foregrounds a superbly executed and strangely enigmatic bronze cone.

The Laban, designed by Herzog & de Mueron, is one of London's finest works of architecture. Like most London projects its basis was urban renewal and it suffered a relatively low budget. But the architects managed to produce a superb design full of architectural gamesmanship. Access can be arranged, although a charge is made (an increasingly familiar feature of architectural attractions!).

The Fawood Nursery designed by Will Alsop is possibly one of his better works – and, as usual, guaranteed to upset some people. In this case those are upset read the scheme as a zoo for young children. But this is another instance of a design that most people know from magazines being misread. In fact, it works superbly well and principally suffers from not being complemented by a large and wild outdoor play area. As a design it is full of wit and pisitive inventiveness, putting many toher po-faced nursery designs to shame.

The so-called Westminster Academy was designed by AHMM as a school for some 1000 school children from about 10-18 years old, on a probalematic site next to an urban motorway. And it has been a superbly successful design that demonsrates how today's architects sometimes have to fight their corner against the dominant influences of pragmatically-minded building contractors. On the other hand, the school is also interesting because of the negative responses received from some other architects. It's good and it is controversial, guaranteed to arouse an opinion one way or the other. (Note: we can arrange a visit, but the Academy makes a substantial charge.)

Landscape design is still a poor cousin to architecture, but this (controversial) example in Hyde Park is a superb example of what can be achieved. See it, of course, in the summer, when you can appreciate its flwoing waters and dangle your feet in them.

It is in the relatively recent past that the media world (and Sky in particular) discovered the potential of cricket to win global audiences. It was a phenomenon that has transformed this once sleepy, historic cricket ground in north London. Hopkins, Grimshaw, and Future Systems ate among the architects who have work here – now being supplemented by an entirely new phase of works over the next tens years, master-planned and designed by Herzog & de Mueron.

Libeskind's Graduate Centre in the Holloway Road is a peculiar mix – of the strange and the worthy. Now a few years old, it has stayed the course, still looks good and is a terrific addition to this urban scenario. But throw away the name and the associations and it looks like something from an earthquake, or as if a grounded ship has had its back broken in two. And then we find the interior ceiling lighting explained by the fact that Libeskind, finding no contextural references when on site, looked up at the night sky and saw Orion – hence the pattern to the lighting . Clients love such stuff! However, a bemused architect should look at the thing itself, stripped of narrative, look at its plan and acknowledge that this is a good design expertly knitted into the existing builoding and serving the University's branding intentions rather well.

This is yet another Alsop work, now ageing but still with a power to arouse pleasure. See it in conjunction with a visit to Adjaye's later idea Store in Whitechapel. Both have parallel social contexts – the Store serving a predominatly Banglideshi community and the Peckham Library serving a predomintly Afro-Caribbean community. Alsop's building strives to creat a small urban place beneath its 'L-shaped' section and, in the library hall at the upper level, features three 'pods' which echo the Archigram concerns of the 1960s when Alsop was a student.

This oage feartures the work of one of London's more famous architects – Sir John Soane – that has been recently supplemented by work from Rick Mather. The original Soane work is itself idiosyncratic (a mausoleum that is a picture gallery) and the Mather addition does an excellent job of beginning a quadrangle to one side of the Gallery.

The ten years or more before the recession of 2008 hit British architects saw large sums of money going into health projects commanded by those who built them – an intersting test for the architects involved, who had to deal with the constant dumbing-down and value-engineering of their masters. This centre is a fine example of how Buschow Henley learned to play the game and deliver a work of merit. (A similar health centre by the same firm is in New Cross; yet another worth looking at is AHMM's Kenthish Town health centre.)

The Maggie centres are a curious mix of charitable concern for cancer sufferers and opportunities for Charles Jencks to play at architectiural patron. At their best – as here – they are large and informal houses. But a key part of the challenge to the architects was how to produce the qualities required on a site that located the centre next to a large NHS hospital and a very busy road – hence its introverted aspects.

Kew Gardens has been attempting to supplement its attractiveness by adding to its collection of notable architectural works that include its famous C18th Pagada and C19th Palm House. Now it has works like this pavilion by Wilkinson Eyre and a high tree walk by

Most Londoner's or its visitors never get to Rogers' Terminal Five building – and they miss a treat. In fact, it is realtively easy to get to and enjoy, even without being on a long-haul flight. The structure and the detaiing are marvellous and T5 is a fine addition to heathrows chaos (which, incidentally, merely matches the disorder of London as a whole).

Ken Allinson's latest books – A Guide to London's Contemporary Architecture, and The Architects and Architecture of London – are available from many bookshops, including the RIBA and the Tate Modern. Alternatively they can be purchased from London Open House (who obtain a charitable contribution). Click on the image to be taken to the LOH shop page. The key point of Architects and Architecture of London is to deal with history as something alive and a part of London's current cultural life. The buildings listed are extant works that can still be seen and experienced as a part of contemporary London life.

St Bart's is a terrific architectural experience. Started as a Norman church with subsequent additions, it was caught out by the Reformation and suffered great damage. This was repaired in the Edwardian period, leaving us with a marvellous architectural mix of work from differing historical periods.

The problem with history is that it presents us with problems in being able to see a work, in itself, for what it is. This is not helped by a modernistic attitude oriented to what is new rather than old. And so merit, in itself, has difficulty in fighting through. Here is an attempt to compare and contrast some of the better works from a significant period that emphasised architecture as a civic monument, with churches still as its most prominent content.

Jones is the father of architecture in Britain as we understand it today. As an architect trained in the theatricality of masques he played a key role in the court of Charles I. However, his purely architectural taste was thoroughly neo-Palladian and Jones was responsible for introdcuing the idea of 'regularity' to London's streets. Little of that work remains, but theri is some in Covent Garden and in Lincoln's Inn Fields, as well as his most notable extant work, the Banqueting House in Whitehall (originally to be part of a grand palace) – a superb building designed for his royal patron: for formal occasions on the main floor and private parties in the cellars below; a building from whose window Charles stepped onto a timber scaffolding upon which his head was lopped off.

Wren's St Paul's Cathedral, completed about 1700, remains one of the most significant of London's works of architecture, affecting planning issues and still serving a very important role in state rituals. Intnded to match Late Renaissance and Baroque works in Rome, the Cathedral has always been a problematic edifce – especially after the Great Fire of 1666, when Wren had to conceal his real intentions, but also more recently, when proposals for a new development now known as Parternoster became the scene of contentious royal interventions.

Trained in Wren's office, Hawksmoor has remained, to this day, one of London's most notable and idiosyncratic architects. Two of his churches – Christchurch and St George, Bloomsbury – have been fully restored and fine places to vists and experience this man's architectural gamesmanship. Another, St Mary Woolnoth, stands prominenly at Bank and is also worth visiting.

St Martins has recently had major changes made at an underground level, comlementing Gibb's superb work that faces onto Trafalgar Square. These pages compare two of Gibb's works - St Martins and St Mary-le-Strand – with Wren's St Clement Danes (all quite near to one another, all in good condition and worth visiting).

Lord Burlington was a major patron of architecture and related arts in the early decades of the C18th century, promotoing a pure kind of neo-Palladianism of the kind he had experienced on his 'grand tour' to Italy. He hosted a household of notable creative tyopes, including Colen Campbell and William Kent. His home, Burligton House is now the Royal Academy, but one can still pick the house out, even though it is now overlaid by Victorian building works. It is also relatively easy to visit his Chiswick Villa, loosely modelled on Palladio's Villa Rotonda, but as a peculair addition (joined by a bridge link) to a much older house (now demolished).

One of the architectural joys of London is Sir John Soane's Museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Unfortunately, like most such places it now tends to be swamped in tourists and one has to wait for a cold, rainy weekday in the winter in order to be able to appreciate it. But how marvellous it is: home, office, museum, gallery... A veritable temple to the muse of architecture herself.

John Nash was a very prominent architect between about 1810 and 1830. And he was the author of a 'royal mile' between a palace near to the present Buckingham Palace and a royal venture in what is now Regent's Park. The difficulty was joining the one to the other, necessitating speculation and a marriage of design wit with masterful urban design that had to negotiate its way through the heart of existing developments and between the contrasting social areas of Mayfair and Soho. The whole thing remains one of the very few such grand undertakings in London. And the small church of All Souls epitomises the wit with which Nash dealt with his tasks.

Pugin, one of the most significant figure os the neo-Gothic movement, whose work still delights all those who visit the likes of the Westminster Palace, ran a wreck salvage business off the south coast. How this links in with his other talents is a mystery, but it adds to the uniqueness of a man who died relatively young.

Architcts tend to avoid anyhting of tourist interst - places such as the Westminster Palace where one finds the Houses of Parliament and the Lords. Both are like old fashioned gentlemen's clubs into which women are reluctantly invited – strange cultural scenarios inhabiting a unique architectural vision. The House of Lords is an especially good example of Pugin's decorative overlays upon Chales barry's essentially Classical building plan. Architects should somehow drop the anxietoies with tourisnm and politics and history, and experience the place.

Butterfield was one of London's more peculiar C19th characters, living in a Georgian house in the Adelphi, designed by the Adam brothers, but devoted to the Christian content of the neo-Gothic revival. His Al Saintes church in Margaret Street, just behind Oxford Circus, is a masterful exercise. Whether it will be to your tastes is another matter. For me, this is one of the finest architectural works in London.

Street was another strange, obsessive and very talented London architect, author of the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand. We see the building as richly neo-Gothic. He would have seen it as his career nightmare, stripped down to much less than he had envisioned. In fact, like barry's work at westminster, this is a ruthlessly economic plan form dressed in a more 'painterly' and even picturesque guise. These two qualities together make this a facinating building.

Shaw – like manyother famous architects – was once one of the brightest kids on the block who later became an establishment figure. On his own he virtually invented the so-called 'Queen Anne' style that ushered in a 'free-style' period of architectural explorations and experimentation in the last decades of the C19th. It didn't last, being replaced ny something more orthodox and disciplined, but London has an ignored richness of works from this period.

George represents the strange and very creative 'free-style' work of the later two decades of the C19th. Once celebrated he is now, like so many from that period, forgotten. Today's architects will suffer a simlar fate, whatever they think. But, then, some enthusiasts can rediscover them and dump the history in an attempt to meet with the thing in itself and enjoy the fruitful creativity of such architects.

Waterhouse's monument is the Natural History Museum – one of the more significant architectural works of the museum area of Kensington. He was a particular fan of the use of terra-cotta and the Museum is a good place to see how eonderfully he uses it and dealt with Darwinian themes to the institution.

Big Horace Jones was the City's architect and the named author of many City buildings, including a contribution to the Tower Bridge – actually designed and detailed by an engineer, Sir John-Wolfe Barry. Leadenhall market is possibly his most interesting extant work.

Lutyens was a genius. By the time he designed this wonderful church in Hampstead Garden Suburb (St Jude's) he was well on his way to becoming the architect who was to be a national figure, particularly noted for the design of the Cenotaph in Whitehall. But this neglected church exhibits odd touches of baroque bizzareness and is quite delightful. As a Christian church in an predominantly Jewish community it has a strange life on the edge of obsolesence, but is worth a visit on a quiet summer day when the Suburb's pleasures can be enjoyed. The East End this is not.

These opages deal with regent Street at its lower ends, where its 'grand manner' buildings were designed and completed in a period from about 1910-30. Toursist keep their heads down, merely looking at the shop windows, but there is some marvellous stuff above them, filled with an Empire spirit for which Modernism did not yet exist, despite the visit of the Futurist, Marinetti, to London at the beginning of this period.

While the historian's attentions tend toward the larger-than-life figures who went from survival to success and to significance, London enjoyed the services of a mass of less well-knowen names whose works can be found, for example, in Soho and Mayfair, in bond Street and elsewhere. As 'free-style' these are often very inventive. (Men such as Henry treadwell and Leonard Martin)

Modernism came to London in disguise – as the work of engineers who gave steel frames and elevators to buildings that otherwise looked like the load-bearing structures of old (for which the London Building Regulations were partly responsible). Among the more notable buildings of this period is the Selfriges store, in Oxford street – still one of London's more splendid facades.

Davies represents transition form one world to another. As a bright kid on the block he brought his Parisian trainig to London and, at 22, was the job architect of the Ritz hotel. After WWI his work continued, particularly designed the interiors of trans-Atlantic liners. But when his clients asked him to design on the new, fashionable style that we now know as Art Deco, he suffered suffered a mental breakdown (rroted in his experiences during the Great War). A new world was dawning.

Sir Evan Owen Williams was an engineer-architect whose work represented an odd period in English architecture when, during the 1930s, a genuine search was on for a style at once modern and yet not too radical. And yet the lOwen was the latter and his most notable work – the Daily Express building – still exists (in part) on Fleet Street. What is there now is the office frontage to what was the printing works of the Daily Express newspaper. When the newspapers moved out of Fleet Street the City banks moved in and the works part of the building was redeveloped into trading floors and the like. However the amazing facade remains, as does the famous Art deco entry lobby designed by Robert Atkinson.

English Modernism was largely a foreign import, the product of men such as Lubetkin who saw London as a great opportunity to introduce a foreign novlty to a nation with conservative tastes. He set up a practice wit others from the Architectural Association school, using their contacts to establish a famous practice: Tecton. One of the practices most famous pre-war works was two blocks of flats in Highgate, in north London and these remain a fine example of the best of pre-war Modernism in Britain.

Another notable emigre to britain was Erno Goldfinger, who managed to do what many architects dream about: marry an heiress. They met in Paris and came back to London where Goldfinger set up a practice and designed the famous Willow Road terrace of three houses as a home for the newly married couple and as an exhibition exercise of the architect's talents. The design seeks to marry Parisian Modernism with the merits of the London georgian terrace house that Goldfinger admired – and he succeeded admirably. Today, the house belongs to the National Trust and has been maintained as it used to be when Erno and Ursula lived there.

Gywnne was an idiosyncratic architect born into an affluent middle class family, Early in the 1930s his father was persuaded to let the son design a new family home on land they owned – and Homewood was born. After WWII and the death of both parents, the house became Gywnne's home and it is now a National Trust property exhibiting tastes that now and then lean toward a kind of Modernist kitsch, complete with 1960s modifiations in the Gywnne studio that are straight out of James Bond.

Leslie Martin came to fame by a leading role in the 1951 Festival of Britain and its legacy which still exists: the Royal Festival Hall. But he was a leading figure on the architectural scene in another way – heading up a new school at Cambridge, setting up a consultancy and promoting young architects such as Stirling & Gowan, Patrick Hodgkinson and Colin St John Wilson.

The Barbican – designed by Chamberlin Powell & Bon – is a major City landmark and where the majority of its inhabitants live. The trioe had previously won a competition for the neighbouring Golden Lane estate when teaching at Kingston school of architecture. Then came the Barbican commission. Both of these developments are outstanding examples of housing from that period, remaining desirable places to live.

The Smithsons were, in the 1950s, something new: part of a scene of architects and artists who were concerned with the authenticity of urban grittiness. Their designs were radical and husgely influential, but they actually built little. Of what was constructed the Economist gropup in St James' is by far the most successful and remains an excellent example of civility.

Seifert once represented the darker side of post-war professionalism – a man with a reputation for being able to obtain planning permissions and engender huge financial gains for his clients. He was, in a word, 'commercial'. Now in an era of practcie when most architects admit to being either in business or out of practice, Seifert's reputation has been rehabilitated. We can now enjoy the outputs from his office, mostly from the 1960s and early 1970s. Ironically, they are becoming idiosyncratic landmarls displaying a tectonic interest of which most young architects are now ignorant, intersts belonging to a pre-digital area of sculptural forms brought to viability by largely anonymous engineers.

Cedric Price was an architect who denied any interest in either building or aesthetics and yet took the greatest of care in a sartorial manner that contradicted such declarations. he was famed for his 'idea projects' and only has one notable building in London: the Aviary at London Zoo, a building that adds to a a small collection of similarly notable works that include Tecton's Penquin Pool. You may not like zoos, but it is worth going there in order to see the Aviary, still a thoroughly unusual structure exhibiting references to Buckminster Fuller's work.

Grimshaw's consistently high-quality work in the once-upon-a-time, so-called 'High-Tech' manner always takes the opportunity to display tectonic interests that most architectural practices do not have the curiousity or knowledge to indulge in. We see this at Camden Town, in the Sainsbury supermarket, and particularly in the more recent office building at 25 Gresham Street, in the City. The latter is ordinary and yet, oddly, stands out from the crowd.

We now like to turn away from the Post-Modernist phenomenon, repressing the memory of what now appears to have been a short-lived interlude. Like Art deco, London actually now exhibits very few Po-Mo buildings worth visiting. Here, we make reference to two of its better architects: John Outram and Quinlan Terry. Among the latter's London works is a series of villas in the Regent's Park; and the former designed what is possibly the only Po-Mo work in London worth recalling and visiting: a pumping station of the ise of Dogs. The most notable of such architects was Terry Farrell. However the only interesting work by him in London that exhibits his Po-Mo interests was the Breakfast Television building in Camden Town, whos facade lingers on as a memory trace of a movement that once engaged so many architects. Unfortunately, the mad interior to the building was long ago stripped out and replaced.

The Hopkins' have always been grouped togerher with Foster, Rogers, Grimshaw et al, but their work broke out of the 'High-Tech' stereotype (which, in any case, only makes sense in terms of a contrast to 1970s / 80s Post-Modernism) a long time ago – when they designed Bracken House, in the City, completed in 1992. Other notable work which epitomises their sound social connections include Portcullis House (offices for members of Parliament) and other works that give their practice a far higher and more consistently good quality presence in London than some of their professional rivals.

'Big Jim' Stirling and James Gowan were always an odd couple and, perhaps unfairly, Gowan's staus faded and Stirling's rose in the years after they parted ways. The latter became an internationally famous figure, so there is a certain irony in the fact that there is little in London that exhibits his skills. The most notable works are the Clore Gallery (at the Tate Britain) and No.1 Poultry (in the City), both less than entirely satisfactory works and yet both intriguing.

Lord (Baron) Rogers of Riverside has, as he ages, become the outstanding establishment figure of British architecture. He runs a practice much smaler than Foster but manages to turn out works of a consistently higher standard e.g. the Terminal Five building at Heathrow and the Maggie cancer care centre which won the Stirling Prize in 2009. But the iconic work from this practice is, of course, Lloyds of London, completed in 1986 but still an outstandingly unusual work.

Lord Foster of Thamesbank is one of the world's better know architects, but the problem faced by mature and very large practices is 'emperor's clothes' syndrome and the reality is that the output of the practice varies enormously. In London, the beest works from the practice are the Sackler gallery and assoiated works at the Royal Academy, and the Great Court at the british Museum, both under the leadership of Foster's partner Spencer de Grey. Similarly, the two more publically known projects – City hall and the Gherkin – were under Ken Shuttleworth. nevertheless, it is remarkable that Foster has developed an office culture that has maintained such high standrads among a large body of workers for so long. And while many of the practice's outputs – as the many City office buildings – are not outstanding, they are usually the equal of any other practice's outputs.