Vitruvius’s three principles for architecture were firmitas, utilitas and venustas – firmness, usefulness and delight. In the late 1990s, the Construction Industry Council formulated its design quality indicators and naturally drew on Vitruvius, rendering those principles as ‘build quality’, ‘functionality’ and ‘impact’. Timeless concepts were thus brought into line with Blair-era bureaucratese.

For a profession with firmitas in its bones, architecture is badly afflicted by froth, an unhappy situation explored by Reinier de Graaf in his book Architect, Verb. The trouble is that buildings are very important. We spend a lot of time inside them, they cost a lot of money, they have all sorts of effects on our health, good and bad, and they have all sorts of effects on the planet, good and bad. They can make us miserable or they can make us happy, even if we only walk past them or see them on the skyline. They contribute in important ways to the success of cities and countries. The business of designing them, constructing them and maintaining them forms a very large part of the economy. Done right, buildings can help fix a lot of problems. Done wrong, they can cause a few.

This heaps ever-increasing responsibility on the doorstep of architects and other ‘built environment practitioners’, to lapse back into jargon. Society is mistrustful of architects and there is a broad sense that they are not quite up to the job – a job that keeps expanding as we make them responsible