Frank Lloyd George knew my father and my father knew......

What is Welsh Architecture? In Wales: Churches, Houses, Castles Simon Jenkins asserted that it is ‘buildings in Wales’. It is a claim which is difficult to contest and may be reinforced by his sequel, Wales: Chapels, Empty Shops and Rugby Grounds. The greatest of our castles and monasteries may be said to be French and our capital was built by the Irish for a Scot. Only the houses of the rural peasantry, the vernacular architecture of poverty, might be said to be truly Welsh. The notable exceptions to the rule that our public buildings plagiarize European precedents in their bastardized provincial Victorian and Edwardian interpretation of the Classical and Baroque ‘styles’ will be discussed below.

Driving in from Penarth on a nice sunny other day I chanced to glance across the sparkling azure waters of Cardiff Bay and marvelled at our achievement. From a distance, on such a day, our capital could be taken for Benidorm. In a chance conversation with a visiting academic from The University of Great Leighton, Treforest Branch (open late and weekends for takeaway degrees) he said that he had travelled down by train to the meeting at the proper university in Cardiff. “I think it’s marvellous what this university is doing for Cardiff” he said. “It’s like coming in to Reading now.” And in the shopping centre named after our patron saint you could be anywhere and everywhere. Global brands and local bland.

All that is good about the place in terms of a distinct character was largely built before we were born. All that is good about the place is slowly going.

Who will make the difference and start adding to places that truly inspire or revitalize a general sense of civic pride? Who can design and build a place which will truly instil such a sense? Who are the Percy Thomas’s, Dale Owen’s and Alex Gordon’s of our day? These were chaps who could knock up a building of distinction without tracing it from the previous months edition of the Architects Journal or downloading the latest architectural icon from the internet and getting a cheapo version flung together by a local contractor*.

Who may or may not qualify for the definition of Welsh Architect? Under the rules of International Rugby Union Football Frank Lloyd Wright would. We have exported several, most recently John Belle, the Welshman responsible for the restoration of many of New York's most famous landmarks including the National Museum of Immigration on Ellis Island, (coincidentally named after a Welshman who once owned it). He made the curious statement that "New York has become one wonderful big community ... unconsciously I may have found a place that is like home without realising it."

I am not sure whether he was referring to Wales as ‘home’. If so then he may simply be parroting that clichéd national sentiment which we call hiraeth. In my experience our adoration of the homeland is usually noisily expressed in a bar which is as distantly removed from it as possible. This hiraeth seems to chiefly involve getting maudlin about Wales in a place as cosmopolitan as Noo Yoik or singing about it where rugby is played in the sun. As to the former, the template was developed and patented by Dylan Thomas and rigorously followed by our performing artists ever since. Laugharne to London, Mumbles to Malibu, Holyhead to Hollywood.

Getting back to architecture I recently ordered a biography of John Nash from Jersey Marine’s principal antiquarian bookseller, Messrs A. M. Azon on the strength of their synopsis which suggested that Nash may have been born in Neath. It proved to be as accurate a claim as ‘next day delivery’ but he did have relatives there as it happens. An interesting bit of scuttlebutt which does not appear in other biographies is that he packed his first wife off to Aberavon from London and, by implication, then encouraged an acquaintance to service her to facilitate the divorce that he wished to effect. This is possibly the only recorded instance of some chap having to be induced to seduce in the Neath and Port Talbot district. It does establish that he shared with his principal patron, The Prince Regent and his current successor a rather cavalier attitude to first wives. He also built a lot of rather nice houses in Wales, the one at Rheola being one of the more pronounceable and accessible from our only motorway.

Another famous contributor to our pantheon of Welsh architects was the Northamptonshire born Clough Williams-Ellis. Three names and two houses is definitely thoroughbred crachach and the splendidly patrician and patronising Clough is most definitely a role model for the aspirant National Architect of Wales. Here is a chap who started from nothing. As he tells it himself in one of his several autobiographies there were times in his early career when he did not have the cost of a hansom cab to return home from a ball. But he pulled himself up by his bootstraps – or would have if he hadn’t been wearing spats at the time – and elected himself an architect. Portmeirion is perhaps his best known work, one that delves deep into Welsh history and stands as an elegant reminder that, before we were French, we were run by Italians for four hundred years.

That may well be the nub of the matter. There is no such thing as ‘Welsh Architecture’; perhaps there never has been and never will be. That may be a good thing as architecture as a self-conscious expression of regional cultural identity has often been suspect. However well meant or well executed it is, at best, contrived and at worst a manifestation of the Volkisch mentality that fuels rabid nationalism. We already have plenty of that and need not encourage its representation as The Word in Stone – or whatever that is in Welsh.

What we need are more buildings and places which are Original and Good and widely recognised as such. Structures which are not procured from the itinerant band of starchitects who roam the planet tossing up gimcrack ‘Iconic Buildings’ but emerge from a genuine understanding of place and are recognised as unique. Buildings which, when seen anywhere, are recognisable as being located in Wales…..

And are preferably not castles, chapels, etc etc etc……

• Note. This is a regrettable oxymoron. ‘Local’ contractors with any significant capability are now the wholly owned subsidiaries of French multi-national companies.