There is no love lost between architects and Prince Charles. We have known he has baleful taste in buildings ever since he ineptly stuck some pretentious extra classical pilaster columns on to his Highgrove House. This appetite for neoclassical architecture among the upper classes is not entirely surprising, harking back as it does to a time when kings were on their thrones and the rest of us were subservient. With its order and rules, classical architecture is social hierarchy made manifest in built form.
Prince Charles, however, didn’t just privately indulge his nostalgia. Invited to award the Royal Institute of British Architects (Riba) gold medal in 1984, he stole the evening to attack the architectural profession. His “carbuncle” speech (named after his description of ABK’s proposed extension of the National Gallery) decried modernist architecture, accusing it of overscaled insensitivity. The speech and subsequent publicity left architects – already battered by a recession and a drop in public building – reeling.
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