Letter: When to preserve Modern architecture

Sir: Reading Patrick Hodgkinson's letter about the Mendelsohn and Chermayeff house in Chelsea, I was amused to see him going on about the house arising from a single concept about life.

No building arises from a concept about life, nor as a consequence of its use.

Architecture is something architects do and the 'Cohen' house was designed in the same sense, as, say, St Paul's Cathedral was designed, it being a matter of making a number of aesthetic choices. Preservationists are preserving for us the sum of the aesthetic choices made for that house in 1936.

Yours faithfully,

GEOFFREY SCARSBROOK

Bradford-on-Avon,

Wiltshire

19 February