I understand my work as a sort of mourning for Modernism – that is a mourning for the irretrievability of the optimism that surrounded the Modernist agenda. For all its misguided ness, particularly in the realm of social housing, this optimism set in train forms and visual languages that remain challenging and vibrant. The poignancy of the irretrievability carries over to a preoccupation with the ‘Modern Ruin’ - ruins that were only recently the last word in newness – and their potential to engender an insight into the remoteness of childhood 1. More recently these ideas have conflated with a concern for the demarcation between urban and pastoral land. 1 Robert Harbison The Built, the Unbuilt and the Unbuildable: in Pursuit of Architectural Meaning