Twenty-five years ago last month I attended - the only time in my life I have done so - the RIBA's annual conference. It was striking for three reasons, all of them regrettable. The first was the remarkably flimsy, intellectually fraudulent, historically ignorant "keynote" address by Tom Wolfe, which he would subsequently expand into his captious polemic From Bauhaus to Our House. The second was the alarming passivity of the audience, which either didn't realise that it was being collectively insulted or was, by then, so inured to deprecations of architecture that it could not stir itself to respond by, say, walking out. The third was the sartorial dreariness of that almost entirely male audience, which was almost entirely dressed in the drab suits of high street tailoring. Was I in the presence of some sect that worshipped at John Collier - "the window to watch" - or at Hepworths, or Burtons? No, this was architecture's rank and file. And although it may be foolish to judge by appearances it is even more foolish not to judge by them.
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