My purpose in becoming the editor of a new architecture section for The Filter^ is to make my own contribution to raising the profile of an under-reported form of art. The buildings that surround us have the most amazing power to delight, to depress or to assault the senses, and much of this power is covert. 
It is my full time occupation to read about, critically observe and write about buildings from the past, and when my work is discussed with friends and acquaintances there is an almost universal interest roused within them – people are interested in buildings, often on a subliminal level. Such is the secret force of architecture.
I hope that in blogging around the subject, such secrecy can be unbundled to provide a public venue for informed debate. It is natural that I have developed my own taste in architecture and I will not be reticent in putting forward my views on particular buildings, trends and styles. However, it is not my goal to craft a regular polemical rant but instead to publish my considered views on a range of architectural topics in a balanced and useful way; useful, because an understanding of architecture can become the starting point for exploring an exciting range of ideas in other fields. Architecture is art, underpinned by strong creative impulses; architecture is politics, expressing through its forms both clear and elusive messages about the person and society that creates it; architecture, perhaps above all, is emotion, created to engage with our aesthetic sensibilities, with our ideas of beauty, even with our sense of morality.
I’m looking forward to committing some of my thoughts on architecture into words and, hopefully, receiving some responses from whoever chooses to read those words. In using the web as a medium, I’d like to think that the two-way flow of communication it affords and has always promised will come to be used in a real and constructive way. I hope you enjoy what I have to say, and I do hope you’ll share your thoughts with me.
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