The Irish Times

Every new generation of architects has its heroes. In the early 1980s in Scotland, ours were Robert Venturi and Michael Graves. Venturi's Learning from Las Vegas and Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture were must-have texts and watered-down copies of Graves's Portland Building were posted on every student review. The fundamental principles of the modern movement, where form follows function, were old news for cocksure students like myself, because Venturi had declared - turning the Mies's maxim on its head - that 'less is a bore'. Graves was also a master draughtsman, so the broken pediment and oversized keystone became building must-haves.