Building Sights

First of eight programmes Personal reflections on the best of 20th-century architecture in Britain. 'The definition of good architecture is somewhere you'd like to have a good meal.' Architect Piers Gough looks at the brand new Water Authority Pumping Station on London's Isle of Dogs, designed by John Outram , that's good enough to eat in

Writer Jonathan Meades revisits Marsh Court, a private house-turned-prep-school designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens in 1904 and with gardens by Gertrude Jekyll. Meades finds the place an ever-changing maze.

'I tried to be critical when I first visited the building three years ago but I liked the little monster then and I still do.' Eva Jiricna the architect responsible for designing interiors for Harrods, Joseph and parts of the Lloyds building visits Schlumberger Cambridge Research (architect, Michael Hopkins 1984) and is enchanted by its modernity. 'All too often,' she says, 'people have a fear of the new which verges on the morbid.'

'This may not be architecture as art but it's infinitely artful.' Writer Beatrix Campbell visits the successful Byker housing estate in Newcastle, designed by Ralph Erskine in the early 1970s. It's an epic development - both monumental and modest, and Beatrix Campbell describes why it is such an ingenious design solution.

Stephen Bayley argues that Alexander Fleming House is a building worth preserving in its original design as a monument to modernism. Erno Goldfinger's building, in London's Elephant and Castle, was designed in 1962 and for many, became a byword for soulless post-war development.

'I can't think of a better start for a young artist than to work in a building which is in fact a masterpiece.' Artist Bruce McLean attended Saturday morning classes at the Glasgow School of Art from the age of 6, and went on to study there in the 1960s. But it is only recently says McLean, that he has realised the influence Charles Rennie Mackintosh 's building (1897-1909) had on him.

'It has stood up architecturally to all the insensitive alterations it has had to endure and shines out like a beauty in a bad dress.' First-year architecture student Sophie Hicks delights in the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, Sussex. Designed in 1933 by Erich Mendelsohn and Serge Chermayeff , the building is one of the finest examples of modern seaside architecture in Britain.

Editor of Blueprint magazine Deyan Sudjic examines Creek Vean in Cornwall. It is a house built in 1966 by Team 4, a group of young unknowns. Two of them are now Britain's best known architects, Richard Rogers and Norman Foster. 'Compared with what they went on to build afterwards, Creek Vean was tiny. But size has little to do with the richness of architectural ideas.'