The sad fact is that here, at least, there are two diametrically opposed world-views about property development: either it is a necessary good, or an unnecessary evil. The latter view explains the extensive application of section 106 to pay for everything from public realm improvement in the area affected by development, to entirely unrelated projects within the borough boundary.

The architect and planning consultant, Brian Waters, has sagely commented that planning too often acts as a rationing system, a last bastion of the post-war command economy which made its mark on land use from 1947 onwards, through the Town and Country Planning Act. Rationing means shortage; thus what becomes available becomes more valuable, triggering an irresistible urge to tax it. Why not ease up on the rationing?

In any event, planning authorities are now beginning to realise what happens if development slows or stops. Where are all those planning gain benefits going to come from? On the supply side things are even more uncomfortable. Why take the risk of spending money on submitting a planning application, when the likelihood is that it will be difficult to build anyway?

A good example of where it all goes wrong is in relation to housing. Many overseas investors, while enjoying the benefits of tax-free gains as capital values rise, must be baffled as to why an advanced country such as Britain cannot manage to building enough new homes to satisfy both private and social markets – even though we always used to in past decades.

The truth is that if you load too much of a burden on house-builders they will stop building or build less. London’s last mayor, Ken Livingstone, thought he could fund a social housing programme on the back of private housing development, but all that happened was that starts and completions plummeted.

The thought occurs that given the credit crunch, empty rates, slashed asset values and rental non-movement, it might be time for planning authorities to reverse section 106s, and replace them with  . . . well let’s call them 601s. This would be where the l,ocal planning authority contributes, in cash or in kind, to make development easier, or at least possible. After years of private sector contributions, you reverse the flow: the local authority assembles sites, donates buildings, waives planning charges, and gives properly designed schemes fast-track permissions.

We have become so accustomed to regarding planning as an advanced form of  development control that we have lost sight of its creative potential, to add value in advance, to enable and stimulate rather than regulate and stifle. The best planners have always been natural enablers and encouragers, and it is time to promote this aspect of the system.

At MIPIM last year, there was an excellent stand, outlining the way the London Borough of Croydon had worked with contractor John Laing to generating activity and value in the borough, by creasting a  joint venture where public assets could be used to underwrite financing of big new development. Croydon’s pursuit of innovation represents the sort of silver lining you need in the cloud of recession affecting the property industry. If cash exists but is difficult to access, the task is to find the key to the lock. 

At the other end are the so-called sceptics. Like their opposite numbers, they are beset with paranoia, in this case about a global plot to waste trillions of dollars on measures that undermine individual freedom, bringing state control into every aspect of human endeavour. Sceptical scientists are obviously right. Climate-change believers are evil.

Stuck in the middle are those who have looked as best they can at what is happening to our ice caps, to CO2 emissions and population growth and are extremely concerned at what they see. On the other hand they want scientists to be asked tough questions about their theories as to what is happening. They are not very interested in demonising minority opinions.

It is in the zone of constructive scepticism that good science is likely to flourish, since it is here that research will be tested free of preconception. In this zone there is no need to hide inconvenient truths of any description, whether they appear to support or detract from the general consensus about the extent to which climate change is man-made.

And it is in this zone that policies to combat (or more likely adapt to) climate change can be rationally assessed. Thus we avoid predictions about the likely efficiency of alternative energy technologies being based on anything other than what we know, not what we would like to be the case.

Many years ago I co-chaired a British Council for Offices conference where the keynote speaker was a former director of the UK Meteorological Office, Sir John Houghton. His lucid and unflashy analysis of what was happening to global temperatures was enough to convince me (and everyone in the room) that something disturbing was happening. Since that time I have been more interested in what we do about our new condition than about the undoubted fact that the earth has experienced extremely variable weather conditions over the millennia. We, after all, are dealing with today and tomorrow, not yesteryear.

In this sense, it wouldn’t matter whether climate change was the result of sunspots, the man in the moon, flatulent cows or, as seems likely, a surfeit of CO2. Our chances of doing anything other than mitigate are remote. That is not, of course, an argument for doing nothing, as the Dutch have shown for many centuries. Dam building rather than hand wringing has an awful lot to recommend it.

For architects, the key questions will continue to be how buildings are powered, and how excess heat can be used to good effect. This will be particularly true of existing building stock; much unglamorous work will need to be done, but it will be vital and a necessary part of a strategy too often presented as a battle over travelling by plane, or indeed travelling at all. As far as energy production is concerned, I remain convinced that nuclear power needs to be part (not all) of the solution for the foreseeable future. The UK gave up a world-leading position in this area, preferring to burn coal and North Sea gas. The irony of the UK now importing electricity generated by nuclear power in France, while we agonize about replacing redundant nuclear plant, would be funny if it were not so embarrassing.

Of course if all our energy were generated from ‘virtuous’ carbon-free sources, then we could presumably run the air-conditioning all day and every day without feeling too guilty. For many at Copenhagen, the question of climate guilt looms large. Those two ends of the spectrum are a Manichean version of everyday weather forecasters. For the rest of us, we are likely to depend on relatively old-fashioned engineering to keep us warm and dry, while scientists refine their propositions as to where we go from here, and how we should try to get there.

All this has resulted in a feeling of ruthlessness, where you no longer have a clear idea who is responsible for what on your patch: police, fire and health authorities often have boundaries none of which fit exactly with that of other services. Electoral areas, always subject to some revision, now have overlays of European red lines. Regional authorities come and go, as do their fields of responsibility. (The New Localism of all the political parties is a dim-witted attempt to deal with this loss of identity, which will result in further paralysis of the planning and development system.)

When it comes to the idea of a country or ‘nation’ we are all over the place. According to the Rugby Football Union, England is a nation. But according the EU (and the RIBA for that matter) England is only just about a region, unlike Scotland and Wales, which are ‘nations’. The shaven-head fascists of the British National Party lay claim to the whole country but what does this mean when the Scots and Welsh have their own nationalist parties? What it means is that they are laying claim to England.

Until, quite recently, I only thought about being English in relation to sporting events, tending to describe myself as British for official purposes, and a Londoner for mental mapping. I think this began to change when Tony Blair and Gordon Brown started going on about being patriotic, even as they completed the process of splitting off Wales and Scotland. They even had a ‘Minister for Patriotism’, a political nonentity called Michael Wills, who seemed to spend quite a lot of time in Brussels.

But what does the idea of being English imply? And is there such a thing as ‘English architecture’? This thought was prompted by three end-of-year books, each of which has characteristics which I think of as being English. The first is Paul Barker’s ‘Freedoms of Suburbia’ (Frances Lincoln), which deals with that peculiarly English phenomenon, based as it is on a big idea (commuter rail infrastructure imposed on the countryside) and a myriad small ones, that is to say the houses and gardens so admired by Rasmussen in his ‘London, the Unique City’, now apparently out of print.

The second is ‘Custom and Innovation’ (Black Dog), a practice monograph about Colqhoun & Miller/John Miller and Partners, with good essays by Deyan Sudjic, Robert Maxwell, Nicholas Serota and Kenneth Frampton. The English characteristics displayed in the work are those of modesty, restraint, ingenuity and a sensitivity to context and landscape. The work is extremely good but never shows off.

Finally another practice monograph, this time about Procter Matthews Architects. ‘Pattern Place Purpose’ (Black Dog) is a first class piece of design and production, and one gets the feeling that this has been a real labour of love for the practice, which has been described as being English in their approach. Thoughtful essays by Peter Blundell Jones, Jeremy Till and Matthew Wells contribute to the overall quality of the book, but the most interesting piece is by Alan Powers, probably the most perceptive critic of English Modernism and its inheritors.

His analysis of what it is that might constitute an English architecture could equally be applied to the essay itself: modest, restrained, but with flashes of wit and insight, and an enjoyment of moments in occasional work by Procter and Matthews where they look as though they are designing the architectural equivalent of a party.

If you’re looking for a good architectural book for Christmas this is it – whatever your region or nation.

There is then the issue of what constitutes building. Does it imply architecture alone, or would engineering and infrastructure projects be included? Still, these points can make for lively discussion, and since no vote was planned at the end of dinner, nit-picking debating points were kept to a minimum.

Broadly speaking two points of view emerged. One was that even though a city may become famous as a result of a particular development, building or engineering project, such things could only arise from the context created by the city itself. Imposition from above could produce an object, but that could not change the future of the city on its own.

The other view suggested that the generation of significant projects could indeed turn the future of a city, partly because its could change external perceptions of it, partly because it could change the psychological characteristics, if one can put it that way, of the city and its citizens.

One example given on the night was the Eiffel Tower, whose defiant modernity was in stark contrast to medieval Paris and the Haussmann city plan. One might have added that the Piano and Rogers Pompidou Centre had a similar impact, having aroused as much controversy and indeed hostility as M Eiffel’s grand project.

Another example (not mentioned on the night) would be Sydney Opera House. There was little in the city’s DNA to suggest that it would become home to one of the wonders of the modern world; however, the determination of political leaders to make a statement about the cultural aspirations of this young city/country, plus lottery funding, resulted in the iconic architectural result which has been the city’s key landmark ever since. The successful Sydney Olympics bid benefited hugely from the worldwide recognition of that ‘scrum-of-nuns’ logo.

Talking of the Olympics, one cannot deny the impact they had on Barcelona, which re-invented itself for the occasion from dusty provincial backwater to a world city of architecture and design; there are high hopes that the London Games of 2012 will trigger further revitalisation of the east side of London, balancing the damage done to it as a century-long consequence of the industrial revolution.

In both Barcelona and London, infrastructure investment, which will last for at least a century after the Games, has been critical to the future development of the city. If one looks to precedent as to the importance of engineering works, one needs to look no further than the embanking of the Thames in central London in the 1860s, by the great engineer Joseph Bazalgette. His transformation of an open sewer to the Thames we know today was prompted by smell (the ‘Great Stink’), and fear of cholera. The embanking changed London forever, not for the first time as a result of health concerns rather than aesthetic planning.

There was a political consequence of Bazalgette’s work too: the client body which commissioned him, the Metropolitan Board of Works, eventually transformed into the London County Council, the democratic authority which governed London from 1889 to 1963, before expanding to become the Greater London Council (now the Greater London Authority).

Architecture, engineering and planning are integral to the life of any city, and their absence, for example on the fringes of cities in developing countries where the flight from the land is sometimes creating insuperable problems for city authorities, simply shows that the host city has not prepared itself for what we now know to be inevitable.

In 1950, twice as many people lived on the land as inhabited cities. Crossover has just taken place, and by 2050, the land/city population proportions will have reversed. Planners, architects and politicians had better understand the consequences for the built environment – or city destinies will only involve dealing with chaos.

What, therefore, should the mayor, bear in mind when it comes to determining the level of seriousness with which they will treat the quality of architecture, planning and urban design they want for their city or country?

The first and admittedly banal point is that whenever you adapt, improve or create buildings, spaces and places, you will be paying for design. It may be good, bad or indifferent, but you will be paying for it. The idea that any mayor would say ‘I know, let’s commission some really third rate designs for that new transport interchange/school/hospital’ is of course ludicrous, but from observation it cannot be said — to put it mildly — that all our new public buildings are exemplary. The reasons why we often end up with less that high-quality design are comples, but they stem from the attitude of the client towards the desired quality of outcome. Unless there is an expressed desire, backed up by procurement safeguards to ensure high standards, then what you get is what you get.

Politicians nevertheless need to be convinced that the cost of good design can be explained in simple terms to the media and to the electorate, which is where the trouble starts. Too often, the cynical prediction of time and cost overruns in relation to major public projects turn out to be true. Even worse is when they are half-truths resulting from a failure to be frank in the first place.

The London 2012 Games are a good example of this. The reality is that the cost of the games is about one-third of the total money being expended on the Olympic park site and associated infrastructure. The other two-thirds covers environmental improvement and long-term buildings and facilities which would have been necessary anyway in some form; the Olympics acted as the trigger to get the work done in a short time-frame now, rather than in piecemeal fashion over the nest 30 years. If this had been explained clearly from the beginning, then the wave of media hostility towards the project, largely unfounded, would have been much reduced. But rising costs looked like a very good story at the time; now the sums involved seem rather trifling given the bank bail-out over the last two years. The Games have moved from being a financial pariah to a much-needed neo-Keynsian construction stability programme.

Any politician should remember that really big spending on major projects is often about engineering rather than architecture. The Jubilee Line extension programme was a good example of this: the minor cost increases on the stations were as nothing compared with the cost of the tunnelling, which went sadly awry. The public’s experience of the line, however, is all about the stations, and they ended up being the greatest civil architecture project of the 20th century in the capital.

The justification for spending more money on those stations than was spent on their Victoria Line equivalents is simple: safer, more efficient, but above all a magnificent demonstration of the aspirations of London government and the London Underground for its citizens and users. The psychological effect of high-quality design on the paying customer is underestimated, possibly because it is difficult to measure it in money terms. Which brings us to two categories of people whose reaction to a well-designed city spells financial reward.

Tourists are one obvious group who will be impressed by the quality of the built environment, parks, public places and public transport of any city destination. And tourism brings huge money, which is why the slum of East Oxford Street needs to be addressed with all due speed, ditto far too many of our Underground stations, ditto the dreadful paving which disfigures too much of central London.

An even more important group are the companies that choose to locate here, not least because of London’s reputation as a great place to be. This becomes less convincing if you have to put up with the transport nightmare conditions pertaining at Victoria Station for example, or the unpleasant one-way motorways masquerading as rational street planning in much of the West End. Of course many other factors influence corporate location decisions, but it is nevertheless true that cities which are liked and admired stand a better chance of making and attracting money than the other sort.

So for financial, social and psychological reasons, the case for aspiring to high-quality design can be strongly made. But aspiration is never enough: it needs to be accompanied by a strategy and a budget to deliver what is desired. In the case of London and other world cities, the politicians need to be clear about whether the level of design excellence needs to be world-class, international class, high-quality or good ordinary (in my view this should be the minimum standard for any public project, e.g. paving on suburban streets).

Having established criteria for determining which quality category should apply to any given project, the budget should be set appropriately, bearing in mind precedent, and perhaps giving international comparisons. That way, the public will not be misled into thinking you can get a parliamentary building for the same price as a B&Q warehouse. Budget increases should be explained and justified if and when they occur, by an appropriate official who should give all details to the public and media.

Boris could make a start by deciding, with Westminster, whether we should turning those urban motorways into traffic-calmed two-way streets, and if so, whether the accompanying paving improvements should involve York stone or something cheaper. Either way we should be told why the decision has been made and what the cost is, including professional fees, VAT and any other associated cost. If we start telling the truth about costs, there will be fewer nasty surprises along the way and we will begin to think more about the real benefit of good design, which is long-term value in every sense.

The reality is that all political parties want to give people a feeling that they are not being overrun when it comes to major developments, a worthy aspiration; it is also true that governments have duties and responsibilities that require local considerations to be bypassed when matters of national interest are at stake  — for example the strategic importance of airports to a modern economy, or the guaranteed fulfilment of predicted energy needs.

So governments in a democratic state are faced with several problems when it comes to buildings and infrastructure which are bound to disrupt the lives of those nearest to development. The first and biggest of these is how to reconcile local needs (and dislikes), stated in what I still think of as ‘local plans’, with the compelling local, regional or national needs which have arisen since those plans were approved.

Second, how do you deal with the fact that, as all opinion polls show, the one thing which unites individuals and communities is a dislike of major construction on their doorstep? (Or minor projects – look at the fuss in Falmouth over Rick Stein’s plan for a fish and chip restaurant.) And third, how can one begin to reconcile more consultation with faster and more certain planning outcomes?

This government has partly grasped the nettle by creating the Infrastructure Planning Commission to deal with difficult big applications. The Conservatives say they will get rid of it, but then they said they would hold a referendum on the EU constitution. Changing one’s mind is one of the few luxuries Her Majesty’s Opposition enjoys, and a change does confirm that there is a mind at work.

There remains the problem of democracy not only being part of the process, but of being seen to be so. Put simply, if there is any serious risk of a major infrastructure project being turned down under the new arrangements, then it will not be submitted. It therefore follows that applications submitted will almost always be approved, thereby fuelling the paranoia of local and other single-interest pressure groups who have an aversion to almost anything from a local supermarket to a a nuclear power station, however necessary or desirable they may be for a wider public.

Curiously, the self-same people often have a sentimentalised love of anything large-scale – provided it is old. So the Victorian railway termini in central London, which ripped the heart out of local communities and shunted thousands of paupers onto the street, are admirable objects from fine people. Try demolishing a 19th century hotel to make sense of the same infrastructure today and you are hit by a wave of righteous indignation which would be funny if it were not so unreflective.

There is, however, a lesson the Victorian taught us which seems to have been forgotten in relation to major projects and the way they are implemented: the Act of Parliament. Few of those railways and stations would have been possible without direct intervention by government, establishing routes, making compulsory land purchases and so on. Some may remember the way this principle was absorbed into planning legislation via Special Development Orders, which in effect made Parliament the supreme planning committee for significant proposals.

Have we lost sight of the importance of Westminster in the welter of nimbyist localism that now besets us? This is not about the Man in Whitehall Knowing Best, but about where democracy truly lies in respect of (for example) the energy supply buildings we will need for our hospitals, homes and everything else; time is not on our side.

Margaret Hodge, who has recently returned as architecture minister, was immediately put into the hot seat over the recommendation to list the American embassy in Grosvenor Square (by Eero Saarinen). In deciding that it should indeed be listed, the minister expressed the view that the listing of 20th century buildings should generally be where they represented the highest quality of work of the architect, and that they should be fit for purpose.

For good measure, the minister also said she thought the final decision on listing should rest with the minister rather than be determined by English Heritage alone, another example of Richard Rogers’ dictum that architecture is always about politics.

That is certainly the case in respect of the US embassy, the future of which seems to have prompted an odd outbreak of prickliness from the British government. In the first instance, instead of fixing a property purchase for our friend and ally, we managed to elicit a huge offer which was beaten by two others.  The site in question was Chelsea Barracks, which would have made a great embassy location given the inevitable need for security these days. No marks at all to the Ministry of Defence for greedily grabbing an even higher offer from the Qataris, who at the time of writing do not seem to be one of our major military allies.

To add insult to injury, the government has now listed the existing US embassy building as the Americans start planning their move to a site in Nine Elms, south of the Thame.This move will do much to regenerate that area, and indeed is a critical element in the Nine Elms masterplan launched with a fanfare by Mayor Johnson last week. (He graciously suggested that levies to pay for Crossrail would not apply in the area, which is just as well since the Americans would not have agreed to stump up this particular tax.)

So is the Saarinen embassy one of his finest works, and is it fit for purpose? My personal conclusion is a qualified ‘no’ in each instance, the architecture approaching the line but not crossing it, though I can understand why the minister reached the conclusion she did. The embassy design certainly does not show the quality of many of Saarinen’s other buildings, but it is the only building he achieved in the UK, which in itself makes it of some historic interest. The question of whether it is fit for purpose is an interesting one. Were it obviously so, then why would the US government want to  move elsewhere, especially (despite its hidden attractions) to Nine Elms?

On the other hand, the embassy has been functioning in Grosvenor Square for many years since 9/11, so it would be difficult to argue that it is an absolutely impossible building to use, though to resolve some of the perceived security issues associated with its very public relationship to Mayfair would be difficult.

In reality, the building did not need listing to give it protection, since it stands in the Mayfair conservation area and therefore cannot be demolished or altered without a high-quality design being deployed. Listing legislation takes not account of this, however, which is why the minister faced such a tricky decision. Sooner or later the building will have to change, perhaps retaining the façade, which it has to be admitted is striking. There is not much to shout about behind it, as I discovered on a visit a few months ago.

For some, including Margaret Hodge, the embassy is remembered as the site for the protests in 1968 against the war in Vietnam – a war, incidentally, in which Britain played no part. How times change, but how odd that now we are allies in arms again, we can’t behave like friends when it comes to property.

Architects, like contractors before them, now frequently have to bid via competitive tender, to the intense annoyance of the better designers who resent being lumped in with the less talented and treated as though all architects are equal at what they do, implying that the best way to choose one is thus by commercial competition.

There is rich irony here, since the formation of the profession and the RIBA 175 years ago was based on a similar idea: that all architects were equal, and therefore they should all be paid the same fee, whatever the quality of their work. Having eliminated fee/price competition from the outset (while continuing to impose it on contractors and suppliers) and having banned associated ungentlemanly activities such as touting and advertising, the profession was left high and dry when one important plank of its structure, the fee system, had to be disbanded.

It is not even as though the RIBA can produce a recommended scale without upsetting competition authorities, who have very little sense of irony as to the worth of their own activities. (They never have to examine, for instance, whether their policies have had any beneficial public effect, or indeed whether the inevitable consequence of fee competition results in better or worse buildings and environments. There is just a crude assumption that the public would prefer to sit in competitive darkness rather than in the light of a known charging system.)

It is probably unsurprising that the RIBA has now entirely abandoned the notion of fee scales as part of its guidance on using architectural services, but as with the passing of any whole system, it is far from clear as to what will replace it. The suggestion that there must be something wrong with (now superseded) graph-based fee advice, because this implied that percentages would be lower than they were in 1971, is odd. Why would fees rates necessarily be the same (or more), for the same sort of work? Surely a fee system should be able to change the numbers without changing the entire structure.

Anyway, why should consumers take comfort from the idea that hourly rates are a better answer? Better for whom? And what would those rates be? Does a skilled technician get charged out at the same rate as an inexperience architect who just got Part III? And what are partners being paid for, sitting at a screen ‘designing’ by the hour, or contributing expertise which has little relationship to the idea of time charges?
The truth is that no single charging system can properly deal with the very different types of activity that architects undertake. Some of this works on an hourly basis (detailed design, for example); some of it needs a broad-brush sum (feasibility and concept, usually woefully undercharged by the profession), and something in between related to the value and complexity of the project.

Fee scales based on percentages were an attempt to elide the conditions described above into a coherent and predictable single system. And let’s face it, even if you submit a complex set of fee proposals, most clients will still put them into context by working out what the percentage fee is in relation to construction cost, because it gives them a simple comparator.

At a time when certain large architectural organisations are trying to survive by putting in insanely low bids for projects (to the disadvantage of responsible professionals opposed to loss leader business), it would certainly be helpful to have advice on appropriate ranges of fee levels, so clients could understand whether the practice advising them is going to make a loss on their job. In which case caveat emptor.

The problem for the RIBA is publishing such advice without falling foul of competition law. Perhaps someone else could help.

Readers may recall that Marco famously fell out with his erstwhile partner – and fell out of the practice too after an internal power struggle. Various consequences arose: the practice was remodelled and renamed Rogers Stirk Harbour (and has won two Stirling prizes since the revamp); Marco fought a legal action over his part-ownership of the practice’s building, and ended up owning all of it following an agreed sale by the practice. He is thus RSH’s landlord, and is no doubt waiting for an opportunity to expel his former firm once their lease runs out. If Marco had been able to speak as he handed over the cheque (tv timetabling prevented any comment) he had planned to say: ‘I hope this helps you with the rent’. (Amusing but sad — Marco is a big man behaving like a small one.)

Meanwhile newspaper reports say that RSH is suing its former client, Qatari Diar, for £2 million of fees in respect of the blocked Chelsea Barracks design. That would certainly help pay the rent. A speedy settlement would be appropriate given the amount of emotional as well as intellectual effort which went into the project, and indeed the sums now being spent on starting again and choosing a replacement practice, following You-Know-Who’s unprincipled (right word) intervention.

I notice the architects taking part in the new short-listing process were expected to do an extraordinary amount of work for next to nothing in the firsts stage of that procedure, while all the other consultants involved in the process were paid. This is just another example of the cynical way in which architects and their creative ideas are regarded by a good proportion of developer carnivores. Architects delude themselves if they think that this earns them respect from the property industry. In reality it thinks architects are useful idiots, and will carry on exploiting them until the worms turn.

An analogy for what architects willingly subject themselves to would be a cab journey where the fare invites the cabbie to start driving in one direction, and at a certain point decides that yes, they like this cab, and yes, the direction of travel is broadly desirable, and yes, they have finally decided where exactly they want to go. At this point the fare invites the cabbie to turn on his meter. The next time you do work for nothing, ask yourself if your next cab-driver will be as generous.

The crazy thing about all this is that the value to be derived from smart architectural analysis includes real cost control (not the same thing as price control, especially in this market). Architectural thinking, allied with constructive cost strategies and value engineering (if done properly) can save clients million of pounds, while economising on fees saves a few thousand. Do developers choose their haircuts, suits or brain surgeons on the basis of the lowest tenders? Why, then, do they think it could ever be appropriate in relation to the buying in of design brain-power for their day job?

Nor is it a question of minimising costs at the expense of everything else. Outcomes, not outputs, are the most significant factor for many clients. The Maggie’s Centre project cost more than £5,000 per square metre; but RSH’s other fine Stirling shortlisted building, the Protos winery in Spain, came in at under £900 per square metre. Both clients were hugely happy. Developers take note.