THE launch of a petition aimed at trying to prevent ‘eyesore architecture’ from spreading around Guernsey will be welcomed by many islanders, who feel that too much is being lost in the name of progress.

The island has a distinctive architecture and one which takes its identity from the age in which islanders were living and the materials they had around them.

The traditional Guernsey cottages and farmhouses were as much of their time as the Georgian houses that are to be found in St Peter Port and elsewhere, but they share a timeless ‘rightness’ that islanders of all ages relate to.

Whether the same can be said for the rash of post-war bungalows and other suburbia imported directly from the UK is a moot point, but each generation reinvents ‘taste’ according to prevailing conditions and materials, while architects will want to push boundaries on behalf of clients.

What most islanders want, however, is a planning authority that prevents the spread of buildings that are not in harmony with their surroundings. While beauty might be in the eye of the beholder, few would say that the glass and steel building in our page five picture sits comfortably with its surroundings.

The old – and not particularly lamented – IDC had a word for it: incongruous.

Today, Environment seems not only to tolerate incongruous properties, it seems to delight in placing them in incongruous sites and islanders do not like it. What is perhaps more puzzling is that it seems to reflect lazy or cheap architecture.

For many, Admiral Park represents all that is wrong in modern design: material costs pared down to the minimum and as many units as possible crammed in to max out profits.

Yet in the centre of Town are some excellent examples of new buildings combining traditional and modern materials yet retaining elements of vernacular St Peter Port.

Environment has a vital role in this debate on eyesore architecture.

Designers can be as cutting edge as they wish but islanders expect the planners to weed out anything that is not in keeping – and don’t think they are currently doing a very good job.