The government is giving grants for the installation of solar panels as part of a drive to encourage renewable energy use (The Argus, December 22).

A grant has gone towards a new YMCA building in Horsham. Architect Alan Philips tells me that half the costs of materials for the combined heat and electricity generator planned for the Brighton Station site development will be paid for by central government.

So I am mystified when I do not see any so-called "landmark architecture" being offered to Brighton and Hove which has actually been designed around the use of solar panels.

Solar panels are blameless, take up no extra space and, unlike wind-farm blades, won't kill birds.

The £400,000 cash boost is a token gesture but it is a start. Surely no roof on any new building should be other than solar panelled?

Josh Arghiros from Karis developers is asking architecture students to design something for a small spot in the North Laine.

I hope they will not, as students often do, merely emulate their heroes or fashionable bandwagon styles.

I hope they will think solar and be in the vanguard of new architects whose buildings, walls and all, feature solar panelling.

-Valerie Paynter, Hove