It is encouraging that Brighton and Hove City Councillors have taken an adventurous position regarding possible development proposals for the King Alfred site in Hove.

But their backing for these proposed high rise blocks is alarming.

As an architect planner with some 35 years of advising on and promoting development schemes to English local authorities, I agree with many of your contributors who are highly critical.

I was a school pupil in Australia when the proposals for the new Sydney Opera House went on public display around Australia.

Although Utzon's drawings were in coloured pencil on large white card sheets (no computerised images then), everyone was truly excited by the proposed white shell roof structures proudly soaring above Sydney Harbour.

Everyone could understand the suitability of the stunning imagery of billowing sails on the prominent harbour-side site.

No one knew how to build it (it took engineers in London to do that) but there was nationwide agreement this would make Sydney famous.

The Sydney Opera House is now one of the greatest buildings of the 20th Century.

I sense our councillors want to do something similar in Hove. But who is excited by the prospect of these crumpled towers?

Where is the public understanding of the high rise piles of melting ice cream as being representative of the spirit and location of Hove?

Gehry's world renowned Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao is a single use development, not a mixed use scheme as required for the King Alfred site.

It was therefore possible (as with the Guggenheim Museum in New York) to make a sensational architectural statement.

But its avant-garde principles are not applicable to the King Alfred site.

-John Foley, Brighton