We all agree about that. The trouble is, it can be difficult to agree on what we mean by 'well designed'. Very often we get bogged down in arguements about personal taste, whether we happen to prefer the modern or the traditional, the old or the new rather than discussing the design itself.

What we need is a new way of talking about design, a common language based on shared ideas. That way we are more likely to agree on whether or not a building is well designed, even if we still disagree about which buildings we like best.

This a problem that a lot of architects have been stuggling with and some of them have come up with an answer, what they call a set of 'indicators' of good design.