Sir – I am grateful to you for publishing Hugh Jaeger’s letter (January 9): I was beginning to fear that I was the only person in the world who found the building downright ugly, in spite of the hours I spent reading in the North Reading Room, overlooking the garden of Trinity College.


The building presents us with failures on several levels: firstly materials — coursed  rubble, secondly form and image, squat and secretive, and lastly plan and siting — a great lumpen thing devoid of charm and subtlety in its relationship with its surroundings.


Sitting on the steps of the Clarendon Building and facing across the road towards the library, it was possible to imagine what it might have been, in the hands of enlightened designer: for a start, it might have been recognised that we have here an urban design issue: for example, what the Clarendon Building needs more than anything is a square to the front, and that would require demolition of part of the library. Next, the Broad needs less traffic, and, therefore, making a ‘choke’ between the end of the library — extended sideways — and the pub would leave a passage fit for pedestrians and ambulances.


The demolition of part of the library would result in opportunities to make elevations to the square that responded in some way to the Clarendon Building’s elevations. Sadly, the current scheme will deny us all of these delights.


There is more to urban design than wrapping a building site in hoardings hung with images of the great and the good.


Simon Norris, Oxford