Please send letters for the website, clearly marked FORUM, to Julia Dawson at: julia.dawson@emap.com or The Architectural Review, Greater London House, Hampstead Road, London NW1 7EJ, England. MEDIATING MODERNISM SIR: In his review of my recent book 'Mediating Modernism' (AR March 2007) Tim Brittain-Catlin takes issue with the central argument that publications have served to develop new architectural ideas, and by their selection and presentation of  work have made certain projects important and influential. In fact, few buildings speak for themselves and I personally don't believe that they naturally attract attention by some kind of inherent magnetism- for example, practically all visitors to Barcelona in 1929 walked straight by Mies van der Rohe's Pavilion. In terms of the cases in the book, the version of modern architecture expressed by AR in the 1930s emphasised a particular look of Modernism at the expense of any deeper meaning or purpose: James Richards as editor excluded much that wouldn't fit.  It's impossible to think of the emergence in the 1960s of what came to be called High Tech without the self-published Archigram magazine, followed up later in the decade by the kind of work that appeared in AD. And as far as the Boyarsky-led AA is concerned, there's a seamless link in a number of people's work between projects generated at the AA School and what later appeared on the ground. I'm not sure where in the book he found an argument about the Smithsons' responsibility for bad town centre redevelopment, but the emergence of new ideas of how architecture should develop always precedes the materialisation of new buildings. Andrew Higgott 540 Ben Jonson House Barbican London EC2Y 8NH