BEING ignored for your architecture is the worst fate that can befall a city, according to industry leader Ruth Reed.

It is a good job then, added the president of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), that there is so much debate about Liverpool’s skyline.

Controversy may dog some of Liverpool’s most high profile developments, but at least people are talking about them.

Mrs Reed was speaking to mark the launch of RIBA-published book Liverpool: Shaping the City.

The hardback charts the city’s story through its buildings – from centuries-old splendour, through devastating decades-long hiatus and finally to the sudden burst of confidence and frenetic activity of the early 21st Century.

Referring to the jet black blocks currently being built on Mann Island, Mrs Reed said: “It doesn’t hurt for some architecture to be controversial. The worst thing is to be ignored. If Liverpool was a rather bland statement, it wouldn’t be where it is today. It’s great that there’s always discussion about architecture in Liverpool.”

Indeed, the best bit about the city, she added, is “the way that the historic core has been augmented by the new buildings”.

The book was written by architecture critic and former Quarry Bank pupil Stephen Bayley.

He said: “I was in Liverpool in the late 1960s and was certainly aware, as Allen Ginsberg said, it was the centre of the cosmos.

“But it then went into a decline, from which it is now, happily through architecture, starting to emerge.”

Mr Bayley describes the book as a “manifesto about what needs to be done about our cities”.

“What’s happening in Liverpool is just inspirational. I would like to take politicians to Liverpool and smack them round the head and say architecture is more important than politics,” he said.

“You can’t not be impressed by the buildings and what they do to people. If you can create strong, inspirational environments, if you can build with optimism, people behave better, work harder, produce more wealth and are socially more cohesive.”