THE Western Cape architectural fraternity was given a collective pat on the back recently when Peter Smith, regional executive of Nedbank Property and Asset Finance, reviewed the projects with which its corporate and commercial/residential teams have been involved.

He said Cape property developers had learned a great deal from the past, and the architecture and urban layout designs currently coming off their drawing boards were among the best anywhere in the world.

"It is, of course, extremely easy to say that," said Smith, "but one has only to look at the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront, the current upmarket developments (some on almost impossible sites) on the Atlantic seaboard, the housing developments at Royal Ascot and the more expensive similar developments in the Constantia Valley, The Island Club and other projects at Century City, two or three of the new CBD office conversions to create accommodation, the latest Boland wineries and certain projects now going ahead at Tyger Falls to realise that there has in the last 15 years at the Cape been a marked improvement in architectural design.

"To me there can be no possible argument on this question - despite what correspondents have been saying in newspapers."

Unlike many architects in Europe, the UK and the USA, said Smith, Cape Town's architects, although also often locked into the popular neo-classical, Tuscan and Mediterranean styles, tended to modify these with Victorian and Cape vernacular motifs.

 "This," he said, "gives many of our new residential, office and retail projects an appropriateness to their settings, a panache and lack of ostentation that people tired of the more stereotyped European designs have repeatedly told me they find appealing."

Asked why a banker should be concerned about architectural aesthetics, Smith said that he and his team had come to realise that the better designs tended to be the fastest sellers and the best investment risks.

He said that much of the current flair and innovation shown by Cape Town designers could be attributed to the recent buoyancy of the market.

This had enabled developers to allow their designers to be slightly more innovative than was possible a decade ago.

For further information please contact Peter Smith on 021 416 7000