The minister was speaking at a seminar held at the Radisson, entitled A National Policy for Architecture in Malta.

He said there was a difference between a building and a piece of architecture. The garage type structures that feature in the Maltese countryside and the traditional girna, he said, fulfil the same purposes in terms of their function, however the girna can be termed a piece of architecture while the former are mere buildings, he added.

Any construction should reflect its surroundings, both in the countryside and the urban setting, he said, highlighting a number of instances of when this principle is breached such as the homogeneity of the street-scape and so-called “pencil” development.

He suggested that the Malta Environment and Planning Authority should not allow developments with frontages of less than 4.4m, saying that the subdivision of property due mostly to inheritance had created a situation whereby frontages are split among a number of owners who then develop their respective sites according to their own different tastes. In this way the rhythm and scale of the street as a whole are lost.

Architects are expected to understand the impact that their building will have on the rest of the environment and should be able to explain this to their clients accordingly.

He insisted that Mepa policies help to guide architects and developers but they are only guidelines. Architecture is not produced by having a checklist of policies that one ticks against, he explained. “We have too many buildings that are in line with Mepa policy but do not qualify as good architecture.”

Mepa cannot issue policies that take care of every eventuality, he said, rather, it is the architect and the developer that should realise that they have a contribution to give to the environment and society in general.

The minister also spoke of the need to have energy efficient buildings. Again he stressed that the maximisation of property should not come at the expense of environmental considerations. He said that nowadays everyone is installing larger apertures for a better view and reducing the width of party walls to maximise internal space, making the buildings less energy efficient – hotter in summer and colder in winter.

With regards to architecture policies, he said that many of them are already present in the Mepa structure plan and the subsidiary documents. “We are in the process of fine tuning the DC 2000 document which was reviewed after 12 long years,” he said. “This is a very important document which tried to put in words what the directorate and the development control commission was putting into practice.”