One may have expected that Taylor as a landscape architect might instead have addressed the cultural significance of the organisation of the Cameron Offices in Belconnen, designed by John Andrews International, 1968-76, into separate wings connected by open landscaped courtyards that was instrumental to creating the conditions for the symbolic introduction of nature into the city.

The landscaping, designed by one of North America's foremost landscape design practitioners, Richard Strong, had each court depicting a different landscape region of Australia through the use of native Australian plants and water features; a setting based on an emerging Australian school of landscape design, using native plants and bush themes in a naturalistic and informal way.

Taylor might have analysed how the original courtyard landscaping linked internal and external spaces, and was designed as a device for orientation, circulation and relaxation. The courts, noted American architect and academic Jacquelin Robertson writes, are Cameron's treasure as are London's Georgian squares.

He may have commented on how the courtyard landscaping between each wing was continued as tree plantings extending through the car parks; the overall design solution being facilitated by the NCDC's planning policies, being an unusual feature in Australia's urban environment, where subdivision has tended to constrain the design of office buildings.

On the heritage assessment of the Cameron Offices, Taylor asks is the place a unique or rare example of its kind? The answer is yes; but these are not requirements of the criteria for the National Heritage List. In Australia, the Cameron Offices, in terms of the combination of innovations in design and structure, landscape design, scale and urban response, have no peer. They are unique. While comparisons can be made with other buildings in Canberra, these are made on aesthetic and compositional grounds and the Cameron Offices are earlier and technically more advanced.

John Andrews is recognised as one of three internationally renowned Australian architects.

The two criteria that the Cameron Offices meet at an outstanding heritage level and thus require it being placed on the National Heritage List are: The place has outstanding heritage value to the nation because of the place's importance in demonstrating a high degree of creative or technical achievement at a particular period. The place has outstanding heritage value to the nation because of the place's special association with the life or works of a person, or group of persons, of importance in Australia's natural or cultural history.

The Canberra Times article "Call to save, recognise, a precinct of integrity" (August 16, 2006) sets out the Cameron Offices' cultural significance to Australia at an international level.

While critiquing modern architecture generally, Taylor ignores the commitment to a multitude of positive qualities Le Corbusier introduced to the world of architecture. When I visited the Unites d'Habitations in Marseilles and Berlin I could see most of the 23 different apartment types in the one complex; the 26 different kinds of communal facilities such as the nursery school with wading pool, shop and gymnasium; and while speaking with the contented residents, experience the complete privacy of the units where the full width design of the units allowed passive solar climate control through cross ventilation, a planning type only recently adopted in our capital cities to reduce the need for air-conditioning.

Taylor draws on John Ruskin and his dictum. Ruskin's preference for Romanesque, Gothic and English Decorated architectural styles certainly conflicted with Walter Burley Griffin's intentions for Canberra. In Griffin's report of 1911, he called for a horizontal distribution of the large masses for more and better air, sunlight, verdure and beauty. It would seem that one material, reinforced concrete, would contribute to dignity and impressiveness and that appropriate immensity in spans and masses with contracting delicacy in plastic ornamentation together with a maximum of repetition and rhythm and a general simplicity would, with imagination, suffice for rational and genuine style.