Sir – Your report of the Luther Court revamp (November 3), had A2 Dominion Housing Association’s Lizzie Yates saying the mixed housing would “improve the long-term sustainability” of the site.

Then, on (November 10), A. Watson writes of disgust at demolishing a 30-year-old building, castigates architectural teaching and admires the vernacular, roof and detailing of the design.

I taught architecture and urban design at Brookes. The present building has the details but also an impenetrable façade, blank windows, utility windows and no access to Thames Street. It turns its back on the city and away from Thames Street which seems as if it is a place given-over to despair, few pedestrians seem to venture out and those that do, often dart across the road.

It’s an ugly and mute street, feeling like a traffic conduit even if the buildings are admired by some, and even with the trees along Oxpens, it’s like some distant industrial estate rather than next to the Thames and Folly Bridge and being in the Central Conservation Area.

Much of this part of Oxford is a dreadful ‘urban experience’, dressed-up with ‘80s vernacular and a ‘60s approach to roads. Yet it has the same traffic as in beautiful Beaumont Street for instance.

Illustrations of the new proposal have a smart/bland look and five storeys, but we are promised that the housing association want to achieve an active frontage to Thames Street by re-orientating their building and having all entrances to flats from the front. This is excellent news.

Hopefully the expansion of the city centre, with a revamped Westgate, will make Thames Street a more obvious walking route than now. The new proposal at Luther Terrace should look forwards to a friendly city street rather than keeping the existing buildings facing backwards to a segregated inner-ring road.

Graham Paul Smith, Grandpont