The UK’s Commission for Architecture needs a new director to oversee the country’s heritage and wrangle with sticky questions of future development. So why are the short-listed candidates all individuals with little to no knowledge of architecture? “This loss of nerve, which threatens to turn [the commission] from an organisation set up to nurture Britain’s architectural culture into a band of all-purpose do-gooders comes when [its] income from the government has trebled to £11 million a year. Of that, it spends nearly 25 per cent on salaries for its staff of 65.”