Andres Duany didn’t plan Poundbury, Leon Krier did. Duany specifically told the Guardian reporter he was not the designer. (I imagine he would have been proud to be, but he never claimed to be.)

Your photograph of a corner in Poundbury is better than the one posted on other sites. It’s one of the newer parts of town so it still looks less lived-in than older parts. Urbanism must be given time, and should never be judged by one photograph. I spent the night in a B&B in Poundbury last year and the place has many charms and virtues, not the least of which is walking directly into unsprawled rural countryside from the town center. That’s an attribute of this kind of development that often gets neglected.

Thanks for your insights about “high performance.” Braggery about “high performance” buildings is always amusing. (We do
it here in the US too, with LEED.) Perhaps they are talking about
energy-efficiency, but they also seem to think buildings should be on a stage acting out a drama. Prasad confirms this with his next remark: “Architecture needs to represent its situation and its era.” Hmm. I trust that some architects (of any nationality) are currently designing some buildings that look like economic meltdowns. Perhaps they could act out piles of jobless persons living in the streets, and design some hotels with blown-out windows. Or how about a block-long wall made out of discounted SUVs. That would be fun to walk by.