Letter: Jumbled up

Sir: Daniel Libeskind's design for an extension to the Victoria and Albert Museum (report, 17 May) seems to fall between two stools - is it a building or a sculpture? As architecture it does not display the order and beauty we expect. Perhaps the design is an attempt to illustrate chaos theory or the latest intellectual fads.

As a sculpture it is not aesthetically pleasing - all those dominating angles, rectangular forms, straight oblique lines and planes suggesting movement (unsettling in a building), emotional turmoil and aggression (very masculine), only relieved by a hemisphere and cylinder (the breast and phallus?) and the circular shape of what appears to be the Albert Hall crushed at the side.

A museum is a place of tranquillity and contemplation, primarily for the mind. It should welcome and not overwhelm. This design appears to be a jumble of children's building blocks of which the child has tired and knocked down. It is not suitable for a museum.

W K HARPER

Tunstall,

Stoke-On-Trent