So, Nick Lomax desires a "rational debate" about his proposal to erect a tower where Medina House currently sits (Letters, December 19).

It is difficult for Mr Lomax to be objective or rational in relation to this building as his practice is proposing the design.

There is much in his letter that is disingenuous "architecture speak". To claim this is not a large building but a tall one is nonsense. This stretch of the seafront contains a mix of Georgian, Victorian and modern architecture, mostly residential with the exception of the King Alfred Leisure Centre.

A building of this nature cannot fail to dominate the buildings around it. It is ludicrous to attempt to pass it off as a "church spire".

It is not - it is another tired design adding nothing to the surrounding area or the community that lives in it, justified on the spurious basis that people

are moving into Brighton and Hove and we have to put them somewhere.

Mr Lomax poses the questions, "Do we want the city to thrive? Do we want to attract people, businesses and money to the city?" The answer is, obviously, yes but the implication that opposing poor, second-rate design solutions is somehow Luddite opposition to progress is crass.

The site clearly needs a solution. Perhaps it needs an architect with vision and imagination and not one producing a rather weary Nineties mixed development that makes a statement for nobody but the architectural practice producing it.

As an aside, the site is run-down and has been for some years. The squatters have, in fact, cleaned up the site, opened the building to the public and run a series of arts and community events which added a richness and variety to this little piece of Hove that Mr Lomax's building singularly fails to do.

-Micheal Pyner, First Avenue, Hove