That was the Guardian’s headline, and for many it perfectly captured the creeping homogeneity that has come to define swathes of London’s recent building boom. Walk through much of London and you may feel a strange flattening of the world. Brick-clad, portrait-windowed, flat-faced: this is the domain of the New London Vernacular (NLV), a style whose name hints at locality and tradition, but whose execution often feels anything but.

What began as a thoughtful design response to post-2008 pressures has become something else entirely. Today, NLV is less a style than a system—an aesthetic algorithm for planning consent. Peter Cook, ever the provocateur, famously mocked its champions as the “biscuit boys”—those who churn out grim, sandy-hued buildings that comply with the letter of planning while forgetting its spirit.

From guide to gospel: the rise of NLV

The roots of NLV lie in the 2010 London Housing Design Guide, issued under Boris Johnson’s mayoralty. It encouraged brick façades, generous windows, and simple forms—a move towards legibility and dignity in housing after years of alienating “iconic” architecture. These principles, combined with pressure for housing delivery and tighter regulatory scrutiny post-Grenfell, soon solidified into a de facto style: brick as a compliance cloak, balconies as afterthoughts, design ambition sacrificed for certainty.

Esther Kurland of Urban Design London dubbed it “the unstoppable biscuity tide.” Developers loved it: one palette, endless applications. India Block wrote that it became “catnip” for both developers and planners. The architecture studio’s role, increasingly, was not to invent but to deliver—fast, cheap, and just good enough.

But the biscuit, as many have noted, is brittle. Architect Edwin Heathcote observed that much of the brick isn’t even structural. It’s surface—cladding, costume, a visual mnemonic for solidity without substance. As Andrew Waugh put it: get a good run-up and you could probably push a sofa through the wall.

The irony is that NLV explicitly references London’s Georgian past. It borrows its rhythms, its materials, its restraint. But where the Georgian terrace emerged from a rich interplay of craft, speculation, and civic intent, NLV mimics the form while hollowing out the process. The result is what Adam Nathaniel Furman derides as “Minecraft-Georgian”—a flattened past repackaged for a generic present.

Real Georgian London—Islington’s crescents, Bloomsbury’s squares—offered variety within coherence. Ornament was subtle but real. The buildings weren’t just façades, they were social infrastructure. NLV tries to emulate this order, but in doing so often mistakes repetition for rhythm, and camouflage for context.

Proponents: the champions of quiet order

Not everyone is critical. There are those who see in NLV a necessary correction. David Birkbeck, co-author of the Housing Design Handbook, views it as a pragmatic, user-oriented solution to long-term maintenance and civic dignity. Julian Hart of Pollard Thomas Edwards sees it as a humane, structure-first response to urban housing need.

Others offer cautious support. Mary Duggan has praised the principles behind NLV but warns of aesthetic complacency. Nicholas Boys Smith, of Create Streets, sees it as a route to gentle density—a tool for restoring traditional urban patterns. Peter Barber, while more romantic in his approach, draws from the same palette to create socially ambitious and expressive forms of urban living

And then there are the critics. Peter Cook’s dismissal of biscuit-coloured buildings isn’t just a jibe, but a damning indictment of architectural timidity. Owen Hatherley goes further—he sees NLV as a neoliberal veneer, dressing up market-led developments in the garb of civic virtue. Ellie Harrison points out the risk of gentrification disguised as good manners: a displacement narrative camouflaged in brick.

All these critiques share a frustration with what NLV has become—not a style to be debated or evolved, but a checkbox to be ticked. In its overuse, it has become a default—a lowest common denominator of urban design.

But it would be too simple to dismiss NLV outright. There is, undeniably, something soothing about its streetscapes. A post-Haussmannian rhythm, a sense of place created through repeated forms, softened by time. Compared to glass towers or combustible cladding, NLV can seem almost like a civic balm.

And brick does age well. Balconies facing the street, doors opening onto shared gardens—these are not nothing. They reflect a modest urbanism that, with care, could evolve into something more.

Yet therein lies the danger: NLV looks finished too soon. It presents the illusion of completeness, even when substance is thin. What was once a thoughtful corrective has become a marketable aesthetic. It’s easy for developers to co-opt; tempting for planners to wave through. The result is Pret A Manger urbanism: familiar, risk-free, and increasingly devoid of soul.

What we have now is not a vernacular but a compliance code in brick. And that’s the tragedy—because real vernaculars are never born of code. They evolve. They are shaped by craft, culture, climate, and community. They emerge from need and adapt through use. They surprise us.

The question isn’t “What’s the new style?” It’s “What’s the new spirit?” If NLV is to be rescued—and it can be—it will not be by following the guide more closely, but by recovering the spirit that animated it in the first place. That means better clients, braver councils, more imaginative architects. It means resisting the urge to settle for the least-worst option, and instead asking what makes a street sing, a home resonate, a neighbourhood endure.

Because cities are not just containers for capital, rather they are vessels for identity. We deserve buildings that reflect that richness—not just wrap it in beige.

After all, the problem with biscuits isn’t just that they’re inconsequential and empty calories, it’s that they crumble under pressure.

*the views expressed here are not necessarily the views of The Kingston Society.