Rogers is not perfect but Prince's scheme is Wren on steroids

The manner of his intervention exactly follows the pattern he took in the Eighties. Back then he attacked a project by Mr Richard Rogers, as the ennobled architect then was, for Paternoster Square, next to St Paul's Cathedral. He then encouraged a rival scheme for the site. He is now doing the same with Lord Rogers's Chelsea Barracks project, backing an alternative scheme by his favoured "traditionalist" architect.

At first sight the royally approved project for Chelsea Barracks has some appeal. In Quinlan Terry's wobbly pen sketch it looks roughly like Sir Christopher Wren's nearby Royal Hospital, but closer inspection shows it to be a bloated version of the hospital, rising up to eight storeys. It is Wren on steroids.

It presents a long, dull, impermeable wall to Chelsea Bridge Road, whereas the Rogers scheme regularly opens up views to gardens. It appears to offer narrow windows to the flats instead of the broad ones proposed by Rogers, as if there had been no progress in glass technology in three centuries. The Terry scheme has no balconies.

But the worst of it is the miserable, defeatist notion that modern architecture can do no better than mimic the architecture of 300 years ago. It is also unhistorical: if Wren had copied the prevailing London architecture of his time, there would have been no Royal Hospital.

The Rogers scheme is not beyond criticism. It is a little stiff and regimented, and somewhat bulky. But these issues are not resolved by giving it fancy dress. A hefty residential development is still hefty, whether it is in classical or modernist garb.

The Prince has forgotten nothing and learned nothing. He is behaving with the same high-handed arrogance as a quarter-century ago, using his prestige to tip the scales of the planning process in favour of his personal prejudices. This time, by addressing the Emir of Qatar personally, he is trying to exert influence as one prince to another.

He has not learned, in all this time, that good architecture is not about classical dress. He has not noticed the many and beautiful forms contemporary buildings can take. He has not registered how structures like the London Eye, the Gherkin and the Millennium Bridge have made modern architecture popular.

Nor has he learned the lesson of Paternoster Square. There his intervention led to years of stagnation, and the eventual building of a compromise that satisfied nobody. If the Emir of Qatar listens to him now, the same will happen with Chelsea Barracks.