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Here is an architectural glossy with a difference. Before you reach the eye-candy of lip-smacking architectural wonders, you are waylaid by essays by Lord Rogers of the Urban Renaissance, Sir Stuart Lipton, chairman of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, design pundit Deyan Sudjic and even prime minister Tony Blair.

All their earnest words add up to a single message: bright young British architects have never been more inspired, but they need inspired clients to give them work. The book, entitled New Architects 2: A Guide to Britain's Best Young Architectural Practices, and supported by CABE, presses the message home with the chapter "How to be a good client".

The book, which is compiled by the Architecture Foundation, is a sequel to one of the same name published two years ago. All buildings and projects illustrated in this book are fresh, although many of the 66 practices were featured in the earlier volume.

As Sudjic notes in his essay: "Architecture can now be defined as a wider range of things than ever before." Yet within this range of definitions, certain favourite contemporary themes can be discerned. They include exposed natural timber in structure, cladding and internal joinery. Cool, modern conversions of historic buildings make up another theme.

Sharp-edged detailing in industrial materials such as concrete, steel and glass is also much in evidence. And, whereas form has broken loose from function, there remains a strong modernist urge to let materials express their true nature without being cocooned in surface finishes.

It is now up to Britain's clients to take up the cause and spread this multifaceted new architecture throughout the land.