Cities represent fashions, past and present. So there’s been an unseemly scramble to get a 'Gehry', following the revolutionary architect’s successes in California, Japan and Bilbao. (In Denver, the de rigueur Titanium building has been provided by Daniel Libeskind).

In a city like Denver, the relative lack of wealth produces a conservatism and buildings that follow rather than set the trend. The result is something smaller, not quite as striking and lacking in vernacular color.

The fashionable designers of the evidence based world are gathered here in Denver. Their constructions are being copied at least in the 11 countries represented at the conference. At the moment, their work tends to stand out because there is nothing much like it anywhere else.

The aspiration must be for the edifices of prevention science that stand the test of time to become less noticeable in the landscape and largely functional. The Denver capitol building may be a pastiche of classical architecture, but it does its job perfectly well and no doubt is viewed with affection. Can we hope for something similar for programs like Life Skills Training as they become embedded in the mainstream school curriculum, slightly different in Norway than in Sweden, say, or in the Netherlands…

And how long before there are designers in Scandinavia, elsewhere in Europe and in the South producing something radically different for children? Something to set the rest of the world rushing, desperate to have some local representation of the latest fashion?