Robert Adam hit the headlines last month when he joined another Classical architect, Quinlan Terry, designer of the new infirmary at the Royal Hospital in Chelsea, in a robust attack on Modernism. The pair condemned what they viewed as the bias of the Royal Institute of British Architecture (RIBA) against traditional buildings in its annual awards (the shortlist this year includes Terminal 5 and Wembley Stadium).

Adam, formerly a RIBA judge for 12 years, described last month's awards as “a con”, saying, “the RIBA and the architectural profession are behaving like style fascists. This is a battle between architecture that a professional clique thinks is right and buildings the public likes.”

Lord Rogers of Riverside, whose practice won several awards, including one for Oxley Woods, a prefabricated housing development in Milton Keynes, responded acidly: “Modernism has always been a shock and it seems some people are taking a rather long time to recover.”

According to Adam, the Modern architecture movement, which began in the 1920s as an iconoclastic rejection of historic forms, has calcified into a new orthodoxy, intolerant of dissent. “Traditional buildings never get any kind of credence from anyone in the architecture professional. For more than 40 years it has been the case that you will fail at architecture college if you design a traditional building. You are seen as copying the past. But the future must inevitably involve the past at some level.”

He goes so far as to impute sinister undertones to Modernist architectural ideology: “It's totalitarian. Richard Rogers once said that Poundbury should be destroyed. Not that he didn't like it, but that it should be wiped out. They can't brook anybody doing anything that doesn't fit their received notion of progress.” This is the same Poundbury that a government review on Wednesday recommended should be used as a blueprint for the development of successful future rural communities.

Adam's accusation that architects are disdainful of public opinion rings true when one considers their recent campaign to save Robin Hood Gardens, a grim and antiquated concrete 1960s eyesore in East London that the residents and the council agreed should be knocked down. The decision earlier this month by Margaret Hodge, the Minister for Architecture, not to list the estate (and therefore protect it from demolition) on the ground that “it fails as a place for human beings to live”, showed a willingness to listen to the concerns of ordinary residents. In contrast, a recent headline in Building Design magazine, which ran the campaign to save Robin Hood Gardens - “Hodge refusal to list snubs profession” - reveals that the council tenants were not the architects' top priority.

Modernists are, it seems, now in the odd position of iconoclasts who are bent on preserving their own traditions via the English Heritage listing system. What will replace the demolished estate remains to be seen. Classical columns seem unlikely.

Times recommends

• Second homes: credit crunch casualty or money-spinner?
• How I built my own sliding house
• Top 10 incentives for house buyers