LIFE still begins at 40 for architects. In architecture you’re still considered foetal until you are middle aged. The few examples of architectural precociousness are outnumbered by the grinding reality for most after university: designing drainpipes in some megafirm to pay off crippling debts.

But architecture courses are still some of the most oversubscribed in the university sector. Perfectly timed to give this month’s new graduates heart, the V&A and the Architects’ Journal have launched 40 under 40, their pick of the Fosters of the future. The list features the already successful (David Adjaye, Block Architecture, FAT) alongside the freshfaced, and paints a clear picture of British architecture today.

It shows that the ascetic modernism of their Eighties forebears is being fused with tactile materials, a strong political agenda, bold colours and computer-driven form-making. It all points to a revival of oomph in British architecture unseen for decades. Here are five of the best.

LYNCH ARCHITECTS

Patrick Lynch and his wife, the German-born Claudia, met at Liverpool University, and after postgraduate degrees began teaching, while designing offices, flats and exhibitions from Clerkenwell to Hoxton in London. Their big breaks have been designing Marsh View, a modern-rustic Norfolk holiday home, and the East London Family Community Centre ELBWO (which burnt down last year). They are finishing a town house in Hackney, a community space in Balham, and starting a Clerkenwell art gallery and two country houses.

What they do “We soak up a place’s character and replay it back at you amplified for the modern world,” says Patrick. “Think Bob Dylan goes electric. We want to recover the relationship people used to instinctively feel about places, without isolating them from either history or the everyday.”

Our verdict Bold but sensitive, traditional yet radical, intellectual and comprehensible. The start of something great.

BUSCHOW HENLEY

Simon Henley and Gavin Hale-Brown met at Liverpool University, and have worked with Ralph Buschow and Ken Rorrison since 1995. Their break was converting a Hoxton factory into lofts with a rooftop "garden suburb" of zinc pavilions, which won a RIBA award. A second award followed for their warm and woody "multi-story cloister" offices for the TV production company Talkback, and a third for their "new barn" hosue, Phelan Barker, Essex. Surely next year there will be a fourth for their wonderful Caldicott School performing arts centre.

What they do “We’re interested in people’s behaviour,” says Henley, “and in the material quality and sculptural form of our buildings, and in the experience to be had by the people who inhabit our buildings.” This doesn’t mean just private clients. Their designs for a “humane prison” demonstrate a strong social agenda.

Our verdict Their work looks simple. It’s not. It’s packed with ideas and humanity, carried out with sometimes breathtakingly fine detail.

TONKIN LIU