There is nothing like a recession for bringing architecture back to its senses. As less is built, there is time to think. Overblown stylings are out the window. New Puritanism stalks the streets. By and large, this is a good thing. The last recession brought down the curtain on the unlamented ticky-tacky decadence of the postmodern, Lawson-boom era. A new generation of cool modernists was born. But what does this one herald?

Less is definitely more when it comes to dumb shopping malls, nondescript speculative office blocks, sprawling edge-of-town housing estates, mass-market tourist developments and just about anything in Dubai, a wholly invented place that future historians and archeologists will have a lot of trouble explaining. Don’t, however, run away with the idea that suddenly nobody is building anything any more. They are. In the Great Depression of the early 1930s, the incredibly ambitious building of Manhattan’s three great skyscrapers demonstrated a dogged confidence in the future that turned out to be fully justified. Thus, we have the Chrysler and Empire State buildings and the Rockefeller Center. Given this precedent, I’m not surprised to find that, while some plans for City of London skyscrapers are on hold, others are not.

So, although Richard Rogers’s proposed 737ft Leadenhall tower - nicknamed the Cheesegrater - is to have its construction halted for the time being at foundation level, the 1,016ft “Shard” at London Bridge, by his old chum Renzo Piano, is powering ahead. And while you can’t help wondering about an equally controversial project, the 500ft hooded cobra of Rafael Vinoly’s Fenchurch Street tower (the stop-or-go decision there is planned for March), things seem set fair for another supertall example - the 945ft “Pinnacle” on Bishopsgate. That is better known as the “Helter-Skelter”, because of its spiralling shape, and is by the American architects KPF.

Take a stroll through the City today and - although there are, perhaps, fewer cranes than there used to be - you’d almost think there was a boom on, what with big lower-rise developments under way by the likes of the French architect Jean Nouvel or the London-based Nicholas Grim-shaw. Further west, you will find Piano doing another big-but-not-skyscraperish commercial scheme right next to Centre Point, at the end of Oxford Street, while Rogers is well advanced with his enormous ultra-luxury apartment blocks for the Candy brothers in Knightsbridge.

Around the country, we can all breathe a sigh of relief that the bubble of speculative flat-building has burst. Most of the formulaic blocks that pepperpot city centres were driven not by need, but by investors transfixed by capital gain, who sometimes had no interest in seeing them occupied. Good riddance to them.

On the plus side, promising cultural projects have made it through the madness. Despite everything people like to say about the alleged maladroitness of Liverpool, it is well advanced with its £70m Museum of Liverpool on the revived Pier Head. Shame they sacked the original Danish architect, but at least it’s there, and should open in 2010. In London, meanwhile, we shall shortly be seeing a £13m extension to the Whitechapel Art Gallery, courtesy of the Belgian architects Robbrecht en Daem. It is due to open in April, at nearly double its previous size.

I find myself wondering about London’s biggest cultural project: Tate Modern’s £215m extension, a brick and glass ziggurat behind the old power station of the original building. Last time I checked, they were still hoping to get the thing done ultra-fast in time for the 2012 Olympics, but had raised only one-third of the money.

So, unless the Tate’s director, Nicholas Serota, has a magic cash fountain, I’d expect some back-pedalling soon. Which would be a shame, as now is a great time to build. It’s getting cheaper. If a powerful city such as Birmingham can find the wherewithal to build its proposed new cultural quarter (the central library and Birmingham Rep combined), now is the time to get on with it.

Across the UK, you’ll find lots of schools being built (some good, some awful); many hospitals and clinics; even a surprising amount of private housing, in expansion zones such as Milton Keynes, Ash-ford and Didcot. The Royal Shake-speare Company is forging ahead with its £100m, 1,000-seat main theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, which will open in 2010.

Big intercity railway stations, such as London King’s Cross, by John McAslan, and Birmingham New Street, by the rising stars Foreign Office Architects, are in hand. And there’s always our Austerity Olympics. The work cannot stop. The main stadium is now emerging.

Stuff, then, is happening. But stylistically? Well, the New Puritans are triumphant at the thought of the death of the weird-shaped icon building. It’s not dead yet - but the end of its reign is, perhaps, in sight. Did the year that saw the death of Jorn Utzon, the architect of the Sydney Opera House and thus the progenitor of the whole icon craze, mark the end of the line? Only, I think, until the money returns. When it does, though, history tells us that the architecture will be different.

Every artistic movement has its decadent phase, followed by a clearing out of the aesthetic stables. This time will be no different for architecture - save for one interesting detail. Last time round, we saw a return to clean-cut modernism and the ruthless expunging of postmodern ornament. This time, some, at least, of the New Puritans are getting interested in ornament again. Which means that we may be in for quite a bout of pattern-making with the next wave of buildings. But they’re more likely to be a sensible shape.

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