That's how the storey goes

Glasgow 1999's plans seem to have fired the metropolitan imagination in a way that London's own millennium experiments have not. Caroline Roux, editor of Space, the Guardian's design magazine, said she thought the Glasgow project was ''fantastic but not fantastical''. ''It's difficult to show architecture in a gallery, this is the best way to do it,'' she added. In Glasgow itself, the 1999 team has found harsher critics. While the 1999 programme is full of exhibitions and events, it has given rise to just a handful of live building projects. As a result, flagship projects like the Lighthouse, the Millennium Spaces, and Homes for the Future have come under close scrutiny.

Just two months ago, John Dickie Construction began working on the Homes for the Future site, but already they have built three floors on two of the blocks. Thirty per cent of the properties in the first block have already been sold. One home-owner spent the night in his car outside the sales office to guarantee a penthouse apartment with glass ceiling. The year of architecture is suddenly tangible.

Homes for the Future will be developed in three phases up to the year 2005, providing about 300 homes for sale and rent. The project is being run by ROCK DCM. The first phase will cost #10m and provide 99 homes (the number of homes sounds contrived, but Norrie Innes, the project manager, insists it is an accident). Phase One involves five developers (four commercial organisations and one housing association) and seven architects. Scottish Homes have provided Gro grants for the schemes on the condition that units will be sold for less than #60,000. A sense of mission around the project has generated an unprecedented level of co-operation between architects, developers, and planners. It took Glasgow 1999 just six weeks to secure planning permission for the scheme.

When the first phase is completed in July next year, the public will get a chance to trek round the development stopping off at a selection of the new homes as part of an expo which Deyan Sudjic describes as an ''open air ideal home exhibition''. The show will last for four months and the practicalities of getting people around the site and giving new occupants some privacy have been a major influence on the development of the masterplan. ''We want to avoid an architectural zoo, to build a genuine slice of the city,'' says Sudjic.

The area was master-planned by Glasgow architects Page & Park with engineers Arup Associates. The project will provide a mixture of different house types, flats, terraces, and villas. David Page, the man behind the plan, chose to develop the new homes around the edges of a wedged-shaped site that stretches between Greendykes Street and London Road. The masterplan provides outline indicating the relationship between building rather than the building form. Several of the building blocks make the most of the views across Glasgow Green, but in the centre there is a large courtyard or mini-park. David Page wanted to create ''a park with individual blocks rather than a building around the edge of it''. The expected result is a sense of ''permeability'' between the site and Glasgow Green.

Overlooking Glasgow Green will be a block of 12 flats for rent by Ian Ritchie with the new housing association and two seven-storey blocks by Glasgow's Elder and Cannon and London-based Rick Mather. The two practices have collaborated to design a linked pair with a first-floor level walkway. Next to them is the organic shaped block by Japanese architect Ushida Findlay and the Burrell Company. The block has a cascading series of roof gardens which merges with the landscaping within the courtyard. Behind a line of smaller villas by Wren & Rutherford and RMJM Architects (Glasgow) containing flats and houses runs back towards the London Road. Opposite these will be a terrace, half of it designed by Elder & Cannon, the other half by the young Glaswegian architects McKeown Alexander.

Homes for the Future has been compared to Stuttgart's Weissenhof siedlung, an estate designed by Mies van de Rohe in 1927. Weissenhof siedlung, which was condemned by the right-wingers as a ''degenerate kasbah'', marked a defining moment in the modern movement. In 1927 architects Le Corbusier, Scharoun, Gropius, and others produced model dwellings that used the latest construction technology. By the end of the century the failure of post-war system-built housing put architects off experimenting with housing design. Could Homes for the Future mark a newfound confidence in architects' approach to housing construction and design?

SAYS Deyan Sudjic: ''It's not all revolutionary, but it is pushing at the edge of what is possible.'' The construction of several of the projects represents a break with tradition. Ian Ritchie Architects has designed a six-storey steel frame, a shelf-like system. Each unit has a long thin lounge which runs from the front to the back of the building. It will be energy efficient, with a specialised ventilation system, under-floor heating, glazing to catch the sun on the south face, and copper cladding. ''It is a repeatable low-cost prototype using a prefabricated dry construction, proper 1960s stuff,'' says project architect Alex Graef, ''but that doesn't mean we are going to plaster Glasgow with it, we will build one and then learn from it''.

Rick Mather's block is built with a structural concrete frame. It's a popular construction method for housing in Holland but it's a technique used on offices in Britain. This may change as it is faster than traditional brick or block construction, it allows greater freedom in the design of the external walls, and flexibility in the internal layout of each housing unit.

''Homes for the Future'' conjures up images of Tomorrow's World gadgetry, digital TV, remote dishwashers, and central heating controlled from your dashboard. The blocks designed by RMJM will have a Smart house computer control system, and other blocks will contain hi-tech elements, but the real innovation in the Glasgow project is not in the technology but the involvement of private developers.

The British house-building industry has a poor track record on innovation. It is notorious for building the tried-and-tested suburban ''Tudorbethan'' executive home even in built-up urban areas. Glasgow 1999 didn't tell developers what to build, they set up ''blind dates'' between selected architects and developers. The result is a unique combination of private developers working on a high-quality urban project delivered at an affordable price. ''I think the developers have surprised themselves in how far they have gone,'' says Deyan Sudjic.