How wonderful to find an architect who can draw. In the past such an observation would have seemed superfluous and strange, as of course most architects could produce competent sketches or finished drawings – it was part of the job. But these days while most older architects just about produce the wobbly 'concept' sketch (for publication), their younger assistants can only work on a computer screen. Such is the baleful legacy of modernism allied to new technology. in contrast, Craig Hamilton can draw very well, but then he was properly trained - though not, significantly, in any school of architecture in Britain.

In the superficial, polarised debate about architecture today, Hamilton would have to be labelled as a 'traditionalist' as he is one of those who believes that something useful and beautiful can still be said in the language of the Greeks and Romans. But, unlike many in his camp, he is not in thrall to the cult of Palladio. For almost four centuries now, Palladianism has exercised a stultifying effect on British architecture – and still does, at least in the hands of those practitioners who think that to stick on a portico and to insert a few Palladian windows is enough to make a serious, vital Classical building. But Hamilton is so much wider, and more intelligent in his outlook, for he is acutely aware of so many more architects in the past who have demonstrated how it is possible to be expressive, original and, yes, truly modern in Classical terms.

His heroes are my heroes: Schinkel, of course, and Thomson of Glasgow are obvious influences on Hamiltonian Greek. And his 'monument to the loss of a beautiful world' is worthy of a shelter designed for the imperial War Graves Commission by Charles Holden or the great Lutyens. But it is cheering that he also responds – how could he not? – to the quirky Classicism of the Slovenian genius Plečnik, who combined a deep sensitivity to materials stone, brick, timber and metal – with a passion for the noble structural column. But Hamilton's tastes are wide and he can now embrace the unfairly maligned Piacentini as well as the Arts & Crafts Byzantinist, Henry Wilson, whose work could verge on the art nouveau and whom he describes as 'my current hero'.

Now Wilson, as a sometime Master of the Art-Workers' Guild, believed in the creative union of architecture and sculpture, as does Hamilton, so perhaps it is not surprising to find him working with a kindred spirit in Alexander Stoddart, the Caledonian heir to Canova and Thorwaldsen. Both, needless to say, share an admiration for the wonderful Thorwaldsen Museum in Copenhagen designed by the obscure Bindesbøll. But how thrilling to find that they have actually collaborated on a real building, a chapel. For another of Craig Hamilton's strengths is that his imagination is not confined to that stock-in-trade of the traditionalist, the country house. So, good as it is to see his learned, allusive designs for a wide range of building types and monuments so well and so tantalisingly presented on paper, one naturally longs to see more of them built.