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The paper draws on a recent research project 'Design at the Heart of Housebuilding', commissioned by the Scottish Government and undertaken in 2006-7; subsequently published in early 2008. This research focused on the conceptions and practice of design within private sector house developers in Scotland, which is used here as a basis for speculatively exploring opposing values between private sector housing developers and architects in housing design. Drawing initially on reviews of this relationship in the initial mass private sector housing provision in the inter-war period in the UK the paper then compares this with the more recent position as evidenced in the research, two generations later. It identifies and analyses the basis for a perpetuated mutual wariness as a way to understand the potential for change in current trends, and ends by highlighting some examples of alternative collaborations, where the skills and values of architects are more fully articulated with those of developers and manufacturers in innovative housing provision, including forms of mass customisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]