Avant-garde architects have never been able to depend on the support of the establishment, since the customary patrons of this most conservative and slowly moving art form have historically been resistant to innovation and experiment.

Always beware an unsigned architectural design.

Architectural kitsch is most common in the commercial pop vernacular - typified by the Big Duck of 1931 in Flanders, New York, a Long Island roadside poultry stand resembling a duck, which Venturi and Scott Brown made a cult object through their writings.

The work that launched Snohetta into the architectural big leagues was their Oslo Opera House, which will certainly rank among the firm's highlights whatever else they may do. Although this is by any measure a triumph of city planning, the building itself is not quite a masterpiece, though very fine indeed.

The skyscraper style first advocated by Louis Sullivan - a tower of strongly vertical character with clear definitions among base, shaft, and crown - has remained remarkably consistent throughout the history of this building type.

Elevated locations imply elevated purposes, even in American cities departing as radically as Los Angeles does from the traditional planning patterns of the Eastern Seaboard.

Architecture traditionally has been the slowest of art forms. It was not unusual for great cathedrals to take centuries to complete, with stylistic changes from Romanesque to Gothic or Renaissance to Baroque as common as the addition of chapels or spires. But because the function remained the same, the form could be flexible and its growth organic.