Although prefabrication has a long history - the ancient Romans shipped pre-cut stone columns, pediments, and other architectural elements to their colonies in North Africa, where the numbered parts were reassembled into temples - the idea took on a new impetus with the technological advances of the Industrial Revolution.

What a museum chooses to exhibit is sometimes less important than how such decisions are made and what values inform them. To have the crucial role of museum professionals usurped by self-serving tycoons in the name of economic imperative threatens not only the integrity of individual institutions but the very principle of art held in public trust.

During the nineteenth century, the rapid emergence and proliferation of new manufacturing methods and building technologies led to the establishment of polytechnic schools that concentrated on the practicalities of engineering and construction rather than the niceties of stylistic correctness or adherence to established precedent.

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.

From the outset, MoMA followed the Bauhaus's strict prohibition against design that even hinted at the decorative, a prejudice that skewed the pioneering museum's view of Modernism for decades.

Any set of decisions about design is inevitably influenced by cultural prejudice, no matter how intent an architect might be to avoid it.

During the modern period, the vanguard architect has usually relied on small residential jobs both to supply a steady income and to serve as 'sketches' for ideas that are often later translated to the larger scale of public commissions.