Slate: Don't count your titanium eggs before they've hatched

"The real question about new buildings should never be 'Are they cutting edge?' but 'Are they good?'"

In a piece in Slate, architecture critic Witold Rybczynski examines avant-garde architects and how their work will be perceived by future generations.

Rybczynski concludes that while Herzog and de Meuron's steel bird's nest, Andreu's titanium-egg National Theater and Koolhaas' CCTV headquarters might be striking to the eye, such buildings rarely anticipate the future.

Buildings, he says, belong firmly to their own time.