A sense of identity.

Cynics define culture as 'the consumption of the obselete', and there is no doubt that the content of most cultural containers--particularly museums--generally comprises a collection or an archive rooted in history. Over time, the building itself becomes a part of that history, representing the institution and what it stands for as well as the content which attracts visitors; the Museum of Modern Art in New York, or the Victoria & Albert Museum in London provide examples, so well known that the short forms 'MoMA' and 'V & A' have a greater resonance than the full titles. Curiously enough, institutions like these are not entirely happy about their relationship to history, perhaps because they feel the public needs relentlessly dynamic marketing, stressing the new. In MoMA'S case, there is the dilemma about how exactly it should deal with 'Modernism' as a historical movement: all those dead white males so politically incorrect in contemporary Manhattan. The V & A, unbelievably, once marketed itself as a nice cafe with a museum attached.

The new is, of course, as much a part of our culture as the old. It does not require buildings (except art galleries) in quite the same way as the old, because it is all around us. It is only when we wish to assess the significance of even the very recent past that buildings come into play--the museum for rock and roll, photography, video art or football (it is a mystery, given its global popularity, why there isn't a really good cultural centre for this sport). Once you have the museum, the subject matter is subtly transformed. This may be why, in Britain, we have a government ministry entitled the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, as if media and sport were not an integral part of cultural life; but you known what the inventor of the title meant.

What is intriguing about the architecture of cultural buildings is not necessarily the formal response to a particular brief, but the light the brief and subsequent design shed on contemporary attitudes to the content. What we think today about a city, a country, or the history of individuals or groups is revealed, as we can see in the buildings reviewed in this issue. The completion of a cultural building, especially in a city context, is simultaneously a response to history and to the present. It is one of the reasons that architecture is aptly described as the mother of the arts.