Great countries embrace the world.

The largest annual gathering of architects in the world takes place later this month, when the American Institute of Architects holds its annual convention, this year in Los Angeles. Naturally it is attended mainly by US architects, and much of the activity at the convention centres on achieving better design and business performance--symbolic of one of the great American virtues, the desire for self-improvement. However, the event is far from parochial, with representatives from many of the world's architectural organisations there as invited guests, and other overseas architects invited to receive honorary fellowships. The AIA Gold Medallist this year is Antoine Predock, but is quite often an overseas architect (last year Santiago Calatrava). In short there is an international flavour to what is essentially a domestic event.

The recent wave of significant US commissions given to (or won by) European architects should be seen in this light. A generation ago, it would have been unusual or even extraordinary for so many leading overseas practitioners to be active in the great American cities; now it is a commonplace to find Foster, Koolhaas, Rogers, Piano, Grimshaw, Nouvel, Hopkins, Behnisch, Hadid, Herzog & de Meuron or Chipperfield picking up work. Admittedly much, though not all, of this work is in New York, which has a long history of 'invasion' by Europeans and subsequently their architects. But the last time this happened in a big way was as a result of the migration of Bauhaus architects and their contemporaries for political reasons. The new wave of import architecture is a matter of culture and commerce, with US clients more ready to look to the wider world of architecture to find the best talent for building and the site, possibly because they think they are more likely to get the unexpected from overseas designers (the shock of the exotic) or, more venally, that somehow regulatory authorities will be more lenient with guys who just don't understand the local rules.

The Europe/America architectural route is scarcely one-way, however. The great US three letter firms (KPF, SOM, HOK), other large firms (Gensler, RTKL) and signature architects (Meier, Gehry, Holl) are more than holding their own in Europe and further afield as the American empire continues to straddle the world. The liberalisation of trade rules has seen a concomitant relaxation in the minutiae of professional regulations designed to protect home markets--or in the case of the US, individual state markets. Liberalisation is to be welcomed. The proportion of buildings which benefit from a globalised market in design ideas is not great, but culturally it is of huge significance. The idea of America is one of inclusivity and welcome; and in embracing the best architects (and now engineers) from overseas, the US strengthens and refreshes its own architectural culture by importing as well as exporting. This makes for a healthy balance.