ABSTRACT
Four recent European buildings serve as illustrations of how commissioning and briefing are associated, and how, if the choice of designer and brief is handled well, architecture of quality is achieved. The buildings chosen, all designed and built between the late 1970s and the early 1990s, are: in Federal Germany, the Neue Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, and the Museum für Kunsthandwerk, Frankfurt am Main; in France, the Grand Louvre project, Paris; and, in London, the National Gallery Sainsbury Wing. As public art galleries and museums, their requirements are broadly similar, although, as Table 2.1 shows, they differ in size and other features. There were also national differences in procedures, due in part to funding and client organization, and in part to the different approaches of their designers-one British and three American.
