“In New York, there is nothing to match the Brooklyn Academy of Music, affectionately known by its acronym BAM. Its three tiers hold around 2,000, but the embracing curve of its interior makes it seem intimate. What I love most about BAM is the sense that, like Topsy, it just growed. It doesn’t seem engineered. So many ‘arts centres’ – the Barbican and the Lowry not least – are really arts ghettos, plonked down and squashed into the middle of nowhere to suit the exigencies of the town planner.”