Here’s an intimidating project – designing the headquarters for an institution devoted to contemporary architecture. London’s Architecture Foundation will be the city’s first completely new cultural building in 27 years. From the beginning, the group “was determined that the competition should be as open as possible, not only to well-known names but also to those who had never built. An initial list of 208 entrants from as far afield as Mexico, Japan and Lithuania was reduced to the shortlist of eight, half of whom are based in London, half abroad, but none of whom had built a new building in London. All were paid to produce a design.”