Gabion: Cracking up - Why modern architecture falls to pieces 1/3

There's a hip art gallery in fashionable minimalist style by a cult architect. He's had a few run-ins with his client: they didn't like his design much at first, and he had to alter it several times, even while it was being built. Then rain came in through the door, so he had to add a porch. Then his state-of-the-art heating system leaked, the whole place went rotten as a result and opening had to be put off for two years while they sorted the whole mess out. He put the wrong sort of glass in and painted the walls the wrong colour: these faults were put right later. Needless to say, the gallery ended up costing twice as much as it was meant to.

A typical modern-architecture scandal, eh? You read about them all the time: buildings rusting, leaking, cracking, falling to bits, alternately frying or freezing their occupants. Glass seems to be a particular problem right now: it's allegedly going wonky on all sorts of buildings by big-name architects and young pretenders alike, and the media picks up on all of them with glee. But there's a difference: the defect-laden building mentioned above happens to be the Dulwich Picture Gallery by Sir John Soane, opened in 1817. It is by common consent one of the great buildings of the world.

This must be some comfort to the architects of our late 20th century national style, loosely defined as high-tech. Richard Rogers (Lloyds of London building) Norman Foster (Hong Kong's vast new airport), Nicholas Grimshaw (Waterloo International Terminal) and Andy Gollifer (National Glass Centre) have all come under the spotlight over things allegedly going wrong with their buildings. Of course, many other consultants, contractors and manufacturers are always involved, not to mention vandals. Architecture is such a complex business these days, and faults with buildings such a legal minefield, that apportioning blame can be near-impossible.

Do you blame the car designer if the electric windows on your car seize up or if someone breaks in and nicks the radio? Probably not: but architects are more exposed, and tend to take the rap for anything that goes wrong in a building. We know their names: we don't know the names of the people who make a batch of dud components, or who come round at night armed with hammers for a bit of smashing fun.

It does not necessarily follow that a building with painful beginnings is a work of genius - any number of grim and defect-prone 1970s hospitals tell a different story - but the story of Dulwich does demonstrate one clear truth: for architecture to progress, risks have to be taken. If everyone built only what had been tried and tested by an earlier generation, we would all be living in circular wooden huts with straw roofs and a fire in the middle of the floor. "Chimneys? Don't come to me with your fancy high-tech ideas. They'll never catch on."