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The building has its quirks, not least of which is that the entrance - which you naturally assume will be through the big glass wall at the front - is right round at the back, through the earth mound. The Spitfire demonstration explained why this should be - that way you can take in the static exhibits together with the movement on the airfield outside. Equally the delayed moment of arrival heightens the impact when you emerge into the big, column-free, space and find yourself staring down the barrel of a B52. Broad walkways curving down both sides of the shell act as a grandstand for the aerobatics outside, and then lead you down to the floor, where an exhibition of American airpower is laid out among the planes.
The architecture, it becomes clear, is set out from the shape of the B52, its nose tucked into the back, its tail rising almost to the highest point of the roof at the front, its swept wings with their eight engines almost touching the sides. The other objects, from World War One kites to a U2 spyplane, are - aesthetically speaking - so much needless clutter. The building would work best as a memorial to the Stratofortress alone, its extraordinary presence undiffused. But military museums, even more than most civil ones, always cram too much into their spaces, can never keep up with their collecting urge. Duxford's "land warfare hall" nearby is ludicrously over-stuffed and still has a graveyard of surplus tanks and armaments outside. Sell them for scrap, I say. Although the Foster building is much more thoughtfully arranged, there are still just too many things for the space. Not that the anoraks I saw, all toting astonishingly expensive cameras, cared: most visitors to Duxford crave hardware, and the more the better. These people will take a photograph of a rivet, so long as it is a rivet from a Mustang or a Phantom. I shudder to think what their slide shows and albums are like.
For all its aeronautical genesis, however, Foster's museum at Duxford is merely the latest of a particular building type that has come to define the late 20th century: the Supershed. Big sheds, of course, are everywhere - every edge-of-town furniture superstore, every distribution depot, every inward-investment video assembly plant, is a Big Shed - but certain of them aspire to the condition of architecture rather than mere container. Here, where Foster and a few others such as Nicholas Grimshaw have made all the running for years, a new star has arrived: Chris Wilkinson, last encountered in these pages as a man who had suddenly emerged from obscurity to win a lot of competitions.
His designs are now being built - two of his remarkable bridges, a delicate wire-and-glass one in London's Science Museum and a writhing-snake example at South Quay in Docklands - have just been finished. Perhaps more impressive, however, is a superb building that few will ever see: Wilkinson's depot for Jubilee Line underground trains at Stratford, East London. Tucked away amid the terraces and industrial estates, this is a building to make even Foster worry a little, for Wilkinson has done for the humble tube train what Foster has done for the B52: ennoble it by placing it in a palace of space and light. If this were a station rather than a mere maintenance building, it would be among the finest anywhere.
Not that the laid-back Wilkinson is bothered by its humble function. As he likes to point out, this rhomboidal supershed covers such an area that its distinctive, diagonally-slashed roof shows up clearly from planes coming into Heathrow. Which means, I imagine, that Foster must see it quite often.
 
Foster's American Air Museum, Duxford, Cambridge.
Pictures shown on this page are indicative only, are not the same as those used in the published article, and are not for reproduction without permission.
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