Nobody has the faintest idea. There is no consensus. There is no recognizable style to the start of the 21st century, in the way that we can recognize the 1800s or the 1900s by their buildings. There is an epidemic of manic shape-making going on, in which that old Louis Sullivan mantra, form follows function, is all but forgotten. This is, of course, the post-Guggenheim effect, the striving after landmark status. But there are also architects, young and old, who eschew shape-making for its own sake, and who worship at the altar of the early modernists from the 1920s and 1930s. There are those who have veered off into overtly organic forms, taking their cue from nature. And those who see buildings as extensions of landscape rather than as discrete objects. Or those who, in contrast, take science-fiction imagery and design buildings that look like moon colonies.

So no particular "ism" rules at present. If the 1970s was the era of theatrical high-tech, the 1980s represented the post-modern backlash, and the 1990s the return of cool-school modernism, then the 2000s so far show only rampant pluralism. The only discernible style war is that of Mr. Whippy versus Mr. Blobby, with everyone else forced to the sidelines. Whether this matters or not depends on what you think architecture ought to be. If you think it is merely a question of selecting one style over another (and despite the protestations of the profession, this has always been the case to a greater or lesser extent) then fine. You have more choice than ever. But if you think that architecture ought really to be about providing fundamental solutions to human problems, needs and hopes, then you start to worry. The pioneer modernist architect Berthold Lubetkin got it right when, late in life, he described most architecture as a minor branch of ornamental pastry cookery.