The controversy that has attended the latest crop of building designs tells you that Diamond is not alone in his views. Gehry has had a particularly rough ride over his plans for the art gallery. Which is tough in a way, since Toronto is his city of birth and upbringing. He played in the park out the back as a kid. The gallery was where he first gained an appreciation of art. Perhaps as a result of this, his designs are more muted than you might expect from Gehry. There are no histrionics, no Bilbao moments. He unifies the currently piecemeal façade with a long, low visor in timber and glass. He re-orders the interior - in the process undoing some comparatively recent work by Barton Myers - and places that box high on the back, conducting its conversation with Alsop. The design process continues: even as I was there, fresh drawings were coming in.

Over at the Royal Ontario Museum - an example of the 18th century example of the "universal museum" containing a little bit of everything - they are hard at work building Libeskind's "Crystal" courtyard extension, which replaces a previous, non-crystalline courtyard extension. Seeing this, the bosses of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London should weep, for here Libeskind is doing much the same thing as he did in his "Spiral" designs for the V&A extension so many years ago, which still remain unbuilt. London could have been first: instead, if it is built at all, it will be just one of many museums with a Libeskind addition, and these later ones are more fluent.

Alsop is welcome in Toronto, in my view: he is not yet quite the international architectural Band-Aid that Gehry and Libeskind have become. Alsop still challenges assumptions and is capable of springing surprises. OCAD makes you smile rather as Alsop himself does: this is a building with charm. Diamond, for his part, has an older-generation notion of professionalism that serves him well: he is still a great competition-winner. And I'm pleased to have met Kuwabara, who is an architect to watch.