‘How buildings become great’ considers what it is that makes some works of architecture come to be more culturally important than others. Famous buildings and architects are discussed from Mies van der Rohe's Seagram Building in New York, Le Corbusier, the Sydney Opera House, and the Taj Mahal to the avant-garde architects Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Antoni Gaudí. New architectural styles — for example, the Art Nouveau style of Victor Horta and Hector Guimard — and the use of new materials like steel and concrete are described. Buildings can be traditional, novel, or exotic, but architecture is only produced when a building and a culture come into contact.