When stockbrokers buy futures, they follow research and hunches in search of a jackpot down the road.

You can apply the same concept to architecture when cultural institutions cast the net for a designer who will deliver a first-rate building and the right sort of buzz.

The market in architectural futures is one way to make sense of the current hunt for firms to design the new wing of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and, across the bay, a new home for the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive. Experience is important but so is cachet. And if your building opens as your architect's reputation crests - ka-ching!

Thus the local architecturati were surprised to see the 900-employee firm of England's Lord Norman Foster on the list of finalists released last week by SFMOMA. Foster's no hack; he won the vaunted Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1999. And that's "the problem." His sleek metallic forms are old hat to style-watchers focused on the next conceptual innovation around the bend.

The other three finalists offer a sense of adventure rather than a fat dossier. David Adjaye is young for the profession, 43, focused more on textures and connections than postcard appeal. Snohetta is a Norwegian firm with a flair for geological shape-making, just touching ground in the United States. Diller Scofidio + Renfro is a New York firm that had a Whitney Museum retrospective before their first major building broke ground.

From now until September, SFMOMA's selection committee will ponder the message of its selection as well as the selection itself. It can gamble on the vanguard, and risk getting a wing that works better as conceptual theory than constructed reality. Or it can risk seeming to settle for something as conservative as treasury bonds.

The intriguing thing about Foster is that the silvery weightlessness of some of Foster's best work could play well against the fortress-like masonry of SFMOMA's Third Street home. But what would the blogosphere think?

In Berkeley, the renewed quest for a well-known architect to craft a new home for BAM/PFA is a reminder that architectural futures aren't always enough.

The original plan was a new structure on the edge of the UC campus at Center and Oxford streets and a design by Japan's Toyo Ito. The architect was selected in 2006 - and by the time his design was being fine-tuned in 2008, New York Times critic Nicolai Ouroussoff had already blessed "an intoxicating architectural dance ... by one of the world's greatest and most underrated talents."

Ah, the good old days before the economic bubble burst. Fundraising stalled at $81 million, well short of the building's $143 million budget, and Ito and the museum parted ways in November.

The new plan is to pair the 1939 printing plant on the site with 50,000 square feet of new space and an $85 million budget. The institution also has a new list of possible architects: Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects of New York, Ann Beha Architects of Boston and - deja vu - Diller Scofidio + Renfro.

If BAM/PFA goes with DS+R - take that, SFMOMA! - we'll know Berkeley decisionmakers still want to impress the design avant-garde. Williams and Tsien are known quantities on campus with their recent (and masterful) C.V. Starr East Asian Library. Beha would offer dependability of a different sort: she's grounded in preservation yet adept at modern cultural design, the fusion required here.

If all this sounds subjective, it is. Especially since neither institution is holding a formal design competition: They selected firms to submit concepts of what might be, without tightly defined requirements.

"In Europe, design competitions are straightforward," says Peter Walker of PWP Landscape Architecture, a veteran of the ritual. "In the U.S. there tend to be a more varied set of motives ... they can be used to whip up public enthusiasm, raise money, put a focus on the design where there might be other things going on" such as backroom politics or real estate deals.

But even in murky cases, Walker sees an advantage: "With all the complexities, they can produce ideas that wouldn't otherwise emerge ... There's a chance for something remarkable that you wouldn't otherwise see."

Thrill of gossip aside, the speculation in architectural futures becomes moot on opening day. What counts in the long run is how the finished product serves the public and the art - after the hype, and after the buzz.

Place appears on Tuesdays. E-mail John King at jking@sfchronicle.com. He's also Twittervailable @johnkingsfchron.

This article appeared on page E - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle