ELEMENTARY AURORA

New schools are springing up across the United States with design that doesn't go "by the book." These schools for grades Kindergarten through 12 are responding to meet new community demands or simply to replace aged facilities.

Forty-five percent of the nation's elementary schools were built between 1950 and 1969, according to ZweigWhite, a market research firm. And enrollment in public K-12 schools will continue to rise through 2012, predicts the National Center for Education Statistics.

MILAN TRADE FAIR

"When you build one million square meters, you really don't know if what you envisioned will be good or bad," says Massimilliano Fuksas, the Rome-based architect for the New Milan Trade Fair. The 10.8-million-square-foot convention complex, which opened in April 2006, has a mile-long canopy that wows visitors with its whimsical flair, transforming a glass and steel structure into a fabric that billows and then touches down like tornados to the floor.

BEAUTIFUL PARKING

Once upon a time the parking garage was created as a dark place filled with sinister shadows and exhaust fumes. But it doesn't have to be that way. Over the past few years some of the best parking garages have been designed and constructed to be more like parking palaces, as architects focus their design creativity on making the inner-city garage an aesthetic contributor to our urban experience.

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