SWISS AMBASSADOR’S RESIDENCE

The most unusual buildings in the U.S. capital city are often those erected by foreign governments for their embassies. Some are insipid interpretations of a country's architectural traditions. Others are inspired efforts to combine the best of a country's past architecture with cutting-edge trends.

MAYNE COURTHOUSE

The new Federal Courthouse in Eugene, Oregon by Thom Mayne and his Los Angeles firm Morphosis, is in some ways an outstanding building for this small city. Mayne certainly delivers a strong dose of visual excitement, but the depth of art in this architecture is more open to question.

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.

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