PUGH + SCARPA STEP UP Walking or driving past the new Step Up on Fifth project in downtown Santa Monica, California, one could mistake the colorful building — with its front facade of yellow, white, and purple metal panels — for a contemporary art center or a fashionable condominium. The mixed-use residential building in the heart of this affluent, picturesque city was actually built to serve people suffering from mental illness and homelessness. — Published 2009.1202
	MAGGIE'S CENTRE GETS 2009 STIRLING PRIZE On a difficult corner site along a busy street, Maggie's Centre in London provides an uplifting sanctuary in which cancer patients and their families and friends can receive support and information. The building's bold orange masonry wall beckons visitors into daylit spaces shielded from the street beneath a floating roof canopy. This humane health support facility designed by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners has received the Stirling Prize for 2009. — Published 2009.1021
	PORTOLA VALLEY TOWN CENTER When Portola Valley, California sought an updated, seismically safer civic complex, the existing mid-20th-century wood-and-concrete-block campus was deconstructed and its parts repurposed, along with other salvaged components, to create a sustainable new facility on another portion of the site. The resulting Portola Valley Town Center is targeted for LEED Platinum certification and was named one of the Top Ten Green Projects for 2009 by the AIA Committee on the Environment (COTE). — Published 2009.1007
	COLLEGE IN COPENHAGEN From the outside, Ørestad College in Copenhagen, Denmark, is a simple five-story cuboid. But the conventional exterior form conceals a radical open-plan interior. Designed by Danish architects 3XN, the experimental secondary school seems to embody all kinds of things that a school typically isn't. — Published 2009.0930
	MCGILL UNIVERSITY CYBERTHÈQUE For decades, the lower level of the Redpath Library Building at McGill University languished as a drab, dimly lit, compartmentalized box within which books and students were stowed. That changed when the Montreal school revamped some of that standard institutional library space into the Cyberthèque — an open, stylish, technology-centered learning space that has become one of the university's most popular study areas. — Published 2009.0923
	GREEN HOUSE IN GEORGIA In the American South, a region that tends to laud its heritage, modern can be a hard sell. A residential client often hears neighborhood fears that a new modern dwelling will look "chilly" and won't fit in. RainShine House by architect Robert M. Cain answers those concerns. Built near downtown Decatur, Georgia, part of metro Atlanta, the LEED Platinum-certified home is bright, welcoming, treads lightly on its site, and respects its neighbors. — Published 2009.0909
	PARISH CHURCH IN LECCE The city of Lecce, located in the southern heel of the Italian peninsula, is associated with highly ornate baroque palaces and churches, their facades overlaid with elaborate decorative carvings in the local limestone. — Published 2009.0902
	POSTCARD FROM MAPLE GROVE Dear ArchitectureWeek, Inside and outside, this building comes across initially as nice, but seemingly a bit buttoned down, handsome yet perhaps a bit conventional in affect. — Published 2009.0805
	PIANO IN CHICAGO Renzo Piano is known for his finely tuned designs, especially for a refined talent in dovetailing elegant new architecture with an existing context, playing on contextual strengths without duplicating the neighbors. He has achieved this feat once again at the Art Institute of Chicago, where a light-studded new museum wing by Piano opened in May 2009. The Art Institute's new addition is laudable in its intelligent siting, sensitive scale, urban presence, and manipulation of light. — Published 2009.0805
	THE REVOLVING VILLA "I have decided to make the complete turn." Euphoric over seeing his still under-construction house rotate its planned 180 degrees for the first time, the Italian civil engineer Angelo Invernizzi quickly wrote a colleague that the final version had to go all the way around. — Published 2009.0715

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