TOKYO SWATCH BY SHIGERU BAN The new Swatch flagship store in Tokyo's Ginza district immediately stands out from the surrounding high-end fashion boutiques on this densely packed street. There is no doorway, no visible sign, and no glass storefront. Instead, a towering four-story void in the streetscape seems to signify a civic-scale entry. — Published 2009.0218
	YALE ART AND ARCHITECTURE BUILDING The Yale Art and Architecture building in New Haven, Connecticut, designed by legendary architect Paul Rudolph and completed in 1963, is now close to how its architect intended it to be, after a 45-year journey through celebration, fire, indifference, and abuse. One of the most iconic architecture school buildings in the world, the object of a love-hate relationship with those who have known it, has found new repose amid a complex mixture of adoration, restoration, and exhilaration. — Published 2009.0204
	DELFT MEDIA LIBRARY Durability through transformation. That was the architects' vision for the DOK Library Concept Center in Delft, the Netherlands. The multimedia library occupies part of the overhauled Hoogovenpand, a 1970s mixed-use building facing a public square. Architects Liesbeth van der Pol of Dok architects (no relation) and Aat Vos of Aequo BV revitalized the gloomy building, creating the library space among existing commercial and residential functions. — Published 2009.0128
	KOLUMBA ART MUSEUM In Cologne, Germany, a city ravaged by World War II, the Kolumba Art Museum embraces and preserves centuries of culture and pays poetic tribute to the layers of civilization unearthed on its site. Designed by reclusive Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, the museum provides a stunning exception to the city's drab urban landscape built after the war. — Published 2009.0107
	PREDOCK'S ARCHITECTURE SCHOOL In New Mexico, sandstone walls, granite boulders cracked by tree roots, and time-blurred ruins of past civilizations all rise against a cold cobalt sky — variegated results of sun, wind, culture, and geology. Architect Antoine Predock cites such elements of the U.S. Southwest as influences on his design of the University of New Mexico (UNM) School of Architecture and Planning in Albuquerque. — Published 2008.1210
	CATHEDRAL OF LIGHT The soaring Cathedral of Christ the Light designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill has transformed an old retail and commercial district in Oakland, California, into a vital sacred and civic gathering place. The all-new 224,000-square-foot (20,800-square-meter) complex for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland brims with amenities, including a public plaza and garden, health clinic, conference center, gift shop, and cafe, as well as clergy living quarters. — Published 2008.1105
	SMALL PACKAGES One of the principal tactics that underlies the work of Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis is the inverting of the value of constraints, by recasting the limitations of a project as the trigger for design invention. By maneuvering imaginatively within operational boundaries, the latent potentials of the project can be teased out of the very restrictions that would seem to weigh it down. — Published 2008.1022
	OSLO OPERA The new Oslo Opera House is a monumental architectural statement for Norway, providing a glamorous new home for the National Opera and Ballet and a striking public plaza overlooking the Oslofjord. Instantly shedding opera's snooty, high-art image, the new building by Norwegian architecture firm Snøhetta slopes down from the roof to the water's edge. The gleaming-white marble threshold between land and water welcomes hundreds of people on a sunny day. — Published 2008.1008
	DESIGNING FABRIC STRUCTURES The first step in designing a fabric structure is to create a form with sufficient pre-stress, or tension, to prevent it from fluttering like a flag or sail. Lightweight structures with minimal surfaces optimally should have double curvature — a surface that possesses a high-point (positive) curvature along one principal axis and a low-point (negative) curvature along the other principal axis. — Published 2008.0924
	NEWSEUM BY POLSHEK The Newseum building by Polshek Partnership Architects adds vitality and a sense of time and place to Pennsylvania Avenue, a street that, like so many important streets in Washington, D.C., had been devoid of movement and three-dimensionality in massing. A museum about news, the aptly named Newseum moved from across the Potomac River, in Arlington, Virginia, where it had outgrown its space. Its parent organization, the Freedom Forum, sought a location more heavily frequented by tourists. — Published 2008.0903

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