Celluloid Skyline is thorough and engrossing and beautifully designed.

ARO makes the best of a temporary site in New York with bright graphics and playful design.

You might say that East Harlem in Manhattan is well-known for the wrong reasons, such as high rates of crime and joblessness. But the neighborhood, traditionally called El Barrio for its largely Latino population, has shown significant signs of change—and not just gentrification as landlords renovate apartments to lure young professionals able to pay higher rents.

A graffiti-covered factory in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, may not seem the most likely of venues for classical music.

The City College of New York (CCNY) is a bit like an academic Acropolis. Situated in Upper Manhattan on one of the island’s highest points, its collection of early 20th-century neo-Gothic buildings, by George B. Post—and more recent additions by architects that include Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Rafael Viñoly—sit high above the surrounding neighborhood of townhouses and low-scale apartment buildings.

Aficionados of the musical West Side Story will know the New York neighborhood Lincoln Square, once called San Juan Hill, as the backdrop for the clashes between the Jets and the Sharks. But in real life, this is the part of Manhattan’s West Side that was bulldozed in the 1960s to make way for the performing-arts complex Lincoln Center.

The New York Edition hotel revitalizes an historic skyscraper with an interior that glamorously fuses past and present.

The energy-drink company Red Bull (RB) tends to engage the public in unconventional ways. As it plunges into adventurous youth culture—extreme sports, high-risk aviation feats, edgy art and music—it’s never just paying to affix its logo to a Formula 1 racecar or a radical skydive.