A fritted-Glass wall conceals a scarred facade and makes an old gem glow.

Daniel Libeskind, by happenstance or design, has practically become the official architect of Jewish museums worldwide, but that trajectory was near its beginning when he received the commission, in 1998, for San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum (CJM).

The building relies not only on the sharp-edged diagonals—sometimes a shortcut to dynamism and architectural self-assertion—that have been a mainstay in Libeskind’s work, but also on abundant calligraphic symbols, some more convincing than others.

Renzo Piano calls his new building for the California Academy of Sciences a “soft machine.”

To support the expansive roof, RPBW designed a set of four masonry structures—one at each corner—incorporating two of the original academy’s Neoclassical limestone walls in the northeast structure and using poured concrete for the others.

Rather than assume that senior citizens want their housing gussied up in wood shingles and faux Victoriana, the architects of Parkview Terraces in San Francisco treated the project’s residents as people looking to the future rather than the past.

The simple 6,400-square-foot Orange Memorial Park Recreation Building is an airy, light-filled multi-purpose room for cultural, recreational, celebratory, and educational activities.

Getting from the sidewalk into the main sanctuary of Beth Sholom synagogue, in San Francisco, is hardly a matter of opening a front door and entering.