“How many works does an architect need to build to be valid? One,” said Steven Holl recently, referring to the late Lebbeus Woods's only permanent structure, Light Pavilion, which is embedded in (and juts out from) one of five towers that make up Holl's Sliced Porosity Block in Chengdu, China.

Behind engaging architecture there is tension.

Generally, Iraqi-born British architect Zaha Hadid deals in organic forms more amoebic than botanic.

Collective memory was the driving force behind the latest incarnation of the annual, temporary Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, by Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron and Chinese artist-activist Ai Weiwei. To build a kind of manufactured archaeological site based on the previous 11 pavilions, the team created a drawing that fused the foundations of those structures into a single digital rendering, and then carved this form out of the ground.

Argentinean-born, Frankfurt-based visual artist Tomás Saraceno describes his newest installation, Cloud City, with whimsy and enthusiasm.

Along the narrow cobblestone road of Shad Thames, a bit of preserved Victorian-era Britannia on the south bank of London, the adage “What’s old is new again” rings especially true.

Rarely does a 1-inch-by-1-inch building product get to take center stage.

But inside, maple wood pews and treelike, steel structural supports (that give the chapel its name) lend an industrial quality to the airy, ceremonial space.