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.

Chicago’s gentrifying River North neighborhood is a gritty mix of older commercial and newer residential buildings. Among these is 747 North Clark Street, a 22,000-­square-foot condominium completed last year. 

Once vilified for pollution and noise, the mines and factories of the Ruhr district (Ruhrgebiet), Germany’s former coal and steel belt, have become proud symbols of the region’s industrial past. 

Beauty may be skin-deep, but David Jameson's design for the offices of a dermatologist and a plastic surgeon reaches beneath the surface, peeling back layers of intrigue. Inspired by the structure of a tree'with its rough bark on the outside and smoother rings closer to the core' the Washington, D.C.'based architect organized the 3,770-square-foot facility as a progression of spaces wrapped in increasingly refined materials. 

Benedikt Taschen loves design. Though the German publisher is sometimes better known for 'sexy' books'as some of his titles are cheekily referred to'he is the force behind scores of monographs on the world's most famous architects and fashion designers, and gorgeous limited editions on everyone from artist Ai Weiwei to James Bond. 

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

With unusual restraint, a 1960s post office is reimagined as a focal point for New Nordic cuisine.

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. 

In San Francisco, the latest tech office has the cultural prominence a lavish restaurant or fancy boutique would elsewhere. As the battle to entice technical talent continues, designers strive to outdo the competition with their imaginative environments.

John Soane's private apartment, on the third floor of his extraordinary London house at 13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, was a refuge for the architect and his wife, Eliza, within a building that was also his office, salon, and showcase for a vast collection of art and antiquities.