When I was a kid (though not a mere child), I defended Edward Durell Stone’s much maligned Gallery of Modern Art at 2 Columbus Circle when it opened in 1964. 

Occasionally a building emerges that seems to transcend architecture’s inherent limitations.

Although Medellín, Colombia, a valley metropolis of more than two million in the northern reaches of the Andes, is sometimes called the City of Eternal Spring, it is better known for its erstwhile reputation as Murder Capital of the World.

Blurring the line between construction and topography, French architect Dominique Perrault’s campus center for Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South Korea’s trendy Sinchon district is seamlessly integrated into the sloping hillside it intersects.

Given an awkward site squeezed between an 80-foot-high cliff and a busy avenue, Álvaro Siza Vieira’s design for the Iberê Camargo Museum (ICM) secures the building to its particular setting while reaching out both physically and metaphorically to a larger notion of place and culture.