Building directly opposite Charles Rennie Mackintosh's famed Glasgow School of Art, as Steven Holl has done, is simultaneously a plum job and the commission from hell.

The military does not leap to mind as the most likely patron of distinguished design. But the Colonel James Nesmith Readiness Center, a new facility for the 162nd Engineer Company of the Oregon National Guard, in Dallas, Oregon, could change that thinking.

The Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility, designed by Selldorf Architects, speaks volumes about the future of waste management in urban environments.

Diplomatic Position: In the midst of the visual hubbub of China's third-largest city, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill creates an understated ensemble of buildings for the U.S. Consulate General. The U.S. Consulate General in Guangzhou, China, makes only the quietest of claims within the city's noisy new business district. Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), its seven low-rise buildings—offices, screening facilities, a warehouse, and a residence for Marines—dot a 7.4-acre site in the burgeoning Pearl River New Town. Zaha Hadid's opera house lies catercorner to it, and Wilkinson Eyre's supertall IFC Guangzhou and KPF's soon-to-be-supertaller CTF Guangzhou are close by.