For the Renaissance Barcelona Fira Hotel, sited near a convention center on the highway to the city's airport, Jean Nouvel took on the challenge of making meaningful architecture out of what Rem Koolhaas famously defined as “junkspace“—the anonymous, generic sprawl that rings cities everywhere.
Medicine Chest: In Vancouver, a new campus building for pharmaceutical studies conceived by Gilles Saucier makes a bold statement while reshaping its context.
Iconic designs don't always make good places. Photogenic buildings that assert themselves as individual landmarks may ignore their context and fail to enhance the public realm.
When A Square Building Flips Out: With more than 16,000 rotating glass discs, a center for multidisciplinary design gives a new spin to engaging with its surroundings.
Take it from the top: A new center for jazz in San Franciso was designed by Mark Cavagnero Associates to invite the public in for more than musical riffs.
As a latecomer to San Francisco's performing-arts district, SFJAZZ, a 30-year-old concert series, had to figure out how to fit into the Hayes Valley neighborhood.
Game Changer: Columbia University's quirky but tough field house bridges the divide between its gritty surroundings and the athletic playing fields beyond.
There are few American campuses more urban than Columbia University's; even its athletic fields are in Manhattan, grouped together in the cramped Baker Athletics Complex at the island's northern tip.
The design for a convention center in central Spain's historic city of Toledo presented Rafael Moneo with a fascinating problem: how to insert a modern, 400,000-square-foot building into a city that has scarcely changed since El Greco painted it in the 16th century.
The Sky's The Limit: The expansion of a vast trade-fair complex satisfies demanding exhibition-hall requirements and figures into a city's plans for urban renewal.