The cloud has an image problem. The term — which refers to the distributed networks of servers that store data and power all kinds of Internet services — gets tossed around a lot, but it doesn't evoke much beyond a vague nimbus of Amazon orders and MP3 files.

Over several decades of designing together, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien have steadfastly emphasized the serene and assured manipulation of spaces, planes, and materials, and exhibited an impeccable sense of craft.

'It is special and ordinary at the same time,' says architect Annabelle Selldorf while standing on West 20th Street in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood.

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.

Sean Godsell is a surprise. I'm expecting a rising rock star of an architect, a Melbourne Bjarke Ingels, with more success than he knows how to use.

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. 

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.

With a light touch, a New York firm restores the base of minimalist master Donald Judd.