Using cultural clichés in architecture rarely results in good design.

Inspired by the large cavities cut into bedrock by receding glaciers during the last Ice Age, Teemu Kurkela and his colleagues at JKMM Architects carved a tall open space at the center of their Finland Pavilion and gave the building an almost geological character.

Like a pair of jugglers, Brigitte Shim and Howard Sutcliffe approached the Integral House, in Toronto, as a balancing act—creating a building that seems to defy basic forces of architecture.

With all of the mega-projects rising in Beijing and radically transforming the city’s skyline, architects and planners can easily forget that important change can happen on the small scale as well.

Neri and Hu renovated and reskinned a five-story office building on a tree-lined street in the French Concession of Shanghai to create a new headquarters for their architecture firm and their retail furnishings company, Design Republic.

Breaking Conventions: Michael Maltzan designs a house for a nontraditional household.

In Phoenix, sprawl creates cultural, economic, and architectural mash-ups both weird and wonderful.