TIME: Best and Worst of Design in 2002

The ceilings inside the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels reach a maxium height of 104 feet

CATHEDRAL OF OUR LADY OF THE ANGELS, Los Angeles
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe famously said that God is in the details, but modern architects don't always provide many details where God can pitch his tent. For the new LA cathedral, the first to be built in the U.S. in 25 years, the Spanish architect Jose Rafael Moneo produced an utterly modern building that is also a great house of faith. Though its high walled enclosure and yellow ochre exterior owe something to old Spanish missions, the church's vivid angular silhouette is entirely of Moneo's invention. The main portal, set off to one side, feels wrong — skimpy and literally marginalized. But once you're inside, the superbly scaled and illuminated nave, where lights filters in through sheets of semi-transparent alabaster, turns out to be a supremely satisfying sacred space.

AUSTRIAN CULTURAL FORUM, New York City
Good things come in small packages. The 24-story Forum, which houses a mini-theatre, galleries and other facilities, plus an apartment for the Forum's director, is just 25 feet wide. But Raimund Abraham's slender tower, with its irresistible saw toothed silhouette, has more going on than in a whole street of dreary midtown office blocks.

PERRY WEST APARTMENT BUILDINGS, New York City, by Richard Meier & Partners, Architects
For a town that many tourists visit just for the buildings, New York City sure has a lot of crappy apartment blocks. The recent residential building boom has pocked the streetscape with big, bland, poorly detailed boxes. Richard Meier's Perry West represents the sort of residential architecture New York City should have. Its two towers are unconventional, unprivate (with floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides) and unfinished — the apartments were sold, at about $2000 per square ft. without any finishes or fixtures. This is dangerous, test-your-mettle stuff for homebuyers. The pioneers who signed up (including Calvin Klein and Nicole Kidman) are rewarded with panoramic views and oceans of light and the city is rewarded with two shimmering showoffs gracing the riverfront.

BLACK LACE DRESS by Valentino
Oscar frocks are worth, let's face it, about a hundredth of the attention they receive. But when dressing up is what an event is all about then it's key to have as sublime a vision as Reese Witherspoon in her black lace Valentino gown. A dress on its own can be exquisite, but the perfect design moment comes when the dress is inhabited, and well. A flirty-quirky mix of lace and beading, the Valentino's cap sleeves and low lying square neckline not only reflected Ms W.'s own naughty sweetheart persona, it showed off her clavicle bones to perfection.

THE SET FOR HAIRSPRAY, by Rockwellgroup
A young woman is lying in her bed. Except her bed is vertical, so she's facing us. The faces in posters come to life. A curtain of rubber strands becomes a hairstyle when it opens. Elaborate sight gags, fizzy colors and nifty lighting systems so fill the set for the hit musical "Hairspray" that it would all be too much if the musical itself wasn't a paean to excess. Architect David Rockwell understands pizzazz perhaps better than any living soul. He knows how to create it and what to do once you got it. In architecture, that can get tiring. In theater, it's showstopping. Rockwell says he doesn't like to do the same thing twice. But his work in theater (he previously did the Rocky Horror Picture Show set) so showcases his "Let's put on a show!" irrepressibility that it calls for an encore.

CREDITS FOR PANIC ROOM
Not since "Rosemary's Baby" has the New York City skyline been suffused with such glorious creepiness. The opening titles for David Fincher's latest foray into darkness appear to float, disembodied, alongside the city rooftops, blending seamlessly with the structures and touched by the cold sunlight and shadows of a winter day. They're gone before the first words are spoken, but these credits, designed by Computercafe, are bona fide scene-stealers nonetheless.

NISSAN 350Z
Nissan's sleek new two-seater breathes new life into an old and cherished auto. Clean lines, sloping hood, a few family traits stolen from the Porsches, and a muscular 287-h.p. engine serve to remind us that all cars should be like this: A joy to drive and to behold. And all for under $40,000.

TODD OLDHAM'S DESIGNS FOR TARGET
Can a bargain comforter be cool? Can faux fur overcome its '70s roots? Todd Oldham thinks so. Oldham, a longtime fixture in the world of high (priced) fashion, has taken his signature aesthetic and wit to the furniture and accessory aisles of chain giant Target. His funky, fun designs for bedroom and bath are tailor-made for budget-strapped teens and college kids who refuse to compromise on style. After all, you never know who might be stopping by to ... ahem ... study.

DISCOVER 2GO CREDIT CARD
We confess we haven't given this card a user-test. (Too many cards are bad for one's credit report.) But it's hard not to love the idea. A kidney-shaped credit card that snaps into a carrying case keychain. Fiscal independence doesn't have to look so square, or even so rectangular. As a marketing ploy to lure in design-susceptible college teens it's pure evil genius as well. There are other cool-looking cards out there, but none so out there as Discover's.

THE IRISH HUNGER MEMORIAL
A monument to the devastating Irish famine of 1847 looks at first glance like an empty, overgrown, and weirdly elevated lot in the middle of New York's Battery Park City. But it's not a chunk of urban blight, it's the stone walls and fallow potato fields of the rural Irish landscape. The quarter-acre site rises to a peak in the west that represents the leaping-off point for the hundreds of thousands of Irish families that left ruined homes for the hope of New York. Tolle's memorial puts us through our emotional paces, first evoking our curiosity, then moving us.

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