The 10 Best (New and Upcoming) Architectural Marvels

NEW

#1

Bloch Building, Nelson-Atkins

Museum of Art addition, Kansas City, Mo.

Steven Holl Architects

Adding a new wing to a neoclassical museum, Holl devised a spectacular update on classicism: an irregular series of volumes that cascade down the museum's lawn and glow from within. The effect against the nighttime sky is nothing short of magical.

#2 | Federal Building, San Francisco Morphosis

This government office building is not only a smashing addition to the skyline, it's also green to the core. For one thing, its steel-mesh scrim is both a sunscreen and a design element that steps in sharp accordion folds at plaza level. A cutting-edge building, in all ways.

#3 | Olympic Sculpture Park, Seattle Weiss/Manfredi

The Seattle Art Museum decided to put its sculpture park on an old industrial site crossed by a busy road and a railway line. Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi made the most of it with an intricate switchback pathway that draws nature, art and the city into a dynamic force field.

#4 | IAC Headquarters, New York Frank Gehry Partners

Gehry's exuberant building is an undulating, white glass mesa that uses his characteristic whiplashing lines in a subdued and legible way. The sculptural silhouette is actually a clear expression of the interior floor plates. They just happen to be madly inventive floor plates.

#5 | The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York Sanaa

The New Museum is on the Bowery, a grimy but gentrifying stretch of lower Manhattan. So Japanese architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa gave it a home that's part funky, part shimmery, an asymmetrical stack of boxes covered by a honeycomb of aluminum.

UPCOMING

#6 | Olympic Stadium, Beijing

Athletes at the Summer Games will compete in a nestlike venue by Herzog & de Meuron.

#7 | CCTV Headquarters, Beijing

A tetrahedronal structure by Rem Koolhaas will be the most radically reimagined tall building in the world.

#8 | Linked Hybrid, Beijing

Steven Holl's retail/ office complex will have sky bridges connecting each of its eight towers.

#9 | Heathrow Five, London

Richard Rogers' firm is giving Heathrow a big new terminal under a vast, column-free arch.

#10 | Caja Madrid Tower, Madrid

Norman Foster's oil-and-gas-company headquarters will have rooftop wind turbines.