Suzhou is a Chinese canal city which aged for 2,500 years. Set on the lower reaches of the Yangtze River on the verge of Lake Taihu, the city represented the edge of urban sophistication: a place where enclosed garden evolved into a naturalistic universe in miniature. In 1997 and 2000, UNESCO identified nine of the remaining 69 walled gardens as World Heritage Sites where the museum will be built. Originally, the museum was founded in 1960 and located in the national historic landmark, Zhong Wang Fu palace complex. This old Suzhou Museum has been a highly-regarded regional museum with a number of significant Chinese cultural relics.

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The Milan Trade Fair new complex will offer complementary services that will help it to blend with the surrounding area: the area will provide an extensive parking system, vast landscaped areas and a wide range of compatible services, such as hotels, stores, cafés, bars and restaurants, and recreational facilities. It is the place of meeting, of ideological exchange, of relationships, of opportunities. The building is a great architectural project for the country. Its dimension renders it one of the major complex nowadays on building in Europe.

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In addition to the development of a new masterplan for the university, OMA was commissioned to design Educatorium, a crucial link or urban keystone for the entire academic complex. The parameter of the site is surrounded by four extremely different conditions: Horticulture and Botanical Gardens, a green boundary in the north; Transitorium 2, a 17 story office tower in the south; Transitorium 1, a 185 m long, 2 story classroom building with a central galleria in the east; Pedestrian promenade (linked with future student housing to the south as major transverse of the campus), bicycle circuit, canal and green zone in the west.

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The Jubilee Church is the jewel in the crown of the Vicariato di Roma’s (Archdiocese of Rome) Millennium Project. Formally known as Dio Padre Misericordioso, it is the 50^th new church and community center built in the suburbs of Rome. The Jubilee Church has been conceived as a new center for a somewhat isolated housing quarter in the Tor Tre Teste area, located outside central Rome and intended to revitalize a decaying residential fabric. The triangular site is articulating three concepts: first, dividing the sacred realm to the south, where the nave is located from the secular precinct to the north. Second, separating the approach on foot from the housing situated in the east. Third, again separating the approach on foot, from the parking lot situated to the west.

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Alsop’s Colorium forms one element of a larger ongoing program for the regeneration of Dusseldorf’s waterfront. The completed ‘Media Harbor’ project will include works by Frank Gehry, Steven Holl, David Chipperfield and Fumihiko Maki. The building was designed as an office block, with its special shape as a process of aesthetic, economic and social rebirth. The area in which it has been built is the old river port of Dusseldorf, which has several examples of industrial archaeology, with brick buildings and anonymous steel facades.

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Swiss Re London Headquarters is a landmark 40-storey office building in the heart of London’s financial centre, developed by Swiss Re and designed by architects Foster and Partners. Located on the former site of the Baltic Exchange, the distinctive form of the building adds to the cluster of tall buildings. This London’s first ecological tall building is instantly recognisable, rooted in a radical approach by technically, architecturally, socially and spatially.

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Built in 2002, the Peter B Lewis Building is housing the Weatherhead School of Management. Named in honor of lead donor Peter B. Lewis, chairman of the Progressive Corporation, and designed by world-renowned architect Frank Gehry, the building is the most advanced management school facility in the world and reflects Weatherhead’s international reputation for innovative management education. The building in the Case Western Reserve campus is a $62 million building, which Mr. Lewis donated $37 million, with 152,000 sq ft of space.

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Architectural imagination and social conscience are intertwined in the design for Diamond Ranch High School. It is a public high school with 50 classrooms, a gymnasium, cafeteria, administration and parking for 770 automobiles. Total cost for school was $30 million USD. The building presents a detailed story of the design and construction of a single building, by Morphosis. The presentation is a state-of-the-art public school in Pomona, California, offers a level of detail not normally found in architectural monographs.

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The Auerworld Palace was erected in the spring of 1998 by 300 volunteers from all over the world, directed by Swiss-born architect Marcel Kalberer and assisted by builders and artists of the building group Sanfte Strukturen, who guided the construction process. He is one of many architects who provide ecological aspect and sustainable development in his design. The way it was planted expresses the potential energies that can be mobilized in a community-oriented natural building process.

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The Orient Station was commissioned in the short term to serve the needs of World Expo 98 and in the long term to provide a main transport terminal for the east side of Lisboa as a future development of the city is planned for this side of the Tagus River. Today it is one of Europe’s most comprehensive transport nodes, an important interchange for high-speed intercity trains, rapid regional rail services and a tram and metro network. The building is a huge transport interchange, connecting local and taxis, and the underground system, and providing an airport link with check-in facilities.

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The National Space Centre, a landmark Millennium Project for the East Midlands, is one of the United Kingdom’s leading visitor attractions devoted to space science and astronomy. It is located in the city of Leicester, England, on a former brownfield site on the north bank of the River Soar. The building, which is designed as an amenity represents a significant environmental improvement both for the immediate neighbourhood and for the city of Leicester as a whole. The site formerly housed a buried storm-water tank, sewage treatment works (donated to the project by Severn Trent Water) and a council tip. The building was designed by Nicholas Grimshaw, and it opened to the public on 30 June 2001.

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Cyberport is a new “Silicon Valley” on a 26-hectare, previously undeveloped, site, contains high-tech offices as well as shops and plazas for a world-class IT community. The building is a strategic information technology infrastructure project that symbolizes Hong Kong’s determination to develop as a leading digital city in Asia. An estimated HK$15.8 billion (US$2 billion) has been invested on land located at the edge of Telegraph Bay on the western shores of Hong Kong Island, where the site is adjacent to the University of Hong Kong campus in the Pokfulam area.

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Chile’s northern Atacama Desert is one of the hottest, driest, places on earth, and a particular sensitivity to location is required of anyone building here. Scorched by day and chilled by night, the desert plateau is bounded by the rugged cordillera of the Andes to the east. The light is unusually strong, intensified by clear skies and very low humidity. Drawing on semi-vernacular forms and passive methods of environmental control, this Explora Hotel for adventurous travellers is a highly poetic response to light, landscape and climate.

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The Oscar Niemeyer Museum, which also known as Museu do Olho or Museum of the Eye for its new addition, is located in the city of Curitiba, in the state of Paraná, in Brazil. The annex, which was launched on July 8, 2003, is to honor its famous architect who completed this project at 95 years of age. The first building, Castello Branco, was designed by Oscar Niemeyer in 1967, faithful to the style of the time, and conceived as an educational institute. It was remodeled and adapted to function as a museum, imprinting it with a new characteristic identity for a twenty-first-century museum of international building standard.

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The creation of a signature complement to Craig Elwood’s 1969 landmark building was initiated by a school-wide design session led by the California based practice of Craig Hodgetts and Ming Fung. This $800,000 project was set in motion by Art Center’s new President, Richard Koshalek. Envisioned as a casual diversion to the disciplined structure of its Miesian neighbor, the Sinclair Pavilion is intended for an alternative space in which to relax and socialize, on a break from their classes in Art Center’s landmark facility.

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Bellevue Arts Museum is located in the heart of downtown Bellevue where the bold glass, aluminum and textured concrete structure provides a dramatic presence at the intersection of Bellevue Way NE and the NE 6th pedestrian corridor. The building’s new facility, designed by renowned architect Steven Holl, has 5,800 sq ft of gallery space on three floors, plus an art school, studio space for visiting artists, and the interactive Explore Gallery. This art museum building specializes in the work of Northwest artists but also explores national and international influences on local art.

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Broadwick House comes as something of a surprise. The building was commissioned by a developer and occupies an entire city block in the heart of Soho’s dense conservation area, which this quadruple-aspect office development provides six floors of office space raised above street-level retail and restaurant accommodation. It is a place where straightforwardly ‘contextual’ design has been the norm, a contemporary landmark that lifted the profile and enriched the life of this historic neighbourhood.

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This installation for Giovanni and Marella Agnelli Art Gallery hovers atop the historic and enormous former Fiat factory at Lingotto in Turin, overlooking the city of Torino. The building constitutes the third phase of Piano’s 14-year renovation of the factory, into a mixed-use center with a hotel, shops, and conference space. Built in the 1920 by Matte Trucco, the building was the largest and most modern plant in Europe, both architecturally and in terms of mass production capacity. The Lingotto Factory Conversion was the first example of modular construction in reinforced concrete, based on the repetition of three elements: pillars, beams, and floors.

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Dorte Mandrup has designed a community center in Kobenhavn that accommodates a wide variety of uses and gives new life to a faded 19^th century warehouse. The main objective was to connect the building’s many different activities and provides an openness and accessibility for the public. The practice has much experience with historic buildings, and the existing warehouse, located in an industrial building which dates from 1880, was treated respectfully but not shied away from. The Neighborhood Center contains a local library, cafe, youth center, offices and multipurpose hall.

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Burraworrin (‘Magpie’) House, on the coastline of the Mornington Peninsula, is for three generations of one family. Many country residences are detached and isolated, this house, however, melds with the undulating landscape and explores, through its spatial arrangement, the physical need for attachment within the family unit. Burraworrin House expresses an interest in creating spaces that can delight, challenge, heal, calm, even excite. It has been brought forward right to the edge of the ridge. It’s just starting to emerge out so it seems this could be a hang glider, on the tip.

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