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"Buzz-Worthy Buildings\nWhat new architecture matters now? AD surveyed recently completed projects from around the globe and selected 15 that are not only pushing the boundaries of design and technology but are also shaping up to be some of the most influential structures of the decade\nAmsterdam-based UNStudio designed the sculptural white ridges on the fa\u00E7ade of this office building in Groningen, the Netherlands, to be more than merely ornamental. Environmental studies indicate that the wedge shapes reduce energy consumption by acting as shades to control the amount of direct sunlight. The architecture firm also created the structure, occupied by the national tax office and the student loan administration, to be easily converted into housing, should the tenants ever decide to depart.\nInspired by the natural forces that have shaped its Pearl River location for centuries, the Guangzhou Opera House complex in China's Guangdong Province resembles \"pebbles in a stream smoothed by erosion,\" says its architect, Zaha Hadid. Sections of the two buildings\u2014one is the 1,800-seat opera house, the other a 400-seat multipurpose performance hall\u2014are sheathed with glass to reveal the steel skeleton and flood the interiors with sunlight.\nChosen to design a communications tower and entertainment complex overlooking the Pearl River in Guangzhou, China, Mark Hemel and Barbara Kuit of Amsterdam-based firm Information Based Architecture came up with a solution they say is an example of \"sexy complexity\" bearing \"the identity of a female: smooth, curved, slender, gracious.\" The structure is a series of stacked components enclosed by a net of steel tubing that subtly twists and narrows as it rises 1,968 feet to an angled observation deck. The deck's roof is equipped with a Ferris wheel\u2013style contraption whose spherical cars offer astounding views of the province's capital. The tower also includes two rotating restaurants\u2014though soup is not on the menu, due to the wind's tendency to sway the building.\nSteven Holl Architects and the Architectural Design Institute of Nanjing University collaborated on the design of this museum in China's Jiangsu Province, which pays homage to the vanishing-point perspectives seen in the country's traditional paintings. The courtyard is paved with salvaged antique bricks, while the corrugated black-stained concrete walls of the lower section were formed in molds made of bamboo. Metal-clad corridors and galleries rise from the wooded site like linked periscopes. A vertiginous exterior staircase leads to the upper portion of the structure, where a glass wall offers a view of Nanjing.\nWith startling applications of irregular aluminum striping alternating with dark- and light-toned glass, this Brooklyn, New York, condominium by Skidmore, Owings &amp;amp; Merrill (SOM) resembles a giant Cubist sculpture. Or, perhaps, a Constructivist textile writ large. Several of its striking exterior features have unusual origins. According to architect Peter Fajak\u2014who created the building along with SOM partner Roger Duffy\u2014myrtle trees inspired the dimpled glass panels that are among 200 different shapes composing the curtain walls.\nFunded by luxury watchmaker Rolex and described as \"an intimate public space\" by co-architect Kazuyo Sejima, of SANAA, this undulating concrete-and-glass structure in Lausanne, Switzerland, combines laboratories, a library, restaurants, social spaces, and more on the campus of the \u00C9cole Polytechnique F\u00E9d\u00E9rale de Lausanne. Perforated with openings that admit sunlight and frame plazas, patios, and other public spaces, the roof has an organic profile that swells and subsides. SANAA's founders, Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, were awarded the 2010 Pritzker Architecture Prize, the jury hailing the partners for their \"vision of a building as a seamless whole, where the physical presence retreats and forms a sensuous background for people, objects, activities, and landscapes.\"\nThe contracting and expanding silhouettes of these two apartment buildings\u2014designed by Beijing-based firm MAD in cooperation with Canada's Burka Architects and part of a multi-structure condominium complex in Mississauga, Ontario\u2014evoke comparisons to the human form. The 50-story Building E recalls the female (locals have dubbed it Marilyn Monroe), while the 56-story Building D is seen to be its male complement. The skyscrapers, which will be completed later this year, are made of concrete, glass, and steel and are wrapped with continuous balconies that enhance their fluid shapes, while offering most apartments sweeping views.\nArchitect Bjarke Ingels describes 8 Tallet (a.k.a. 8 House) in Copenhagen, Denmark, as \"a three-dimensional neighborhood.\" The complex, comprising apartments, townhouses, retail space, and offices, wraps its glassy walls and spacious balconies around two shared courtyards. It also incorporates a continuous promenade and cycling track stretching from the ground-floor terraced gardens up to the tenth-floor penthouse level to encourage greater interaction between the tenants. The slanting roofs support heat-reducing plantings of moss and sedum that echo nearby farmland.\nThis yurt-inspired building is the tallest tensile structure in the world, and one of many eye-popping public structures erected in Astana, Kazakhstan. The five-story conical complex designed by Foster + Partners with Linea Tusavul Architecture and Gultekin Architecture shelters a dizzying array of venues, including a water park. However, the most innovative aspects address a climate that can go from -31\u00B0F in winter to 100\u00B0F in summer. The skin of the building is composed of three layers of ethylene tetrafluoroethylene, a polymer film that, combined with sophisticated temperature controls, helps resist icing and reduce heat levels.\nThe International Commerce Centre by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates with Wong &amp;amp; Ouyang (HK) Ltd. is Hong Kong's tallest building and home to the new Ritz-Carlton, which occupies floors 102 through 118, making it the world's highest hotel. The structure is a shimmering tapered wedge of glass that tops out at close to 1,600 feet high. On three sides of the building are flared sections that fold out like petals and serve as protective canopies; the fourth side of the building features an atrium that leads to Kowloon Station. The sustainability program includes the recycling of condensed water produced by the air-conditioning system.\nWhen billionaire Carlos Slim Hel\u00FA began planning the Mexico City museum\u2014named for his late wife and to house the couple's more than 60,000 works of art, including the world's largest private collection of Rodin sculptures\u2014he looked to his architect son-in-law Fernando Romero for the design. Romero, who opened a New York City office last year, created an anvil-shaped, six-level building set on a concrete pedestal like an objet d'art; the concave curves are tiled with hexagonal panels of silvery aluminum.\nDesigned by Jeanne Gang of Studio Gang Architects, with Loewenberg Architects, the 82-floor Aqua residential tower in Chicago is distinguished by irregular terraces that ripple and swell around its rectangular core. The inspiration, the architect has explained, is the limestone outcroppings of the Great Lakes region. Geologic reinterpretations aside, the extrusions also provide welcome (and energy-reducing) shade on sunny days.\nA headquarters for consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, this Foster + Partners project on the rejuvenated south bank of London's River Thames combines Foster's classic use of steel and glass with environmentally conscious attributes, among them terrace gardens, a green roof, solar hot water panels, and a heating system that uses recycled cooking oil. Zigzag sections of glass give the ten-story building a sparkling appearance, and the river fa\u00E7ade overlooking London Bridge is equipped with projecting metal louvers that ingeniously reflect and direct available sunlight. Inside is a dramatic polygonal plaza ringed with walks, balconies, and escalators and illuminated by circular skylights.\nCreated by Morphosis Architects and banked with lush gardens by landscape-design firm SWA Group, this corporate village for Giant Interactive Group's online-games division sprawls across a nearly eight-acre site alongside a man-made lake in Shanghai, China. The structure incorporates offices as well as a hotel, where the bedroom floors are made of glass and cantilevered over a purpose-built pond. Dark steel sections burst out of and meld with gently rolling grass hills that are actually green roofs sheltering everything from a pool to fitness spaces. That nature-meets-architecture-meets-energy concept pervades the entire project, whose multifaceted character Morphosis founder Thom Mayne describes as reflecting \"the messiness, the ad hoc\u2013ness that we love in cities.\"\nThe 10,500 panels of stainless steel that ripple and twist across the upper stories of this 76-floor apartment building in downtown Manhattan\u2014starchitect Frank Gehry's first skyscraper\u2014give it a magically animated appearance, as if a tower of water is being disturbed by gentle breezes. (The base, on the other hand, is made of tawny brick.) It's an aesthetic conceit that seems tailor-made for its location, just blocks from the East River and overlooking the Brooklyn waterfront."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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