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"View Slideshow\n\nWorld-class 21st-century architecture has made only a gradual impression on London's skyline. A few dramatic projects have emerged in the past dozen years\u2014notably the Swiss firm Herzog &amp;amp; de Meuron's Tate Modern conversion and Norman Foster's 30 St. Mary Axe (otherwise known as the Gherkin)\u2014but the structures drawing the most visitors to England's capital remain the venerable ones: Buckingham Palace, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's Cathedral.\n\nThis season, though, something is different. As millions begin to converge for the Olympic Games, held in a purpose-built park in East London, they can't help but notice how this great mercantile city is changing. \"It's a terrific time to be here,\" says Tom Dixon, one of the many internationally celebrated designers who call London home. \"There's so much fusion, and it's amazingly creative. This year\u2014maybe it's to do with the Olympics\u2014it feels like it's all coming together.\"\n\nUndoubtedly the Olympic venues have given architects statement-making opportunities, but there's plenty more to see on a tour of the area's buzziest new buildings (with whistle-stops at major design exhibitions along the way). Start in the City of London, where New Court, Rothschild investment bank's handsome headquarters, was recently completed by OMA, the innovative firm fronted by Rem Koolhaas. OMA is responsible for some of the world's most spectacular and unexpected designs, like the Casa da M\u00FAsica in Porto, Portugal, and the central CCTV offices in Beijing, and yet the firm is also fascinated with the idea of architecture that, if not anonymous, is as discreet as a gentleman's suit. The steel-and-glass New Court is a perfect example: a soaring 14-floor edifice that nevertheless resides naturally on its compact site, cheek by jowl with St. Stephen Walbrook, a 17th-century church by Sir Christopher Wren.\n\nAnother structure sure to grab your attention while you're in the City is a glass-clad obelisk shooting up from the London Bridge rail station. Designed by Genoese architect Renzo Piano and due to top out next month, the Shard is, at 1,017 feet, now the tallest building in Western Europe. Truly unmissable in the way it tapers to a jagged glass crown, the Shard, some argue, is out of scale with the rest of the city. \"I hope London comes to love it,\" says Piano, acknowledging the controversy that has met his monumental design, soon to be filled with restaurants, residences, and a five-star Shangri-La hotel. \"It's many things, but a symbol, I think, of the energy of London, of its commercial and creative heart.\"\n\nNot far from the Shard are the impressive Tate Modern Tanks. These three adjacent underground industrial chambers\u2014each measuring 100 feet across and some 20 feet high\u2014were devised by Herzog &amp;amp; de Meuron to host exhibitions and live events. They serve as the first phase of the firm's expansion of the popular museum; an above-ground structure is due in 2016.\n\nThe Tanks officially open in July, so springtime travelers should head for the Barbican Art Gallery,where \"Bauhaus: Art as Life\" (May 3\u2013August 12) represents the largest London exhibition on the subject in 40 years. With more than 400 works\u2014including architectural models, objects, textiles, painting, sculpture, and film\u2014the comprehensive show should please the myriad fans of the renowned German art-and-design school.\n\nOf course, the international venue to make time for is the Olympic Park in East London, where Zaha Hadid's swooping Aquatics Centre and Hopkins Architects' Velodrome\u2014the indoor cycling track with a Pringle-shaped roof\u2014are the must-see attractions. The Velodrome's form is as taut, lean, and dynamic as the latest racing cycles that spin around its cambered track, while the exuberant Aquatics Centre (\"it's about energy, London's energy,\" says Hadid of her celebrated stadium) has the guise of a stylized wave. Daily walking tours of the park are on offer this spring, before the hubbub of the Games begins.\n\nPlenty is afoot in West London, too. Most significant is the news that Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has once again paired with Herzog &amp;amp; de Meuron (his partner on Beijing's Bird's Nest stadium), this time to design the 2012 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in Kensington Gardens, opening in June. The gallery's summertime series of temporary structures is always an architectural treat, and this collaboration promises to be the most enigmatic in years, with plans calling for an excavated chamber topped by a steel roof. No drawings have been released, but given the team the results are sure to be compelling. The main gallery will host a major Yoko Ono show (June 21\u2013September 9), and a short distance away Hadid's next London project is taking shape: the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, a conversion of an early-19th-century Greek Revival army building, which will feature a lilting new caf\u00E9-and-restaurant wing (construction is due to finish by the end of the year).\n\nFinally, from the Serpentine, take a stroll along the rebuilt Exhibition Road\u2014pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists now share the same curb-free boulevard\u2014to a couple of first-rate exhibitions at the Victoria &amp;amp; Albert Museum: \"British Design 1948\u20132012: Innovation in the Modern Age\" (March 31\u2013August 12) and \"Heatherwick Studio: Designing the Extraordinary\" (May 31\u2013September 30). The former brings together more than 300 objects, from telephones to tea sets, that capture the conflicting aesthetic currents of Britain's past six decades; the latter chronicles the innovative work of one of the city's favorite up-and-coming talents, Thomas Heatherwick. The tension between the pull of tradition and the lure of the future is the theme of both shows\u2014and one that, for visitors this spring, is writ large across England's vibrant, changing capital.\n\nClick here to see a selection of noteworthy exhibitions and architectural projects in London."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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