Finally, Hadid has found the criss-crossing trajectories (and the risk-taking client) to validate her deconstructed, sinuous forms and razor-sharp angles. The result is staggering.

5. Best Government Offices:
Caltrans District 7 Headquarters
Los Angeles
Architect: Thom Mayne / Morphosis

Thom Mayne, last year's winner of the high-prestige Pritzker Prize, has called the $190 million Caltrans offices "a very, very simple piece ofwork, designed and built in three years for absolutely no money."

Yet the result, like much of Mayne's oeuvre, is technically complex and highly evocative of its roots. For example, the 13-story, L-shaped structure sports a kinetic cladding of aluminum and glass that opens or closes based on weather conditions and solar angle. Photovoltaic cells line the south face, generating solar power for the occupants. And an outdoor lobby for public events features Motordom, a four-story work by artist Keith Donnier.

With its exaggerated structural elements and quirky façades, the building's outward image suggests the freeway culture that its owner, the state department of transportation, oversees. The result blends in with its contextin spite of its quirky self.

6. Best Expansion:
High Museum of Art
Atlanta
Architect: Renzo Piano

The magical daylight infusing Renzo Piano's recent worksat his Nasher inDallas, especiallyagain takes center stage at the expanded High Museum, alongside Richard Meier's 1983 attempt. A thousand light scoops face southward like sunflowers, or a platoon of robot soldiers, capturing and diffusing rays among the collection hanging in 17-foot-high upper galleries. The intimate piazza created by the new, bright-white structures comforts and shades visitors, in spite of their harsh aluminum and glass edges. Simple glass bridges span the gallery volumes.

Meier undoubtedly approves of the new quad on the Woodruff Arts Center campus. But while Piano respectfully maintained Meier's original design concept, the original spaces disappoint even more so today, next to the contained brilliance of the $110 million new wings.

7. Best Multi-Purpose Arts Building:
Shaw Center for the Arts
Baton Rouge, La.
Architect: Schwartz/Silver Architects

BatonRouge? That's right: Leaping well into the architectural vanguard, Louisiana's second city hired a lesser-known Yankee designer, paired him with New Orleans' talented home firm, Eskew + Dumez + Ripple, and discovered drama and pure energy.

Housing a museum, two theaters and educational spaces, the light green, banded volume of channel glass reaches up and cantilevers over a historic hotel. The architectural voids are what ignite this slumbering riverside city: Conspicuous openings at its terrace (with a Japanese restaurant), its sculptural plaza and a large slot cut right through the building itself.

8. Best Memorial:
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
Berlin
Architect: Peter Eisenman

Non-architectureat its best: The Holocaust memorial by Eisenman (and, for a short time, Richard Serra) has generated considerable controversy, not so much for its unusual designbasically, an undulating field of 2,711 concreteblocks of varying heightsbut for its lack of literal reference points.

Yet here (as elsewhere), abstraction wins. The solemnity and strength of Eisenman's unadorned, hard-edged gesture is palpable at a distance; other emotions take over as one meanders through the disorienting, scary stelae. While workaday worries like graffiti have plagued the architect since the opening, this memorial is plainly built to lasta good thing, considering it was almost two decades in the making.

9. Best Housing:
Sanchinarro Mirador
Madrid
Architect: MVRDV

It's no surprise that the world's most remarkable housing block is a) a low-income public project; b) located in Spain; and c) by the Dutch trio known as MVRDV. The firm's track record of innovative, category-defying multifamily work is only a few years old, but also quite deep. Using their own research, the designers analyze market and occupant needs and create multiple solutionsthe phrase "mass customization" leaps to mindintegrated into singular structures that express internal plurality.