Craig Dykers, a founding partner of Snøhetta, likes to joke that his architecture firm and the Canadian practice DIALOG won the 2013 competition for the new $183 million Central Library in Calgary, Alberta, by “cheating.” Well, not cheating, exactly, but by bending the rules. Rather than take the designated site as a given, they stretched it slightly to include a piece of land that was not part of the original brief, so that it met a major east–west thoroughfare. With this extended parcel, the architects devised a long volume with a projecting prow at its northern end and a series of interior vantage points ideal for observing the activity of the city below. Since the 240,000-square-foot building opened in November, in the long-blighted but now rapidly developing East Village neighborhood adjacent to downtown, patrons can watch trains leave from a nearby light-rail station and disappear under the building. “It’s about creating connections to the street,” explains Dykers.