In so many years of working as an architect, you realize you can learn a lot about the world based on what you get asked to build. So, it means a lot that, in recent years, we keep hearing variations on this question: how do you crown a city with a monument for the ages? How do you design an icon? This question betrays the shallowest instincts of our image-obsessed era, but it doesn’t need to go to waste. In a world oversaturated with urban clickbait, the projects that will actually stand out are those that rise to our era’s greatest challenges – starting from climate change.