For this issue, which coincides with RECORD’s annual Innovation Conference, we included a little bit of everything—a museum, an airport, an aquarium, a housing project, a house, an office building, a collection of schools, and a pair of performance spaces. Needless to say, designing for such a rich variety of building types presents architects with countless challenges but also invites opportunity for inventive solutions, in many cases awe-inspiring ones.

Yet, so often these days, the completed building is met with a certain skepticism rather than congratulations, from both within the profession and those outside of it. Was the building necessary, socially and economically? What is its carbon footprint? Is it accessible? Does it equitably serve its users and the public? Is the architect still a person admired as a role model? In questioning the worth of a building, at times we lose an appreciation of architecture itself.