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Altos de Cazuc', a neighborhood just outside of Bogot', developed organically in the 1970s as peasants fled rural areas plagued by the ongoing armed conflict.

Photo © Alexander Severin/Razummedia 'We maximized the use of cost-neutral elements'light, form, color, and proportion'to make every dollar count,' says WASA/Studio A senior partner Jack Esterson about the 30,000-square-foot facility for men struggling with substance abuse. On the first two floors, which house support services such as counseling, vocational training, and medical care, a frosted-glass facade lets in daylight but preserves privacy. The top three floors of bedrooms establish a hierarchy of progression for clients'if they stick to the treatment, they move from shared rooms on lower floors to private rooms on upper floors with better views. Residents maintain a

Image courtesy Michael Maltzan Architecture Michael Maltzan Architecture's third project for the Skid Row Housing Trust will connect to its urban context in a variety of ways. For example, the now-under-construction 95,000-square-foot building will incorporate an existing one-story structure slated to house shops and support services for both residents and the larger community. Above this podium, prefabricated apartments will be stacked to define recreational spaces and courtyards, making it the first modularly constructed, multiunit residential building in Los Angeles. ARCHITECT: Michael Maltzan Architecture BUDGET: $19.3 million CONTEXT: When completed in 2013, Star will add 102 apartments to the approximately 1,300

A 'windcatcher' is a centuries-old Persian technology featuring a tower that takes advantage of natural ventilation by capturing and cooling air. Hank Louis, founder of DesignBuildBLUFF, the University of Utah/University of Colorado, Denver design-build studio, recognized the merits of this simple solution for a recently completed Navajo family home. The house features a tower made of compressed earth bricks with four openings around the top. As the wind blows through the slits, wet blankets (moistened by a drip line) chill the air that then circulates around the home. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) helped the students engineer the tower,

Image courtesy BNIM The twister that pummeled Tuscaloosa on April 27, 2011, killed more than 50 people and left a trail of destruction a mile wide and more than five miles long. The city's plan for rebuilding calls for neighborhoodscaled commercial centers, improvements to several city parks, and the construction of new municipal facilities like police and fire stations. The scheme also includes a recreation trail that doubles as storm-water-management infrastructure. This greenway dubbed the 'Citywalk,' follows the scar left by the tornado, preserving it as a 'path of remembrance and recovery,' explains Stephen Hardy, BNIM associate principal. ARCHITECT: BNIM

In the early 1920s, Adolph and Elisabeth Winters, recent German 'migr's, hired a little-known San Francisco architect, Albert W. Cornelius, to design a center for ballroom dancing, concerts, and the occasional boxing match, in downtown Richmond, California. The Beaux-Arts structure became known as the Winters Building and, over the years, housed retail space and a bank. But by 1973, when the East Bay Center for the Performing Arts took up residence in part of the building, much of it had fallen into disrepair: Its roofs leaked, its ceilings were low, and the first level's stalwart concrete face gave it the

Photo © David Wakely A city-commissioned, 25,000-square-foot community sports center aiming for LEED Silver (top) takes its stylistic cues from a nearby shipping company's unadorned HQ. Sustainable materials and features (solar-thermal panels, rainwater-collecting bioswales, a solar-heat-gain-reducing brise soleil) prove green can be fun while providing a haven for kids and the elderly. ARCHITECT: ELS Architecture and Urban Design BUDGET: $20 million CONTEXT: In a neighborhood notorious for drug- and gang-related activity, the building allows respite and recreation on a site once proposed for a sports center for San Francisco's unsuccessful 2012 Olympics bid. People Client: City of Oakland Architect: ELS

After a deadly tornado tore through Joplin, Missouri last year on May 22, leveling the town’s high school, district officials pledged to be ready for the regularly scheduled start of the academic year—less than three months away.