The future of food is already here. Everyone's favorite bit of technological wizardry, the 3-D printer—coveted by architects for models and others for its ability to extrude raw materials into three-dimensional forms—could one day be the standard in personal and commercial-scale food prep.

Zaha Hadid's first tower, completed in September 2011 for container-shipping company CMA CGM, is visible beyond low-rise buildings in Marseilles's Grands-Carmes district.

The dramatic white interior of the University of Helsinki's new main library, by local firm Anttinen Oiva Architects, is striking for its curving travertine-marble staircase, its Finnish furnishings, and the oval-shaped voids the architects carved out of the center of the floor plates.

The iconic gable-roofed tree house got an update last August as part of Dartmoor Arts Week, an arts-education program in Drewsteignton, England.

In the wake of the massive earthquake and tsunami that devastated the eastern coast of Japan two years ago this month, the small town of Rikuzentakata has looked to the ruins for renewal.

This new social-housing complex in Champigny-sur-Marne, outside Paris, is dubbed Urban Collage, but what really is going on here is more of a suburban ménage à trois.

“How many works does an architect need to build to be valid? One,” said Steven Holl recently, referring to the late Lebbeus Woods's only permanent structure, Light Pavilion, which is embedded in (and juts out from) one of five towers that make up Holl's Sliced Porosity Block in Chengdu, China.

Behind engaging architecture there is tension.

Generally, Iraqi-born British architect Zaha Hadid deals in organic forms more amoebic than botanic.