Outsiders say that architects spend too much energy giving each other prizes, but when Glenn Murcutt won the Pritzker Architecture Prize this year, you could almost hear the cheers.

If you didn’t know better, to talk to some architects you might think that idealism had vanished from the architectural scene.

Passions and confusion hover over the former World Trade Center site like lingering smoke.

Think of where you feel most secure. Lying fully prone on a warm beach or snuggled in your own bed?

In the 20th century, urban observers like Jane Jacobs praised the interactive sensory and social experiences that lie on any good block in Greenwich Village or Back Bay Boston.

When Sam Mockbee died, somewhere down South a tree fell—big as an oak, a 57-year marvel in its own place, it drew sustenance from generations of loam and deep water, weathered storms and bent and grew broad, threw off shade and color for all that came and sat beneath it, sheltered all comers, an elemental force that rained out new growth, and, on December 30, returned to its own soil.

Nicholas Grimshaw’s Eden Project in Cornwall, England, featured on this month’s cover, both startles and instructs.