Richärd + Bauer, a young Phoenix-based firm, has demonstrated numerous times in its 11-year history that it can still advance architectural quality in inexpensive institutional buildings.

The client, a New York–based developer with a young family, had a clear goal: a weekend house “as exciting as anything by Neutra and Schindler.”

The more successful buildings by Rafael Viñoly, FAIA, display distinct athletic gestures—from the smoothly arcing roof of the 1994 Lehman College Physical Education Facility in New York to the exuberant, glass-barrel-vaulted roof of the Kimmel Center for Performing Arts in Philadelphia.

The downtown boutique aesthetic that emerged in New York City’s SoHo loft district in the late 1970s caught on––and stuck around––largely because it showed off arty clothes to striking effect.

If you go by newspapers and monthly consumer magazines, you might think there is only one female architect designing significant buildings today—Zaha Hadid. To be sure, the London-based, Iraqi-born architect deserves acclaim for her inventive assortment of zoomy structures completed in the last few years. But what about the rest? Aren’t there other talented women architects out there, who, like Hadid, run their own design practices?