Clare Jacobson

Adapting to a changing program, an inventive project in Seoul mixes micro and small apartments with arts-focused functions. Although they used repetitive units and simple construction in their Songpa Micro Housing in Seoul, Jinhee Park and John Hong of Single Speed Design (SsD) brought variety and style to the 5,500-square-foot project by animating the spaces in between and around the tiny apartments.

A coal-conveying platform from the 1950s and a parking garage from the first decade of the 21st century act as unlikely form-givers to Atelier Deshaus’s new Long Museum West Bund in Shanghai.

A view from the Huangpu River toward construction of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s White Magnolia Plaza in the North Bund.

Diplomatic Position: In the midst of the visual hubbub of China's third-largest city, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill creates an understated ensemble of buildings for the U.S. Consulate General. The U.S. Consulate General in Guangzhou, China, makes only the quietest of claims within the city's noisy new business district. Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), its seven low-rise buildings—offices, screening facilities, a warehouse, and a residence for Marines—dot a 7.4-acre site in the burgeoning Pearl River New Town. Zaha Hadid's opera house lies catercorner to it, and Wilkinson Eyre's supertall IFC Guangzhou and KPF's soon-to-be-supertaller CTF Guangzhou are close by.