Tracy Metz

A design team digs down to artfully connect a historic museum to a building across the way. In the hands of Dutch architect Hans van Heeswijk, the Mauritshuis, a 17th-century mansion in The Hague that later became the Netherlands' first museum, has undergone an impressive expansion.

In a gravity-defying act of daredevil modernism, a villa in the Dutch province of Zeeland seemingly floats above the surroundings it was named after—the former 60-acre Kogelhof farm.

A young Dutch firm turns a difficult building from the 1980s into a home for a surprising group of residents: ex-convicts.

In the picturesque Austrian village of Erl, just east of the German border, where the rugged Alps seem to descend from the heavens to meet the undulating valley below, a striking, angular structure, the Tyrolean Festspielhaus, or Festival Hall, pierces the landscape that inspired it.

It can be done: a wheelchair-friendly environment that in no way resembles the typical one.