In five years’ time, when Barcelona’s largest urban regeneration project is complete, the Plaça de les Glòries Catalanes will be a leafy oasis in the middle of a new business and leisure district.

Odile Decq draws from Lyon’s industrial context to project the waterfront’s new identity. From Oslo and Lisbon to Hamburg and Amsterdam, the last 20 years have seen many of Europe’s redundant urban dockyards transformed into architectural zoos, peppered with signature structures by top-tier architects, often with greater regard for novelty than for the particularities of history or place.

Denton Corker Marshall created a forest of columns for the Stonehenge Exhibition and Visitor Centre that respects the ancient monument it serves.

Daylight, augmented by an illuminated dome, bathes a baptismal font as reimagined by John Pawson for the St. Moritz Church (circa 1019) in Germany.

London’s Mayfair district, populated by yacht brokers and art dealers, is a natural home for retailers trading on exclusivity.

Laboratory buildings are often the graveyard of architects' good intentions, as stringent technical requirements leave little room for environmental and aesthetic concerns.

Tucked tight against Switzerland's border with both France and Germany, Basel is a small city that has made room for big business.

Two teams of architects employ very different strategies to reinvigorate a pair of ambitious 1960s apartment projects, one in the north of England and the other in Paris. Bois-le-Pêtre, Paris The $15.4 million overhaul of Bois-le-Pêtre, completed in 2011, is a more explicit manifesto for renovation. Its roots are in a combined response by Lacaton & Vassal and Frédéric Druot to the French government's 2003 demolition plan: 'We were shocked by the idea that nothing could be done except tabula rasa redevelopment,' recalls Anne Lacaton. The two architecture firms embarked on a published research project which concluded that such buildings