"Great architecture can give us hope,” says the co-founder and CEO of MASS Design Group.

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture will open to the public Saturday, September 24.

Drawing comparisons to an M.C. Escher composition, a pinecone, or even an insect’s exoskeleton, Thomas Heatherwick’s Vessel is a 16-story steel pavilion with 80 viewing platforms, 154 flights of stairs, and almost 2,500 steps.

“People thought New York was finished,” says Architectural Record editor in chief Cathleen McGuigan, thinking back on the days after September 11, 2001. “People didn't understand how a city could go on.” But in the decade that followed, the city and country did carry on, spurred by tragedy into new conversations about politics, security, and architecture.

Rising above a gritty swath of rail lines leading to and from the Porta Garibaldi Station in Milan, an eyecatching urban landmark has made another comeback from a state of disrepair.

Brooklyn-based conceptual artist Jill Magid spent years plotting the perfect proposal—the location, the rock, the words—but what she had in mind was a bit different from most.

More than 800 floating concrete columns will commemorate the dead and compel communities to remember the past.