Vietnam Veterans MemorialMaya Lin, Washington D.C., USA, 1982

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a national memorial in Washington, D.C. It was designed by American architect Maya Lin. Lin’s conception was to create an opening or a wound in the earth to symbolize the gravity of the loss of the soldiers.

The black cut-stone masonry wall, contains the names of 57,661 fallen soldiers carved into its face,. The wall is granite and V-shaped, with one side pointing to the Lincoln Memorial and the other to the Washington Monument

Ira C. Keller ParkLawrence Halprin, Portland, OR, USA, 1970

Keller Fountain Park is a city park in downtown Portland, Oregon. The central feature of the 0.92 acre park is the concrete water fountain. The fountain was designed by Angela Danadjieva using inspiration from waterfalls in the Columbia River Gorge located east of Portland.

The fountain’s pools hold 75,000 US gallons (280,000 l; 62,000 imp gal) of water, while the waterfalls pump 13,000 US gallons (49,000 l; 11,000 imp gal) per minute over the cascade.

Teardrop ParkMVVA, Battery Park City, NYC, USA, 2006

Teardrop Park is a public park in downtown Manhattan, in Battery Park City, near the site of the World Trade Center. The shadier southern half of the site is an active play area featuring a long slide, two sand pits, “theatre steps” and a water playground.

The northern half of the park is unprogrammed play space featuring a broad lawn, which is graded to catch the most light from the south, park benches, a small wetland play path, and a perched gathering area.

Plug-In CityArchigram, Unbuilt Concept, 1964

Archigram was an avant-garde architectural group formed in the 1960s that was futurist, antiheroic and pro-consumerist, drawing inspiration from technology in order to create a new reality that was solely expressed through hypothetical projects.

Plug-in-City is a mega-structure with no buildings, just a massive framework into which dwellings in the form of cells or standardised components could be slotted.

Crystal Palace

Sir Joseph Paxton, Hyde Park, London, 1851

The Crystal Palace was a cast-iron and plate-glass building originally erected in Hyde Park, London, England, to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. More than 14,000 exhibitors from around the world gathered in the Palace’s 990,000 square feet (92,000 m2) of exhibition space to display examples of the latest technology developed in the Industrial Revolution. Designed by Sir Joseph Paxton, the Great Exhibition building was 1,851 feet long, with an interior height of 128 feet.

Kresge Auditorium

Eero Saarinen, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA, 1955

Kresge Auditorium is an auditorium building for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, located at 48 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was designed by the noted architect Eero Saarinen, with ground-breaking in 1953 and dedication in 1955. The auditorium is defined by an elegant thin-shell structure of reinforced concrete, one-eighth of a sphere rising to a height of 50 feet, and sliced away by sheer glass curtain walls so that it comes to earth on only three points.

Water Temple

Tadao Ando, Awaji, Hyogo, Japan, 1991

The Water Temple is the residence of Ninnaji Shingon, the oldest sect of Tantric Buddhism in Japan, founded in 815. The Water Temple is located in the northern part of the island of Awaji. Navigating the layout of the temple requires the visitor to take a winding route offering a variety of views over the sea and then over the temple. The lotus pool is actually the roof of the temple, which is built partly underground; and a stairway which cuts the oval shape of the pool in two.

Seattle Central Library

OMA/LMN, Seattle, WA, USA, 2004

The Seattle Public Library’s Central Library is an11-story glass and steel building in downtown Seattle, Washington. The architects conceived the new Central Library building as a celebration of books, and worked to make the library inviting to the public. The architects’ philosophy was to let the building’s required functions dictate what it should look like, rather than imposing a structure and making the functions conform to the structure’s dimensions.