Novartis Headquarters – Basel, Switzerland

Daniel Vasella, chairman of Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis, remade an obsolete manufacturing complex into a showcase of contemporary architecture and art, including an office building by SANAA that’s so minimalist it seems to consist only of white planes of floor and sheer walls of glass. The centerpiece is a lyrical composition by Frank Gehry that piles tilting curved forms on top of each other.

Beekman Tower – New York, U.S.

Of celebrity-architect-designed skyscrapers slated for Manhattan, only the Beekman Tower, by Frank Gehry, survived the meltdown. Topped off last year in shining crumpled metal, it almost lost half its 76 stories as its developer, Forest City Ratner, struggled to keep its massive Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn afloat.

CCTV – Beijing, China

Built to coincide with the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the sinister donut designed by Dutch architecture firm OMA was started in September 2004 and was supposed to be completed by the end of last year. OMA now says it doesn’t know when the building will open. Its intimidating form increasingly reflects the state television network’s function as China clamps down harder on dissent. One part of the complex, including the Mandarin Oriental hotel, burned down early in 2009. Ole Scheeren, lead architect on the project, is adamant that reconstruction will take place.

Rolex Learning Center – Lausanne, Switzerland

If Salvadori Dali had designed a Swiss student center, it would probably have looked something like this undulating, drooping building/landscape in sheer curving sheets of glass and pristine white surfaces that opened in February. SANAA, its Japanese architect, designed the 289,000-square-foot high-tech art library and a host of other resources for students and faculty at the Swiss Institute of Technology to frame a variety of views of nearby Lake Geneva. The traffic-stopper cost some 110 million Swiss francs (about $102 million). A journalist for the British Observer wrote at the opening, “if you could live inside an iPad, it would look something like this.”

The Shard – London, England

Construction began last year on The Shard, London’s only skyscraper to hit the 1,000-foot-tall mark. Proposed almost 20 years ago, it’s something of a miracle that this ambitious mix of offices, hotel, and apartments is rising at all, given the numerous political and economic obstacles to building in London’s historic center. Numerous design revisions by architect Renzo Piano have cost this 87-story pyramid of overlapping glass planes a considerable degree of elegance. Get used to it. Rising from London Bridge, a rail station on the south bank of Thames River, it may dominate the skyline for decades.

Elbphilharmonie – Hamburg, Germany

The new home for the NDR Symphony has turned out to be an ironically extravagant icon for Hafencity, a $10 billion rebuilt port district designed to resist global-warming floods. The undulating tiers of seats in the concert hall, by Swiss duo Herzog and de Meuron, nestle within a brooding 1960s warehouse topped by a swooping glass tent. The cost of the project (which includes a luxe hotel and apartments) has spiraled from $313 million in 2007 to a yet-to-be-determined point north of $500 million. The opening has been delayed two years, to 2012.

Marina Bay Sands – Singapore

Marina Bay Sands – Singapore: Singapore isn’t necessarily synonymous with Vegas. The city state is more sterile than high stakes. Nonetheless, the Las Vegas Sands Corp. is set to fling open the doors to an ambitious, $5.5 billion casino/convention complex later this year. Sands CEO Sheldon Adelson describes the jaw-dropping design, by Moshe Safdie, as “a catalyst for the economic future of Singapore,” not to mention the hoped-for salvation of his struggling company. Three 50-story hotel towers are linked by a two acre Sky Park.