Over the last year, developments in sustainability, building materials, and computer-aided design have dramatically changed the field of architecture. Seizing the opportunity for experimentation, a number of architects have created surprising additions to urban and natural landscapes. The ten best buildings of 2007, which range from tiny homes to towering monuments, embrace the latest architectural thinking while offering poetic responses to local and global conditions.

In five new residential projects, architects subverted traditional domestic spaces with unusual materials, contorted forms, and porous boundaries between nature and structure. For Spidernethewood in Nîmes, France, French firm R&Sie(n) created a building that disappears into the natural landscape; an elaborate system of netting delineates rooms and supports vines and shrubs, which ultimately grow to camouflage the house. For their forest Ring House outside of Tokyo, Japanese designers TNA alternated horizontal bands of glass and wood to create floors that appear to float among the trees. Highlighting natural materials, Foreign Office Architects designed bamboo shades for their Carabanchel 16 social-housing project in Madrid, Spain, generating a flexible and interactive facade and ensuring sustainability. In contrast, playful Dutch architects MVRDV made a boldly incongruous statement on the rooftops of Rotterdam with Didden Village, a complex of simplistic houses painted in brilliant, robin's-egg blue. Experimenting with new geometries, Amsterdam-based UNStudio fused twisting rectangular solids to create the smooth, continuous spaces of the VilLA NM in upstate New York.

The year's outstanding institutional and commercial projects surpassed project requirements to offer sensual new public spaces. For the 2007 Serpentine Pavilion in London, artist Olafur Eliasson and Norwegian architect Kjetil Thorsen created an evocative, sculptural building wrapped by a ribbon-like walkway. Mexican architect Michel Rojkind expressed the lip-smacking pleasure of candy with his Nestlé Museum in Mexico — a dynamic, angular red gem. In designs for art institutions, two leading architects turned to the evocative power of light. For his Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, American architect Steven Holl nestled glowing galleries in an undulating sculpture garden, and London-based David Adjaye used a syncopated arrangement of windows to create varied light sources in London's Rivington Place. Finally, Beijing-based offices Studio Pei-Zhu and Urbanus created a dramatic addition to the Beijing Olympic complex. Already open for use, the Digital Beijing information center evokes an enormous, glowing barcode.

Looking ahead, the coming year also promises a stunning crop of architectural monuments, including the much-anticipated projects for the Beijing Olympics. Collaborations between exceptional architects and engineers open in Beijing this summer: Herzog & de Meuron's Olympic Stadium, OMA's CCTV Tower, Steven Holl's Linked Hybrid Complex, PTW's National Swimming Center, and Norman Foster's Beijing Airport. When the games have ended, the world will look to the booming construction in the United Arab Emirates. Besides the underwater Hydropolis hotel and Dubailand in Dubai, the starchitect-packed Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi is marked to be the next architectural destination. With projects such as Jean Nouvel's Classical Museum, Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum, Zaha Hadid's Saadiyat Performing Arts Center, and Tadao Ando's Maritime Museum, the UAE will take the lead in the international competition for architectural prestige.

-BR