A good building provides shelter, storage, housing. But a great building? Well, there's no limit to what it can do. This year's class of wondrous structures are responsible, variously, for transforming a neighborhood (just look at the New Museum, which towers over its gritty corner of Lower Manhattan like some fabulous spacecraft), revitalizing a landmark (see the exuberantly beveled extension to Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum), and breaking all limits of what a building can be (for proof, see Dubai's still-in-progress Burj Dubai, which, once completed, will be the world's tallest tower, with 160-plus stories). Collectively, they're proof not only of the golden age of architectural ingenuity in which we currently find ourselves but also of our desire to be dazzled, to be made to look again at a place we thought we knew.

NORDBORG, DENMARK
Cumulus Building
Danfoss Universe

Is it a meteorite? A cell? A molecule? "There are many possibilities to see in the buildings-that's exactly the project's intention," says Berlin-based architect Jürgen Mayer H. of his design for the Cumulus Building, an exhibit hall and one of his additions to Danfoss Universe, a science and technology museum near the southern Denmark headquarters of its namesake thermal engineering conglomerate (the other addition is a similarly alien-looking cafeteria). The challenge, he says, was to respect the wide-open space of the site. "I saw the buildings not as buildings but as landscape formations between ground and sky," says Mayer, who used colored steel to evoke the local soil, and a tar-sheet roof similar to those on nearby houses. "We were seeking a new silhouette that is unique, specific, and memorable." Inside the hall's gallery and auditorium, amorphous windows offer views of the surrounding countryside, while the structure's scooped-out sides function as outdoor display areas, hinting at the discoveries that lie within (1 Mads Patent Vej; 45-74-88-95-00; danfossuniverse.com).

DUBAI
Burj Dubai

The latest in Dubai's bid to turn itself from moderately oil-blessed emirate into the world's favorite playground, the Burj Dubai is primed to break all kinds of records when it opens later this year. Set to be the centerpiece in a mammoth development that will include 30,000 residences, nine residential towers, a mall, and a man-made lake,Chicago-based architect Adrian Smith's skyscraper will be the tallest structure on earth at 2,111 feet and 160-plus stories, or about as tall as one-and-a-half Sears Towers. (Its completion will mark the first time the Middle East has been able to claim tallest-building rights since the early fourteenth century, when England's Lincoln Cathedral surpassed Egypt's Great Pyramid—a point of pride for local backers.) The design plays with traditional Islamic motifs. "I drew inspiration from patterns prominent within the region, including onion domes and pointed arches," Smith says. "The Burj's geometric shape recalls the forms of flower petals, references Islamic dome structures, and maximizes views from the tower." Zooming visitors to the rooftop observation deck will be other record breakers: the world's fastest elevators, going up and down at about 40 miles an hour (971-4-366-1688; burjdubai.com).

LONDON
Wembley Stadium

Londoners have long revered Wembley Stadium, located in the northwestern part of the city, not only for its role in sports history (it was here, after all, that England celebrated its 1966 World Cup triumph) but also for the proximity of its seats to the action-not to mention the "Wembley roar," the deafening clamor of the crowd that the space's special acoustics created. In designing Wembley 2.0, Pritzker Prize-winning architect (and native son) Sir Norman Foster went the bigger-and-better route, increasing seating capacity by ten percent to 90,000. About a fifth of the seats in the old stadium had obstructed sight lines, but in Foster's rendering, there are no supporting pillars to get in the way, thanks to the design's signature element: a massive 436-foot-tall, 1,000-foot-long single arch that braces the retractable roof. The stadium will be the icon for the 2012 Olympic Games, which will be hosted in London, but it has already changed the city's skyline as dramatically as did two of the architect's other projects-the bullet-shaped "Gherkin" building and the epic Millennium Bridge--when they were unveiled. Foster, too, is pleased. "When friends fly into the city, or come across the stadium when they are driving in northwest London, they think it's unbelievable," he has said. Let the screams begin (44-171-0844-980-8001; wembleystadium.com).