An undulating grassy plain, a glowing amber lantern, a skyscraping square doughnut. Some of this year's most remarkable edifices blend organically with the landscape; others announce their existence like flares shot ecstatically into the night sky. But all six have this in common: They are sui generis—as original as they are arresting. Renzo Piano took the challenge of building green to its logical yet superbly creative conclusion with the California Academy of Sciences, in San Francisco. So radical was Rem Koolhaas's design for Beijing's CCTV Headquarters that it required the government to rewrite the city's planning laws. In Doha, Qatar, I. M. Pei borrowed from Egyptian mosques, Tunisian fortresses, and Spain's Alhambra for his Islamic Museum of Art, but made of them something unique. Each of these instant classics is an eloquent expression of the place in which it resides—and the perfect starting point from which to explore.

UNITED STATES
California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco
Made of recycled steel and concrete, Renzo Piano's glass-walled pavilion is perhaps the greenest museum ever constructed and has views of the surrounding parkland—including Herzog and de Meuron's copper-skinned De Young Museum. Inside, Piano has assembled a glass-domed rain forest, a 290-seat planetarium enclosed in a giant eggshell, and a saltwater aquarium. "We've tried to create a building that balances the world of the scientist and the visitor—of science and nature, of technology and wildlife—all under one roof," Piano has said. And what a roof: A two-and-a-half-acre expanse of seven hillocks, it insulates the building interior, while Californian plants attract insects and birds, creating a mini-ecosystem (415-379-8000; calacademy.org).

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FRANCE
Zenith Concert Hall, Strasbourg
Once upon a time, cathedrals were the apogee of European architecture and design. Today, concerts and sporting events trump religious services in popularity, and sixteen French cities have responded by building high-design Zenith Concert Halls, partly funded by the country's Ministry of Culture. While tourists of more traditional tastes still walk Strasbourg's cobbled streets, which are lined with Gothic churches and half-timbered houses, modern architecture adherents are hitting the latest Zenith project, Rome-based architects Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas's twelve-thousand-seat concert hall. The venue's concrete base is topped with concentric steel rings wrapped in a membrane of amber fiberglass and silicone. "The building is like a tent," says Massimiliano Fuksas. "At night, it lights up like a lantern and reveals the supporting structure of the facade, while images or video of what's going on inside are projected on the surface like on a huge billboard" (33-3-88-10-50-50; zenith-strasbourg.fr).

CHINA
CCTV Headquarters, Beijing
When Beijing had a building spree in advance of last year's Olympics, the Bird's Nest Stadium and Water Cube aquatic center snagged all the airtime. The capital's most recent revolutionary work, though, is just about to open and has already made headlines—the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, behind the main structure, went up in flames in February. Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas's OMA firm has taken the soaring skyscraper form and turned it on its head—and its side—to create a twisting, blocky doughnut. Home to China's state television network, the structure is a loop of diagonal steel webbing. It's unclear how open this office space, the world's second-largest (after the Pentagon), will be. Officials have discussed restricting the plaza to employees and eliminating public access to the approach roads. And it has its critics, who bemoan the destruction of residences on the forty-nine-acre site and decry the design as hostile to traditional Chinese aesthetics. For the CCTV Headquarters to become a reality, the power of an authoritarian state was required: The plans violated Beijing building codes, so a panel was convened to inspect and approve the radical design. "I cannot imagine it going up anywhere else," says Ole Scheeren, OMA's leader on the project (86-10-62103210; cctv.com).