In gathering 10 lists of the year's most innovative buildings of the year, BusinessWeek recently found that, in building after building, the same themes emerged: a rethinking of space to improve a building's function, the use of sophisticated composite materials and digital networks, and perhaps most notably, a focus on environmental sustainability.

These design and engineering themes continued as the publication searched the architectural wonders rising in China, Dubai and Italy, as well as wonders of civic engineering and bridge design. From among the 10 lists created, BusinessWeek selected the following "10 most amazing individual projects"…which are tough to dispute.

1. 30 St Mary Axe (aka "The Erotic Gherkin")
London

The distinctive tapering profile of this London skyscraper is the key to its energy efficiency because it creates a pressure differential between inside and outside, driving fresh air into the building.

The diagrid structure allows for floor-to-ceiling windows, ensuring the maximum amount of daylight. A system of atria acts as the building's "lungs," circulating fresh air drawn through the façade's double-skin. Combined, the features reduce the building's energy consumption by half, compared to a typical air-conditioned office tower, raising the bar for sustainable skyscrapers around the world.

2. Harilaos Trikoupis Bridge, or the Rio-Antirio Bridge
Strait of Corinth, Greece

Completing the Harilaos Trikoupis Bridge — what is now the longest cable-stayed bridge in the world — required solving a number of engineering and construction problems, from sea depth to soft foundational soils to what geologists call "high seismicity."

It comprises five spans, the longest of which is 7,390 feet, and is built upon "floating" pier bases that sit on gravel and soil beds reinforced by steel pipes — both structural firsts.

The Harilaos Trikoupis Bridge, named for the Greek prime minister who first proposed the project more than a century ago, won the 2005 Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement award from the American Society of Civil Engineers.

3. Cardinals Stadium
Glendale, Arizona

When Cardinals Stadium is completed next fall, it will be the first sports facility in North America to feature a removable-tray grass field and a retractable roof. The professional-football field rests in a 12-million pound, 234-foot-wide by 400-foot-long steel tray set on rails powered by motors so that it can be moved out of the stadium when it is not in use. The idea is to maintain/tend the field's grass outdoors in the gigantic steel tray, then slide it back inside on game days.

The $355 million, 160-acre stadium's insulated metal skin is composed of panels separated by vertical open-air gaps that allow natural light to enter. The retractable fabric roof will give the 63,000-seat stadium an open-air feel even when it is closed.

4. Toshka Project - Mubarak Pumping Station
Lake Nasser, Egypt

The $70 billion Toshka project is Egypt's effort to transform half a million acres of desert into arable land, creating what it calls a "second Nile Valley." The centerpiece of the project is the Mubarak Pumping Station, which was also recognized as one of the most outstanding civil-engineering achievements of 2005 by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

The station's 24 pumps will enable it to channel 1.2 million cubic meters/hour into the 72-kilometer system of canals that will carry the water to the country's arid regions.

While its throughput is impressive, the Mubarak Pumping Station is admired by engineers for two less obvious feats: the structural system of steel mini-piles, a cost-effective, earthquake-safe alternative to concrete supports; and the jointless design of its underwater portions, which ensures a watertight structure despite a temperature range of 0-50 degrees centigrade that would destroy standard joints.

5. Millau Viaduct
Millau, France

"The Millau Viaduct is a work of both engineering prowess and architectural grace," BusinessWeek notes. Millau is a massive but slender piece of infrastructure: it is the tallest (1,122 feet) and longest (1.6 miles) multi-span cable-stayed bridge in the world.

Thanks to a prefabrication process in which 2,000 sections of the steel roadway were manufactured offsite, lifted into place and aligned with the help of a GPS, its construction took a mere three years. The technique also allowed for the minimum disruption of the surrounding environment — echoing the bridge's overall goal of relieving the river valley of traffic while connecting the highway systems of France and Spain.

6. (New) Wembley Stadium
London

Currently being rebuilt, the new Wembley Stadium will be the largest European football/soccer arena in the world. The signature 98.3-foot high twin towers of the original Wembley, built for the British Empire Exhibition in 1924, are being replaced with a dramatic 436-foot arch that will support 5,000 tons of the 7,000-ton movable roof — a structural solution that eliminates the need for pillars that could obscure visitors' views. With a span of 315 meters, the arch will be the longest single-span roof structure in the world and will be visible from all parts of London.

Built to incorporate the latest digital technology, the stadium includes two giant video screens, each roughly the size of 600 TV sets.

The original structure — already one of the world's most famous football/soccer stadiums — was demolished in 2003.

7. Dongtan Eco City
Dongtan, China

Because ecologically sensitive design is a key element of the master plan, Dongtan Eco City will be the world's first fully sustainable cosmopolis when completed in 2040. About three quarters the size of Manhattan, it is situated on the third-largest island in China.

There are some things that must be done before the Shanghai Expo trade fair opens in 2010, at which time the city's first phase should be completed and 50,000 residents will call Dongtan home-sweet-sustainable-home. Over the next five years, these goals include systems for water purification, waste management and renewable energy. An infrastructure of roads will connect the former agricultural land with bustling Shanghai.

8. Chanel
Tokyo, Japan

For the Chanel boutique in Tokyo's Ginza district, a 10-story building was turned into a giant TV set, covering the edifice with 700,000 embedded, computer-controlled LEDs. The massive display can project footage of fashion show runway scenes or an electronic version of Chanel's iconic black-and-white tweeds on a larger-than-life scale.

Thanks to a combination of 3,675 square feet of canvas scrim and electronically controlled privacy glass, the electronic mural can also transform from transparent to opaque. Neatly hidden within is a complex system of 65,000 microcomputers capable of processing more than 32 trillion commands per second.

9. The Palm Islands
Dubai, United Arab Emirates

The three artificial islands that make up the Palm — comprising the Palm Jumeirah, the Palm Jebel Ali and the Palm Deira — are the world's biggest manmade islands. Each was built from a staggering 1 billion cubic meters of dredged sand and stone, taken from Dubai's seabed and then configured into individual islands and surrounding breakwaters. The entire complex is designed to collectively resemble a date palm tree when seen from the sky.

Designed as part of the plan to develop tourism in Dubai against the eventual depletion of the emirate's oil reserves (which are expected to be depleted in the second decade of the 21st century), the complex's goal is to become one of the biggest areas in the world for tourism as a means of diversifying the economy.

10. Fiera Milano
Milan, Italy

The Fiera Milano complex is Milan's exhibition center and trade fair complex and Europe's largest open construction project. The new fairground (opened in April 2005) incorporates eight exhibition halls, totaling 345,000 square meters of space, in addition to restaurants, bars, offices and an assembly hall. The unique feature of the complex is an undulating glass-and-steel canopy that stretches for 1,300 meters, connecting the myriad buildings and funneling light into the spaces below.

According to BusinessWeek:

The complex spatial geometry of this roof structure forced the engineers to develop an irregular grid system: the volcano-like protuberance near the entrance is formed by a square mesh, the free-formed portion of the canopy is formed by rhombic meshes, and some triangular meshes are used in the areas of double curvature. The engineers put the design through wind-tunnel tests to ensure that it would handle the loads.

The unpredictable curves of the Fiera Milano are reminiscent of the work of Frank Gehry, who's known for working closely with his engineers to realize such complex forms. In the case of the Fiera Milano, architect Massimiliano Fuksas simply delivered his sketch to the engineers at Schlaich Bergermann und Partner, who then set about to build it as it was.

There you have it: the year's "10 most amazing individual projects" in architecture, civic engineering and bridge design, according to BusinessWeek's research and judgment. What do you think? Anything missing, or anything undeserving?

Resource

Wonder of Wonders
by Jessie Scanlon
BusinessWeek, Aug. 24, 2006