The TUIN (garden) building

Rotterdam designer Reinier de Jong says that housing in big city centres seems to consist of small apartments. Highrise equals apartments. Or so it seems. However many cities economically really need well-to-do middle class dwellers. They flee to suburbia as soon as salaries go up and kids arrive. So we will diminish the suburban sprawl that is swallowing up our precious land.
The project TUIN (garden) combines high-rise with a typical suburban housing typology: a two storey dwelling with garden. A height of seven metres and a depth of one metre of soil guarantees a true garden. Enough for sunlight, rain and wind to enter and nourish trees, shrubs, flowers and grass.

Nicolas G. Hayek Center

With so much new, high-profile construction going on in Tokyo, it takes a special building to stand out as truly exceptional.
The Nicolas G. Hayek Center, the new headquarters for Swatch Group Japan (designed by Shigeru Ban) is just such a building. Located in the posh Ginza district and named after the company's founder, the building focuses on Swatch's luxury labels — Breguet, Blancpain, Glashütte Original, Jaquet Droz, Léon Hatot, Omega (plus a Swatch presence for the masses) — each with its own retail space.
Each shop has a hydraulic glass elevator that lifts you directly to the shop's entrance and doubles as a showroom, offering a glimpse of what to expect when it stops and you step out.
Add to that a wide-open exterior lobby and beautiful wall-mounted garden — environmentalism is a signature of Ban's work — and you end up with a shopping center that's truly ahead of the times.

via Times