This book presents a survey of K-12 Schools from around the world that combine the best in aesthetics, sustainability and high performance design. K-12 school construction currently represents one of the largest sectors of new construction of any building type. Considering rising energy costs and concerns for the environment, there has never been more attention focused on the need to design schools responsibly. The book highlights the work that the best architects are doing to respond to those needs while still creating beautiful schools for enhanced learning.

The small emirates and states located on the Gulf, at the eastern edge of the Saudi Arabian peninsula, are building new cities in the desert at an astonishing rate, from Bahrain to Doha, and south to the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Comprised of Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah, and Umm al-Quwain, the UAE is an oil-and-gas-rich region that has experienced an unparalleled architectural boom in recent years. With a dizzying array of ultra-modern towers popping up throughout the area, it's no surprise that the Gulf region has attracted many of the world's most prominent architects, including Tadao Ando, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, and Jean Nouvel, who are all designing groundbreaking projects for the ambitious Cultural District project on Saadiyat Island off the coast of Abu Dhabi. With these and many more remarkable, large-scale projects recently built or in progress, the Gulf emirates are perhaps today's top architectural hotspot.

It might surprise some to hear that Spain has a vibrant culture of contemporary architecture. Delayed by the Spanish Civil War and the ensuing dictatorship under Franco, the emergence of modernity in Spain may have been late in coming, but today’s young architects are making up for lost time in a spectacular way. Original personalities like César Manrique Cabrera marked a move toward the modern in the 1960s, while Richard Bofill’s innovative work in the ’70s helped bring Spanish architecture to the world stage. In the 1990s, architects such as Rafael Moneo and Santiago Calatrava began to create the look of contemporary architecture in Spain as we know it today. From a modern interpretation of a bullring to cutting-edge green architecture, the book covers a dizzying variety of architectural innovation.

本书收录了位于美国波士顿的Office dA建筑设计事务所设计的作品，主要包括艺术、文化项目、住宅项目、制造中的设计、装置与家具项目等。