Hotel Camino Real Ixtapa

Mr Legorreta's own words about the project: "Cancún is more water than land. The Hotel Camino Real site was originally 70 percent water. It had been filled during the urbanization process. I wanted to return the site to its original status, so we built the guest room block on solid rock and the public areas on piles, and then excavated what was originally the lagoon. The difference in tide levels provides the necessary water circulation to keep the new lagoon clean. Public areas stretch from the entrance past the lobby bar and pool bar, restaurants, lagoon-side terraces, and finally across a causeway to the pavilion of private rooms. The blocks of rooms—one vertical, the other overlook either the sea beyond or the placid lagoon area. All rooms are approached through a lushly planted sheltered space created by the juxtaposed blocks of rooms."

Colossus of Rhodes

One of the seven ancient wonders of the world. A colossus is a statue larger than life. The most famous colossus of antiquity was the Colossus of Rhodes, erected between 292 and 280 BC. It was a bronze statue of the sun god Apollo, cast by Chares of Lindos. No one knows exactly what it looked like; but the common view – that its legs straddled the entrance to the harbor, so that ships passed beneath it – is an invention of the Middle Ages. About 56 years after it was put up the Colossus was overthrown by an earthquake. Pliny, more than 300 years later, described its finger as larger than a status of ordinary size. It disappeared in AD 672 when a traveler from Emesa bought the fragments, loaded them on to 900 camels, and carted them away. It is believed that the architect, Chares of Lindos, did not live to see his project finished. There are several legends that he committed suicide. In one tale he has almost finished the statue when someone points out a small flaw in the construction. The sculptor is so ashamed of it he kills himself. In another version the city fathers decide to double the height of the statue. Chares only doubles his fee, forgetting that doubling the height will mean an eightfold increase in the amount of materials needed. This drives him into bankruptcy and suicide.

Hearst Tower

Hearst Tower revives a dream from the 1920s, when publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst envisaged Columbus Circle as a new media quarter in Manhattan. Hearst commissioned a six-storey Art Deco block on Eighth Avenue, anticipating that it would eventually form the base for a tower, though no such scheme was ever advanced. Echoing an approach developed in the Reichstag and the Great Court at the British Museum, the challenge in designing such a tower at seventy years remove was to establish a creative dialogue between old and new. The new tower rises above the old building to a height of forty-four-storeys, linked on the outside by a skirt of glazing that encourages an impression of the tower floating weightlessly above the base. At the base of the tower, the main spatial event is a lobby that occupies the entire floor plate of the old building and rises up through six floors Like a bustling town square, this dramatic space provides access to all parts of the building. It incorporates the main elevator lobby, the Hearst staff cafeteria and auditorium, and mezzanine levels for meetings and special functions. Structurally, the tower has a triangulated 'diagrid' form - a highly efficient solution that uses 20 per cent less steel than a conventionally framed structure. With the corners cut back between the diagonals, it creates a distinctive facetted silhouette on the Manhattan skyline. The building is also significant in environmental terms. It was built using 85 per cent recycled steel, its heating and air-conditioning equipment utilises outside air for cooling and ventilation for nine months of the year, and it consumes 25 per cent less energy than an equivalent office building that complies minimally with the respective state and city codes. As a result, it was the first office building in Manhattan to achieve a gold rating under the US Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) programme. As a company, Hearst places a high value on the quality of the working environment - something it believes will become increasingly important to its staff in the future - and it is hoped that Hearst's experience may herald the construction of more environmentally sensitive buildings in the city.