Aaron McDonald Architect, One Union Square 903, New York, New York 10003

Its failure is not without interesting lessons. The building's formal language -- its proportions, its grid, its contrast of materials and finishes -- are on one hand dominating, and on the other hand compromised in countless instances by expedient placements of its functional appurtenances, smoke detectors, fire doors... It is an object lesson in a project dominated by one individual, yet at the same time wildly out of that individual's control.

Its brief six years have not been kind to it either -- exterior stair rails are streaked with rust, panels are discolored on their drip lines, careful patterns of stone reveals have been jostled and dislocated. You might not mind this in a gas station, but I would have expected somewhere in the $1 billion construction budget would have been room for proper primer for the exterior metals, for instance.

I cannot think of another building so beautiful, so perfectly sited, yet where as it unfolded before me I had the uneasy feeling that it might have been better never been built at all.