Architect’s Guide to New York City: 20 Must-See Buildings and Designs

Call for entries: The 14th Architizer A+Awards celebrates architecture's new era of craft. Apply for publication online and in print by submitting your projects before the Main Entry Deadline on December 12th!

New York is a city of icons, but not all of them are obvious. For architects, the city offers a different kind of guidebook — one that traces ideas as much as monuments, details as much as skylines.

This list brings together twenty buildings and public spaces across the five boroughs, each recognized in the Architizer A+Awards, that define what it means to design in New York today. Some are global landmarks — places that embody civic ambition on the scale of Moynihan Train Hall, the National September 11 Memorial, or the newly opened Perelman Performing Arts Center. Others reward a closer eye: the custom bricks of The Grand Mulberry, the kinetic lighting at Coqodaq, or the micro-spatial ingenuity of Lifted Lid in the Garment District.

What unites them is not just location, but architectural intelligence — an ability to connect with history, push material or structural innovation, and respond to the city’s shifting needs. Taken together, they offer a roadmap to New York for architects and design enthusiasts: part history lesson, part field study, part urban adventure.

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The View

By Rockwell Group, New York City, New York

Popular Choice Winner, Restaurants (L >1000 sq ft), 13th Architizer A+Awards

Suspended atop the New York Marriott Marquis — designed by John Portman in 1985 — this remains the city’s only rotating restaurant, offering a 360-degree panorama of Times Square. Plush fabrics, concentric ceiling motifs and custom furnishings dramatize the experience, blurring architecture with theater, infused with timeless New York glamor.

Architect’s Detail: Overlapping concentric circles across the ceilings act as shifting reference points, visually reinforcing the restaurant’s hourly 360-degree rotation.

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Hudson River Park’s Gansevoort Peninsula

By Field Operations, New York City, New York

Jury Winner, Public Parks and Green Spaces, 13th Architizer A+Awards

Once a sanitation pier, this 5.5-acre (2-hectare) transformation introduces Manhattan’s first public beach and salt marsh, pairing recreation with ecological restoration along the Hudson River. Its layered edges extend the city’s transition from land to water, creating resilient habitats while inviting new modes of public access.

Architect’s Detail: The northern salt marsh incorporates reef balls and gabions seeded with 20 million juvenile oysters, pioneering new permitting models for intertidal resilience projects in a city regularly battered by Atlantic storms.

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Lifted Lid

By Model Practice, New York City, New York

Popular Choice Winner, Restaurants (S <1000 sq ft), 13th Architizer A+Awards

This compact restaurant transforms a 1920s Garment District storefront with a suspended “box” inspired by the Korean Dosirak, compartmentalizing functions above the compact dining space. Its reflective shell engages the urban context, while acoustic plaster interiors temper the noise of 7th Avenue.

Architect’s Detail: The suspended box’s compartments act as both spatial dividers and acoustic devices, merging functional clarity with cultural reference in just 900 square feet (85 square meters).

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Arverne East Coastal Conservation Center and Nature Preserve

By WXY architecture + urban design, Queens, New York City, New York

Jury Winner, Best Public Projects Firm & Finalist, Community Centers, 13th Architizer A+Awards

At the threshold of a restored oceanfront landscape, this compact civic hub anchors New York’s largest planned nature preserve with essential public amenities.  From gender-neutral restrooms to flexible gathering space, its program demonstrates how carefully detailed small-scale architecture can expand access to ecological and community resources.

Architect’s Detail: Designed as part of the broader Arverne East master plan, the building doubles as an educational interface between the urban edge and a newly resilient coastal ecosystem.

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Lever Club

By Marmol Radziner, New York City, New York

Popular Choice Winner, Commercial Interiors (>25,000 sq ft.), 13th Architizer A+Awards

Housed within the landmark Lever House — designed by SOM in 1952 and celebrated as a modernist icon — this private lounge reimagines the tower’s original cafeteria floor. Stone, rosewood and aluminum details complement custom furnishings that reinterpret Bunshaft’s architectural language, framing views of the restored terrace garden.

Architect’s Detail: Marble flooring and bespoke furniture are color-matched to Lever House’s pioneering green façade, tying the new interiors directly to the building’s historic identity.

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Perelman Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center

By REX, Manhattan, New York City, New York

Popular Choice Winner, Hall/Theatre, 12th Architizer A+Awards | Jury Winner, Unbuilt Cultural, 7th Architizer A+Awards

Wrapped in translucent Portuguese marble that glows after dark, this cultural landmark elevates a rotated cube above complex subterranean infrastructure. Inside, three independent theaters form a radical “Mystery Box,” where movable guillotine walls, seating towers and acoustic planks enable sixty-two spatial configurations.

Architect’s Detail: The façade’s 4,896 marble-glass panels are meticulously book-matched into a biaxial pattern, ensuring visual symmetry despite unpredictable quarrying outcomes.

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The High Line + Moynihan Connector

By Field Operations, New York City, New York

With Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Piet Oudof & Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM)

Jury Winner, Architecture +Light, 2nd Architizer A+Awards | Popular Choice Winner, Public Park, 3rd Architizer A+Awards | Popular Choice Winner, Architecture +Landscape, 12th Architizer A+Awards

Built in phases beginning in 2009, this 1.5-mile-long park reimagines a 1930s elevated rail line as a sequence of concrete planks, wild plantings and unscripted social spaces. Its final section at the Rail Yards preserves self-seeded grasses and industrial remnants while opening sweeping views of the Hudson River, while the recent Moynihan Connector extends the High Line’s reach eastward with a timber truss bridge and a landscape-rich Woodland Bridge.

Architect’s Detail: The Connector’s 260-foot glulam Timber Bridge, built of sustainably sourced Alaskan yellow cedar, recalls historic Warren trusses while reducing embodied carbon and floating lightly above Manhattan’s streets.

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Day’s End

By David Hammons and Guy Nordenson and Associates, New York City, New York

Jury Winner, Architecture +Art, 12th Architizer A+Awards

This minimal waterfront installation traces the ghostly outline of the demolished Pier 52 building, honoring Gordon Matta-Clark’s radical 1975 work while reframing the site’s cultural memory. Its skeletal stainless-steel frame dissolves into the skyline, inviting reflection on history, absence-+ and renewal.

Architect’s Detail: Slender 8-inch beams span 65 feet (20 meters) with prefabricated connections, engineered to withstand Hudson River corrosion, rising sea levels and future storm conditions.

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The Grand Mulberry

By MA | Morris Adjmi Architects, New York City, New York

Popular Choice Winner, Architecture +Facades, 12th Architizer Awards

This contemporary condominium reinterprets Little Italy’s Italianate tenement heritage through a tripartite brick façade of banding, pediment windows and arched openings. Custom domed bricks laid in a double-stacked running bond create a modern illusion of historic masonry craft.

Architect’s Detail: Nearly every façade brick was hand-molded and positioned to achieve depth and shadow, translating 19th-century ornament into a distinctly 21st-century expression.

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Bathhouse

By Rockwell Group, New York, New York

Finalist, Spa & Wellness, 12th Architizer Awards

In a three-level Flatiron space, this urban bathhouse blends the communal energy of global banya traditions with the refinement of a contemporary spa. Rockwell Group’s design balances sleek modernity with restorative rituals, redefining the American spa as both social hub and wellness retreat.

Architect’s Detail: Contrasting zones of heat, steam, and cool immersion are choreographed as sequential spatial experiences, turning recovery into an architectural journey.

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LaGuardia Airport Terminal B 

By HOK, New York City, New York

Popular Choice Winner, Transportation Infrastructure, 11th Architizer A+Awards

This complete reimagining of LaGuardia Airport introduces a transparent, light-filled terminal organized around two island concourses linked by monumental pedestrian bridges. Daylit circulation sequences elevate both arrivals and departures, transforming air travel into a civic-scaled experience.

Architect’s Detail: The bridge-concourse scheme freed 40 acres (15 hectares) for airside operations while reducing construction time by two years, proving that infrastructural design can balance efficiency with architectural ambition.

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Coqodaq

By L’Observatoire International, New York, New York

Finalist, Architecture +Light, 13th Architizer A+Awards

This opulent dining space layers Korean and Art Nouveau influences, where custom furnishings are amplified by a choreographed play of light. Cast-glass arches, glowing banquettes and champagne-inspired luminaires turn illumination into both ornament and atmosphere.

Architect’s Detail: A programmed lighting system shifts intensity and tone throughout the day, conserving energy while creating distinctly theatrical moods for each dining setting.

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Raising the bar with the most ambitious workplace in NYC | HSBC

By M Moser Associates, New York City, New York

Popular Choice Winner, Sustainable Commercial Building, 13th Architizer A+Awards

This Hudson Yards headquarters embeds sustainability directly into its architecture, with efficient floor plates, abundant daylight and terrace connections reducing reliance on mechanical systems. Flexible planning supports hybrid work while promoting wellbeing through accessibility, inclusivity and strong ties to the surrounding city.

Architect’s Detail: Smart building systems monitor energy use in real time, while biophilic design strategies integrate natural light and greenery to improve environmental performance and workplace health.

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130 William

By Adjaye Associates, New York, New York

Jury Winner, Multi-Unit Housing – High Rise (> 16 floors), 11th Architizer Awards

Rising 800 feet (245 meters), this Lower Manhattan tower reinterprets historic mercantile architecture with a hand-cast concrete façade and rhythmic arched windows that cut a bold profile on the skyline. Within, a vertical “microcity” of residences, amenities, and a public plaza blurs private and civic life.

Architect’s Detail: Textured concrete surfaces paired with bronze detailing evoke the masonry craftsmanship of downtown’s early high-rises, grounding the tower in its historic context.

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Little Island

By Heatherwick Studio, New York City, New York

Jury Winner Public Parks & Green Spaces, 9th Architizer A+Awards

Hovering above the Hudson on sculptural concrete “pots,” this park creates a new topography of hills, paths and performance spaces that feels worlds away from Manhattan’s grid. Indigenous plantings, microclimates and three integrated venues turn a pier into both ecological refuge and civic stage.

Architect’s Detail: Each precast planter was fabricated locally and barged into place, minimizing disruption while forming the island’s undulating surface and concealed undercroft for performance infrastructure.

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Moynihan Train Hall 

By Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), New York City, New York

Popular Choice Winner, Transportation Infrastructure, 9th Architizer A+Awards

This adaptive reuse of the 1913 James A. Farley Post Office restores the civic grandeur lost with Penn Station’s demolition, expanding transit space by 50 percent. A dramatic skylight of four catenary vaults floods the former mail hall with daylight, supported by original steel trusses revealed for the first time.

Architect’s Detail: Each of the skylight’s 2,500 glass-and-steel panels was engineered with variable thickness, lightening at the 92-foot apex to maximize transparency while managing structural loads.

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The Shed

By Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Rockwell Group, New York City, New York

Finalist, Museum, 8th Architizer A+Awards

Set on rails at Hudson Yards, this cultural building expands and contracts with a telescoping shell that transforms a public plaza into a 17,000-square-foot (1,580-square-meter), climate-controlled hall. Inspired by Cedric Price’s Fun Palace, its kinetic system adapts industrial gantry crane technology to create a permanently flexible architecture for the arts.

Architect’s Detail: The ETFE-clad shell rolls on six-foot wheels along a 273-foot (85-meter) track, enclosing or revealing the plaza in just five minutes.

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Edge

By Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, New York City, New York

Finalist, Exhibition Space, 8th Architizer A+Awards

Cantilevered 80 feet (25 meters) from 30 Hudson Yards, this 1,100-foot-high (335-meter) platform is the tallest outdoor observation deck in the Western Hemisphere. Angled glass panels, sky-bleacher steps and a transparent floor immerse visitors directly in the Manhattan skyline.

Architect’s Detail: The mullion-free glass balustrades lean outward, heightening the vertiginous sensation of stepping beyond the tower’s façade into open air.

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Governors Island Park and Public Space

By West 8, New York, New York

Jury Winner, Public Park, 5th Architizer A+Awards

This 87-acre(35-hectare) transformation reimagines Governors Island as a civic landmark, weaving historic landscapes with new parkland and a 2.2-mile (3.5-kilometer) promenade around New York Harbor. Designed through extensive site observation and public input, the plan turns the once-abandoned island into a resilient cultural and ecological destination.

Architect’s Detail: Sculpted topographies and waterfront edges were shaped to frame shifting harbor views while buffering the island against sea-level rise and storm events.

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The Metropolitan Musuem of Art

By L’Observatoire International, New York, New York

Finalist, Architecture +Light, 5th Architizer A+Awards

Stretching four blocks along Fifth Avenue, this 2015 redesign restores the grandeur of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 1902 Beaux-Arts façade with new fountains, trees, and visitor seating (the original building is by Richard Morris Hunt). Precision lighting transforms the landmark exterior into a sculptural presence at night, treating the architecture itself as artwork.

Architect’s Detail: Integrated fixtures reveal the depth of cornices, moldings and statuary without glare, reanimating the façade’s dimensionality for the first time in decades.

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National September 11 Memorial

By Handel Architects, PWP Landscape Architecture, New York City, New York

Popular Choice Winner, Memorials, 2nd A+Awards

Set within the World Trade Center site, this 8-acre (3-hectare) plaza carves two vast voids into the ground, their waterfalls marking the absence of the Twin Towers. A forest of nearly 400 white oaks frames the pools, creating a democratic public space where memory, daily life, and civic resilience converge. See more about the landscape design here, and about the adjacent museum here.

Architect’s Detail: Victims’ names are incised into bronze parapets engineered with hidden heating and cooling systems, their arrangement shaped by over 1,200 requests from families to create meaningful adjacencies.

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Call for entries: The 14th Architizer A+Awards celebrates architecture's new era of craft. Apply for publication online and in print by submitting your projects before the Main Entry Deadline on December 12th!