Citta del Sole in Rome, designed by Labics Studio. The project comprises a library and residential, office, retail, parking and public space.
Citta del Sole in Rome, designed by Labics Studio. The project comprises a library and residential, office, retail, parking and public space. © The New York Times

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Thanks to a percolating economy and the technological revolution that swept through architecture while most of these designers were building their practices, many of them are producing work at speeds and scales that were not possible even a decade ago. Today, a five-person office like the Oyler Wu Collaborative in Los Angeles, founded in 2004, can produce a residential high-rise in a faraway place — even one with the complex, syncopated screens that encase their recently completed Monarch residential tower in Taipei. “The building code there encourages standardization,” said Jenny Wu, 42. Her husband, Dwayne Oyler, 45, added, “We wanted to show that even in a constrained environment, you can still be creative.”

Thanks to a percolating economy and the technological revolution that swept through architecture while most of these designers were building their practices, many of them are producing work at speeds and scales that were not possible even a decade ago. Today, a five-person office like the Oyler Wu Collaborative in Los Angeles, founded in 2004, can produce a residential high-rise in a faraway place — even one with the complex, syncopated screens that encase their recently completed Monarch residential tower in Taipei. “The building code there encourages standardization,” said Jenny Wu, 42. Her husband, Dwayne Oyler, 45, added, “We wanted to show that even in a constrained environment, you can still be creative.”

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The youngest architect in this current group also has the largest practice. Bjarke Ingels, 42, started the acronymically perfect Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) at the ripe old age of 30 and now employs nearly 450 people, primarily in Copenhagen and New York. BIG’s projects are by turns unorthodox, clever and even hopeful. Like the German war machine it in part catalogs, the Tirpitz Museum in Blavand, Denmark, which opened this summer, is an artifact buried in the sand. ....

Mr. Ingels calls his approach ‘‘hedonistic sustainability’’: sustainability that increases the enjoyment of life.

Now that’s leadership any generation can appreciate.