Maya Lin

I love that Maya Lin designed an ice skating rink. She took something playful and human and entwined it with something beyond (yet a part of) this Earth: the cosmos. She said as she looked at the stars twinkling beneath the ice that she had "frozen a point in time" (or something to that effect). The particular set of constellations that she replicated under the ice skating rink only occurred once, and could only be seen from Grand Rapids, Michigan. She created something functional and beautiful that literally froze a point in time. I think that architects, as artists, have a responsibility to mark their time in some way. Their creations should reflect the personality and values of their era because they'll be around long after we're gone. Maya Lin is doing that for us.

I found some images of a few office buildings/residences that she has created:

This is a duplex apartment building that she designed in New York, I think it's interesting to relate these designs to her sculptural work, there are many similarities.

This is an American Express office building that Lin designed. The "raised plane" floor (how do you describe that?) next to the trees reminds me of the Vietnam memorial wall, it looks like it was sliced out of the ground, not built.

This was just called a "financial building"... I like how she melded that organic line into such an angular space.