This building makes effective use of color in order to put a distinctive mark on Los Angeles' alternately blue and brown sky. Its cladding is of coral-colored granite, accented with bronze panels and somehow complimented by green-glazed windows. Toward the top of its 52-stories the skyscraper becomes blunt like the nose of a bullet faceted in glass. The building is superlative in the sense that it has not just one 75-foot atrium, but two -- providing one of the few occasions in the English language to use the word "atria." Its only real drawback is the fact that Saint Paul's Episcopal Cathedral gave its life for this temple of moneychangers.

Photographs courtesy of Dave Liu.