The Best of 1998 Design

1 BORDEAUX RESIDENCE, FRANCE Has Rem Koolhaas reinvented the home? One architectural journal went so far as to call this "the best house in the world, ever." Yikes! Built for a wealthy client in a wheelchair who asked that it be made as complex as possible, the house has three stories, in each of which is a 10-ft. by 10-ft. hole. The hole is filled only when the client's 10-ft. by 10-ft. elevator, which is also his office, is in that space. Get it? Rather than making allowances for its disabled owner, each floor is really complete only when he's there. Abled people are inconvenienced for him. But this is more than just a house Christopher Reeve could use. The top floor is a concrete box that hangs implausibly over the column-free middle floor, as if two halves of an Eskimo Pie were held apart by nothing. The box is supported by a huge spiral-stair-filled column outside and anchored on one side by a vestigial-looking tendon that plunges into the ground. On the middle story, floor-to-ceiling windows slide away on hidden tracks to make the room disappear almost entirely. If that's not complex enough, there's a three-story-high bookcase, and the porthole-like windows of the bedrooms are angled to illuminate certain places. Absurd, wonderful, revolutionary.

2 JEAN-MARIE TJIBAO CULTURAL CENTER, NOUMEA, NEW CALEDONIA Never heard of Tjibao? Don't know New Caledonia from Old? Hardly matters. The silhouette of this arts complex is so eye catching that unlike much modern architecture, it doesn't need to be explained to be liked. But it helps to know that Renzo Piano designed the slatted wooden sails of the center as a tribute to the local building traditions, as wind shields and as thermal chimneys that promote airflow.

3 IMAC Thank you, God or Steve Jobs or whoever is responsible, for the arrival of the Imac, a computer with color, a computer with fun translucent bits, a computer that looks like what a desktop computer for the home really is: a toy. And since the most fun thing about the computer is the Internet and the least fun thing is attaching all the ugly cables, thank you for making it so easy to plug in. The two-tone keyboard! The adorable round mouse! The parabolic shape! Even the circuit boards, visible through the plastic sides, are alluring.

4 NEW BEETLE Messing with a classic is dangerous, so when VW reintroduced the Beetle, it sprayed on the style with a fire hose. The Volks-folks managed to make the car whimsical but not silly, ingenious but not too cutesy, sexy and sporty at the same time. Just as the old VW Bug inspires aging boomers to memories of more carefree days, the new Beetle suggests glad times ahead. Nothing--fenders, headlights, fuel tank--interrupts the curves of this happy hemisphere of color.

5 BOB CROWLEY'S SET DESIGNS Paul Simon's Broadway effort, The Capeman, may have been a turkey, but it was dressed like a peacock. Even bad plays look good when designed by Crowley. Good plays, like The Judas Kiss and Twelfth Night, positively shimmer. Crowley knows how to stun and to enchant. He understands that showmanship need not be showy and that one of the things that draws us to the stage is the way a good set mirrors and enhances a play, yet never overpowers it.

6 THE PROTEUS It's a bird! It's a plane! It's... O.K., it's a plane, named after the sea god who changed shape. This little flyer can too: the middle section and the wings can be adjusted according to the mission the plane is undertaking. And because Proteus can fly so high (about 65,000 ft.) and for so long, potential missions are manifold: atmospheric research, reconnaissance and--designer Burt Rutan hopes--launching vehicles for space tourism. Proteus has the body of an insect but the heart of a jumbo jet.

7 FELIX NUSSBAUM BUILDING, OSNABRUCK, GERMANY This gallery, housing works of an artist who died in Auschwitz, is the first architectural theorist Daniel Libeskind, 52, has finished. Libeskind's ideas on the presence of absence--how to represent something that isn't there--and his fascination with layers and the fractured, broken and diagonal line make for some fabulously strange exhibition spaces (not to mention dangerous windows).

8 HANNIBAL TAPE DISPENSER Cute, colorful and witty: Isn't this what the world has always wanted in a tape dispenser? Hannibal comes in bright colors and oh-so-1998 translucent plastic. He sits on your desk looking intimidatingly like his eponym, the guy that almost conquered Rome, until you need tape and then presto: as you fold his trunk out, he induces a mid-boring-office-chore smile. Only one flaw: Who pays $60 for a tape dispenser?

9 DOMINUS WINERY, NAPA It's a shed. A 300-ft.-long two-story shed sheathed in rocks that are held together with the gabion system--a technique used to hold up embankments on highways. But despite its stony visage, this winery, designed by Swiss architecture firm Herzog & De Meuron, is less brutal than brut-worthy and sits well in the Napa landscape. Once inside, visitors find the stony exterior becomes a playful moire that lets in shards of light. The stones are transformed, just like the grapes within each cask.

10 MIMID MINIATURE MINE DETECTOR With 70 million land mines buried out there, this sleek, telescopic diviner with its Miesian line couldn't have arrived sooner. Created by Gerhard Heufler, its carbon and glass fiber-reinforced plastic body comes in basic GI Joe green, weighs 3 lbs. and quickly collapses into a small backpack for transporting to remote areas. The controls take just a few minutes to master. This is good design with a good purpose.

AND THE WORST Technology is pushing us toward the tinier and thinner, but car companies (encouraged by buyers) keep making sport-utility vehicles bigger. As well as pollution and gas consumption, this leads to bigger garages, bigger parking lots and, yikes, bigger fluffy dice.