Faces to watch 2003

Gae Aulenti

Architect

Italian architect Aulenti made her reputation with the Musee d’Orsay in Paris and several Italian projects, including an Italian Pavilion for Seville’s Expo ’92. Her style is often noted for a sense of space, and an imaginative use of wood and brick. Aulenti, who says she likes “forms in a harmonious relationship with the context for which they are created,” also works in interior and industrial design. American fans will have a chance to see the 75-year-old architect’s work when the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, her biggest commission in the U.S., opens in March. The revitalized 1917 structure across from City Hall will include an indoor courtyard, a sense of openness and an attention to historic details.

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Zaha Hadid

Architect

The sleek, fluid designs of Baghdad-born, London-based Hadid, who worked with Rem Koolhaas, have been seen mostly in Asia and Europe. But her first major U.S. commission opens next year: the first free-standing building of the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati.

The 52-year-old architect is best known for her fragmented design of a Hong Kong club house, which was included in the important 1988 Deconstructivist exhibit at New York’s Museum of Modern Art but never built. Her office is working on an arts center in Rome and a public square in Barcelona; her ski jump in Innsbruck, Austria, just opened.

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United Architects

Architectural team

This group of innovative young Turks, which came together to design what’s become dramatic, well-received plans for the World Trade Center site, is made up of six firms. The group includes Los Angeles architect Greg Lynn and UN Studio, a cutting-edge Dutch company that will complete a single-pylon bridge in Utrecht, Netherlands, in March and an addition to Wadsworth Atheneum art museum in Hartford, Conn., in 2006. Lynn, 38, teaches at UCLA and is known for conceptual and high-tech digital architecture -- including the award-winning Korean Presbyterian Church of New York. His firm, Greg Lynn FORM, is based in Venice. United Architects may join forces again for a transportation complex in Portland, Ore.

-- Scott Timberg