THE BEST DESIGN OF 1996

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1 NATIONALE NEDERLANDEN BUILDING: A structure as playful as this deserves a nickname. And Frank Gehry and Croatian-born architect Vladimir Milunic's new building on the banks of the Vltava River in Prague has one. It's called Fred and Ginger, after its twin towers: one flirty and curvilinear, the other solid and upright. The staggered windows and rippled riverfront facade reflect the adjacent row houses even as the building stands apart from the rest of the city. Using some local construction techniques combined with sophisticated three-dimensional computer modeling, the two architects maintained consistency with the surrounding buildings but added Gehry's signature whimsy. Ginger isn't twirling like that just for fun, though--her kinked shape means the view of the Prague castle from a neighboring apartment house is minimally obscured. This, clearly, is the new Prague, just as the Charles Bridge is the old. Like Fred, it has some stunning moves; like Ginger, it's a lot of fun.

2 Calvin Klein Cut-Out Dress All eyes were on the wedding frock of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy this year, but this masterpiece by her former boss warrants just as much fanfare. Although minimalism and sensuality are typically fashion's warring cousins, this off-the-shoulder evening gown joins them together in an elegantly peaceful union. True to Klein form with its lean cut and absence of adornment, the shapely dress pays stunning tribute to the female body without a hint of tawdriness. It is everything that evening wear should be--dramatic but not overwhelming.

3 S,M,L,XL Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and Canadian graphic designer Bruce Mau collaborated to create this definitive anti-coffee-table book, an eccentric and exhaustive assemblage of Koolhaas' building designs, jottings and musings. It even has pages of charts showing how his practice has fared over the years. It was the first book ever to have a launch party at New York City's Museum of Modern Art. And no wonder. Squat, garishly silver and with photos that look more like they were taken for a home photo album than an architectural manifesto, it's designed to be dipped into, flicked through and maybe even used to prop open a door. In short, a visual delight.

4 Aronoff Center for Design and Art This Cincinnati design school occupies an unpromising site, shoved between two older buildings and on top of a parking garage. Nor does its central feature, an 800-ft.-long subterranean corridor, seem to be the most compelling vehicle for delivering great architecture. But Peter Eisenman, never a safe designer, pushes all sorts of boundaries, including walls, floors and ceilings, to create spaces that are bewildering, exhilarating and compelling.

5 Canon ELPH 490Z Yes, yes, this tiny aluminum point-and-shoot boasts a foolproof loading mechanism and powerful zoom lens, but what makes it truly revolutionary? Efficient design that features a swing-open lens cover, which turns the camera on and reveals a multifunction flash unit and a red-eye-reduction lamp. This canny placement of the flash inside the cover increases the effectiveness of the lamp feature by positioning the flash up and away from the lens.

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