The first architect to radically rethink the skyscraper was Norman Foster. At the time—1986—critics hailed his headquarters for the Hongkong & Shanghai Bank as an example of the so-called high-tech style. But later skyscrapers such as the Century Tower in Tokyo and the Commerzbank in Frankfurt show that Foster and Partners is interested in much more than merely exposing structure. They want to reconsider how skyscrapers are built. The Hearst Building (at right), now nearing completion in New York, is a good example. It somewhat resembles a Brancusi sculpture, but the unusual crystalline form, or "diagrid," as the architects call it, has a functional purpose: Thanks to the diagonal bracing, the building uses 20 percent less steel than a conventional structure. If Buckminster Fuller, one of Norman Foster's mentors, had designed a skyscraper, it would have looked something like this.