National Centre for the Performing Arts

Critics have compared it to an egg, but it's more like a massive mercury bead, an ultramodern missile silo or the futuristic lair of a James Bond villain. To some it's a dazzling work of art, to others it's the definitive blot-on-the-landscape. The unmistakable building rises – if that is the word for it – just west of the Great Hall of the People, its glass membrane perennially cleaned by squads of roped daredevil cleaners fending off the Běijīng dust. Despite protestations from designers that its round and square elements pay obeisance to traditional Chinese aesthetics, they're not fooling anyone: the theatre is designed to embody the transglobal (transgalactic perhaps) aspirations of contemporary China.

Examine the bulbous interior, including the titanic steel ribbing of interior bolsters (each of the 148 bolsters weighs eight tonnes). A fascinating exhibition inside displays failed competition conceptions and construction efforts that realised the final building; note how many of the failed entrants (eg the proposal from Obermeyer & Deilmann) incorporated echoes of the Great Hall of the People into their design, something that the winning design (from ADP Aeroports de Paris) avoided at all costs. A noticeboard in the foyer should inform you which of the three halls are open, as they are occasionally shut.