Nicolai Ouroussoff considers skyline-altering projects in two great cities and advises that “while the design for the Phare Tower in Paris is a work of sparkling originality that wrestles thoughtfully with the urban conflicts of the city’s postwar years, the other, the gargantuan Gazprom City in St. Petersburg, Russia, is a bone-chilling expression of corporate ego run amok. Together, they train a lens on the range of architectural approaches to a daunting problem: the clash between the classical city and the inflated scale of the new global economy. And they underscore the limits of the creative imagination when it is detached from historical memory.”