Towers were the height of fashion

We haven't built any here -- not yet anyway -- but there's no question that the top architecture story in 2006 was the proliferation of proposals for super-tall buildings, all over the world. It was like an international sports event, with everyone trying to out-score everyone else in height.

As just one example among many, take the tiny emirate of Dubai in the Middle East. Its Burj Dubai Tower, by American architects Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, was designed to be the tallest building in the world. It would be 158 stories -- the Empire State is only 102 -- and more than 1,900 feet.

But almost immediately, a rival was announced, right there in little Dubai. This one would top off at more than 2,000 feet, to be designed by the Pei Partnership of New York.

Another 2,000-footer was planned for Chicago, by famed architect Santiago Calatrava. Meanwhile in New York, construction began on the Freedom Tower at ground zero. At 1,776 feet this, too, was intended, originally, to be the world's tallest. In 2006, it felt modest.

The tower mania reached Boston in February. Mayor Thomas Menino proposed a thousand-footer on the site of a city-owned parking garage. Though no competition for Chicago, this would be 200 feet higher than the Hancock Tower, now Boston's highest. The city is currently reviewing a design proposal by Italian architect Renzo Piano.

It's a safe bet that not all of these towers will actually get built. But some of them will, and probably others, in the future, will push even higher.

What's the motive?

There isn't a logical one.

What drives the battle for height is the sporting instinct. Politicians and owners want to feel they're winners. They want to feel they've put their personal signature on a city's skyline.

Perhaps the mayor's tower will make our list of architectural bests -- or worsts -- in a future year. In the meantime, here are the Top 10 for 2006.

The major event in the architecture of Boston, far and away, was the arrival of the long-awaited new home of the Institute of Contemporary Art.

The ICA opened in early December on a site at the edge of Boston Harbor. It was immediately obvious that this was the most inventive, most provocative hunk of local architecture in decades.

It works the way an art museum should, with skylit galleries for the art, a generous theater for performances, a delightful "mediatheque" for messing with computers, and much else.

But what lifts the ICA above mere excellence is the way it engages its surroundings. The galleries thrust forward over the water like a telescope taking in the view. The HarborWalk, which skirts the edge of Boston's waterfront, morphs amazingly as it passes the ICA. Its richly toned wood paving spreads out to become steps, benches, walls, and, eventually, the under surface of those thrusting galleries. The ICA becomes an extension of the HarborWalk.

Then as you move through the interior, views of the water appear. The architects, Diller, Scofidio + Renfro of New York, are known for art installations in which they discover new ways of seeing familiar things. At the ICA, they explore the many ways you can frame a view of water as a work of art.

Our number two is the stunning renovation of the Getty Villa site in Malibu, Calif. Boston architects Rodolfo Machado and Jorge Silvetti transformed a dreary imitation of a Roman villa into a brilliantly beautiful art museum. Then they surrounded it with what feels like an archeological dig, out of which emerge, as if newly uncovered, an amphitheater, a restaurant , and much else.

It's not every year that a Boston firm wins the prestigious Architecture Firm Award , an honor given by the American Institute of Architects to only one US firm each year. Winners Andrea Leers and Jane Weinzapfel hate to be pigeonholed as women architects, but their Boston partnership has nevertheless raised the profile of women in the profession. They're unabashed modernists who craft buildings as crisp and elegant as new jet fighters.

The AIA's 25-Year Award is another high honor, awarded annually to one work that has stood the test of time. It's great to see it given to Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Designed while she was still an undergraduate, it was deeply controversial at first. Now it is acclaimed everywhere as the gold standard for war memorials.

The Diva Lounge is a tiny but delightful martini bar (26 flavors) in Davis Square. The architects call themselves Studio Luz. Luz is headed by a pair of married partners in their early 30s. Young architects usually don't get much press, but the Diva Lounge is the cover, this month, of the leading US architecture magazine.

The Pedini house in Lexington is the work of another talented firm, also headed by young marrieds, that calls itself Single Speed Design . It's named after the only kind of bicycles the staff could afford when they started. The house is constructed out of recycled junk from the demolition of the Central Artery. More than a mere tour de force, it's a handsome and livable home.

The superb restoration of the exterior of Sever Hall, Harvard's best single building, was an act of homage to the great 19th-century architect H.H. Richardson. Now if only Harvard would go to work on Sever's glum interior. . . .

Not everyone liked the new addition to the Denver Art Museum by Daniel Libeskind of New York. But I found it a satisfying experience of richly shaped gallery spaces, where the art felt quite at home, and a memorable exterior that looks like a joyful explosion in a toy store.

OK, now the worsts:

Menino wants to abandon Boston City Hall and build a new one near the ICA on the South Boston waterfront. The site would be too far from other government, from business, and from the subway system. Instead, the mayor should go to work to refashion City Hall -- a remarkable but admittedly grim piece of architecture -- into the livelier place it could easily be.

The early modern movement is out of fashion and its examples are rapidly disappearing. In Belmont, we lost a pioneer 1931 house by architect Eleanor Raymond. Harvard poorly revamped its Woodberry Poetry Room, originally by the Finnish great Alvar Aalto. A stunning house by Paul Rudolph is at this moment being demolished in Connecticut.

Other significant buildings, especially houses, are in danger everywhere.

Robert Campbell is the Globe's architecture critic. He can be reached at camglobe@aol.com.