Lofts at Globe Mills

Globe Flour Mills was Sacramento's most dramatic industrial ruin: a late-1800s flour mill, barley mill, boiler house and twenty-four six-story concrete silos that closed in 1968 and sat derelict through four decades and multiple fires. The $38 million rescue completed in 2008, with seismic engineering by Miyamoto International.

The silo cluster is the showpiece — homes and common spaces thread through and against the concrete cylinders, producing spaces no architect could invent from scratch. Thirty-one market-rate lofts in the historic mill building share the complex with 112 affordable senior apartments, a few blocks north of downtown in Alkali Flat.