The Triangle isn't just one place, one skyline. It's Raleigh-Durham-Cary-Chapel Hill and at least a dozen other towns sharing highways and hyphens.

Part of it, too, is our region's ambivalence about declaring itself. What other metropolis would put its tallest building -- the 43-story Soleil Center, now under construction off Glenwood Avenue near the Beltline -- in one of its deepest valleys?

But the economic dynamism that drives the Triangle is giving this subdued region a bold new look.

By the time Soleil is finished in 2009, it will have followed a flurry of new buildings opening this year. Some will become landmarks helping to define Raleigh, Durham, and the rest of the region: the capital city's new convention center and hotel, its downtown RBC Plaza tower, and a cluster of mid-rise condominiums; Durham's new performing arts center and expansions of its American Tobacco complex; a new terminal at Raleigh-Durham International Airport.

In establishing a sense of place, buildings matter. More than mere markers, they're stages for our public and private lives.

Today, The News & Observer begins an occasional series that will assess significant new buildings as they open. With the series, Marvin Malecha, dean of N.C. State University's College of Design, will provide a design perspective.

"People gauge their lives by their landscapes," Malecha says. "It's primal that you identify with a place. You know you're home. When you don't have that sense, you feel disconnected."

Modernism and progress shouldn't obliterate local traditions and culture, Malecha says.

"We're at a moment in time when we're building things so fast that we're basically removing the sense of place," he says. "We have a couple of hundred years or history here. We shouldn't just remove it."

But we can add to it, reshape it.

"I hope we have the wisdom to create new landmarks for each generation," Malecha says.

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