Laid out in order the portfolio has no visual through line at all, and people occasionally ask what happened. Nothing happened. Each site was allowed to produce its own answer, and sites differ, so the answers do. I would rather defend that than a house style.

The earliest work I would still point anyone toward is the conversion of two Ralph Walker telephone buildings. Walker Tower in Chelsea was full of ageing telecom equipment and a working data centre when we took it on. Turning it into residences meant enlarging the building, moving the core, opening up the windows and reskinning the facade, and that work is what unlocked roughly 50,000 additional square feet at the top. Stella Tower gave a second Walker telephone building the same kind of second life.

Those two established something the firm has kept returning to, which is a structure built for a purpose that has nothing to do with living in it, and a conversion that is far more structural than decorative.

The American Copper Buildings began as a former Con Edison site on the East River, acquired in 2013. What went onto it was twin towers joined 300 feet up by a three story skybridge, the first in New York City in 80 years. The bridge carries amenity space and it also runs building systems between the two towers, so it is doing structural, social and mechanical work at once. The project was delivered after Hurricane Sandy and its approach to the waterfront reflects that directly. It includes affordable housing.

111 West 57th Street is the building most people know. It is the tallest and most slender residential building in the Western Hemisphere, designed by SHoP Architects and built in the courtyard of the landmarked Steinway Hall. Studio Sofield did the interiors. Steinway Hall itself is the Warren and Wetmore building that JDS restored and folded into the development rather than working around.

That decision is the one I would defend hardest on the project. The restoration went down to the limestone, the brickwork, the copper roof, the lantern, the decorative painting and the gilding, while the tower behind it went up in bronze, glass and terra cotta, making no attempt to pass for anything older. Landmark residences sit inside the restored hall and the auction house Bonhams occupies its retail space. Two eras of the city standing next to each other, neither in costume.

The Brooklyn Tower is Brooklyn's first supertall, rising from the landmark Dime Savings Bank. SHoP Architects designed it. It holds condominium and rental homes, affordable housing among them, along with shops and shared floors, and it keeps one of Brooklyn's more recognisable landmarks in public view rather than behind hoarding.

Miami took the portfolio somewhere the firm had not been, into hospitality and into branded residences. There we are building 888 Brickell Dolce&Gabbana, a condominium and hotel tower where Dolce&Gabbana is shaping the residences and the guest experience around a five star hotel.

Mercedes-Benz Places Miami goes further again. It is the first branded residential project of its kind in North America. SHoP Architects designed it, Woods Bagot the interiors, Field Operations the landscape. It brings residences, office, hospitality and amenity together as a piece of city rather than as a single object, and at its base Field Operations is remaking the adjacent Southside Park as public landscape tied into the UnderLine and the Brickell streets around it.

Monad Terrace in Miami Beach is Jean Nouvel's, and the waterfront is not a view from it so much as a material in it. Planting, water, bounced light and the long view out are treated as parts of the building rather than as its setting.

On design the firm has leaned on Jean Nouvel, on SHoP Architects repeatedly, and on Gachot Studios and Roman and Williams, with Studio Sofield and Woods Bagot inside the buildings and Field Operations on the ground around them. Four of these projects get a page each, at proper length, on the firm's own site.