What were the cultural highlights of 2011? Icon asks nine international critics, curators and experts to select their half-dozen stand-out moments in architecture, design and art.

In Vardø, an island at the most northeasterly point of Norway, Pritzker prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor and artist Louise Bourgeois collaborated on a monument to 91 witches burned at the stake in the 17th century.

In Vardø, an island at the most northeasterly point of Norway, Pritzker prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor and artist Louise Bourgeois collaborated on a monument to 91 witches burned at the stake in the 17th century.

With a hidden garden of wild flowers at its heart, this year’s design is a call for architects to reassess the relationship of building and garden.

It’s rare that a building looks like nothing else of its kind, but “La Trufa”, by Anton Garcia-Abril and Ensamble Studio is one such work.

Do ho suh had never heard of Rachel Whiteread when he planned to cast his studio in plaster.

"If you’re going to write about me you need to know something," says PeterZumthor sternly. "My reputation is completely wrong. Everything you think I am, I am not."

Six o'clock on a misty Wednesday morning in a silent field in southern Germany and we should be alone with Peter Zumthor’s Bruder Klaus chapel.