You could be excused for thinking that the force of gravity imposed itself unequally among the various regions of the Earth. To judge from the architecture of cities – with regard to the spirit, not the height of their buildings – some places, like Venice and Shanghai, seem to enjoy a gravitational pull as clement as the moon’s while others, like New York, groan under an atmosphere 10 times more tyrannous than Jupiter’s.

Only compare the architecture that a firm creates in New York with what they accomplish abroad. In the latter case, you sense a great weight has been lifted from their souls, as though they were lions finally freed from the choke-chain of an ornery master. The ongoing debacle of Lower Manhattan is a case in point: The philistinism of the developer, the dullness of our magistrates, and the impulse to subordinate design to the appearance of safety, all conspire to extinguish any whiff of architectural inspiration.

Enrique Norten, of Ten Arquitectos, is the rare exception that proves the rule. Most of his work is in Mexico City – where, architecturally, anything is possible. Of late, though, he has begun to design in New York, where nothing is possible. Yet even here, he manages to break through to inspiration, as is shown in a worthy new exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York.

Unlike the earlier and highly vernacular Luis Barragan, perhaps the only Mexican architect to equal his reputation, Mr. Norten is an avowed internationalist, whose high-tech vocabulary of forms would be equally suited (or unsuited) to Vienna, Cancun, or Brooklyn. Nary an adobe wall in sight. If I might resurrect a phrase from a recent column, Mr. Norten is ever and always a proponent of “ornamental functionalism,” that super-cool, rectilinear, Apollonian style that vies with Deconstructivism as the dominant architectural trend of our time.

To judge from Mr. Norten’s work in Mexico, this architect’s virtues are his exquisitely calibrated sense of form and of the dramatic interaction of forms, as well as an innate feel for color – within the narrow register of his silvers, grays, and muted off-whites. The proof of this is beautifully set forth in the monograph “Ten Arquitectos” (Monacelli Press, $40).

Consider the National School of Theater (1994), a single, humongous barrel vault, constructed of shimmering corrugated steel arching over a concrete core. In a sharp perpendicular, a hairpin ramp of black stone with razor-thin steel railings protrudes from the main structure. Every part of Mr. Norten’s building fits together according to the obscure protocols of his nearly infallible tact – a quality an architect is either born with or not.

But then you start to reflect. Does that barrel vault serve any other purpose than to look sensational? Take it away, and the remaining structure seems oddly ordinary, liked a champagne poodle who’s been fleeced. Would it not be wiser simply to climb a few steps to the entrance than to submit to the unnecessary longeurs of that interminable ramp?

Here lies the paradox not only of Mr. Norten’s architecture, but of that ornamental functionalism that he embodies. Aside from the specifics of its industrial vocabulary, you are left with an almost Roman Baroque love of theatrical effect for its own sake.

I once had the pleasure of staying at the Hotel Habita, in the Polanco section of Mexico City, which Mr. Norten designed inside and out. It is an approximately beautiful cube wrapped in a shell of translucent glass. The rooms present a paradox of utmost opulence couched in a vocabulary of almost monastic severity. Yet every element of the design – the faucets, the bathtub, the minibar – presented a conceptual challenge I was required to master. Even at their best, they worked no better than any other sink or bathtub in the world. By the time I got the hang of it all, I was back on the Upper East Side.

Which brings us to Mr. Norten’s grand plans for the Big Apple. To a remarkable degree, he has maintained his integrity in the various projects included in “New York Fast Forward: Buildings by Enrique Norten/Ten Arquitectos, at the Museum of the City of New York.” On the other hand, ground-break ing has occurred for only one of them, the Harlem Park Hotel on 125th Street. This will consist of a mixed-use 34-story slab, with an undulating glazed facade, that rises above a base whose component parts will glow (according to the rendering) in zones of green, blue, and orange glass.

As for the Brooklyn Public Library for the Performing and Visual Arts, I am assured that it will occupy its triangular plot like the prow of an ocean liner, as the renderings suggest, and that it will be eight stories tall, its double-glazed curtain-walls enlivened by ever-changing signage. Because this building does not yet exist, I am not able to assess it. But it is unquestionably visionary and ambitious, and if it ever does get built, it will serve as a bellwether for New York architecture – an important confirmation of something that, thus far, has been only tentatively hinted at.

A shift is occurring in New Yorkers’ consumption of their constructed environment. The sundry adequacies and mediocrities that have been foisted upon us for the past two generations will not be tolerated much longer. We are starting to demand better, and someday we may get it.