Manhattan is a land of narcissists, or so it often seems, with each citizen hell-bent on winning the fullest measure of attention through his or her wardrobe and personal comportment. And so you might think that our architectural stock would exhibit a similar excess, a similar individualism at all costs. But in fact, more often than not, the borough of Manhattan has been defined by an ineradicable architectural conservatism and banality. Perhaps it is the grid plan itself, promulgated in 1811, that has made architects unwilling to venture very far outside their cubic cages, with only the rarest exceptions in cultural venues like the Guggenheim and Whitney museums.

In the past few years, however, that conservatism seems to have been challenged and catalyzed by architects’ intent, for better or worse, on doing something different, on drawing clamorous attention to their own invention, the way they do in other cities around the world. Lord Foster’s Hearst Tower, at Eighth Avenue and 57th Street, is a case in point, as is Frank Gehry’s Sails building on Eleventh Avenue and 17th Street. And while it is still an open question whether Santiago Calatrava’s ground zero transportation hub will ever be realized now that his brilliant project for 80 South St. has been rendered null and void, the mere desire for either of them is proof of a shift in our collective mood.

Another recent example of a building that succeeds in startling us with its irrepressible newness is Blue, Bernard Tschumi’s mangled and misshapen colossus in various hues of blue and purple that rises over the intersection of Delancey and Norfolk streets in the heart of the Lower East Side. Now, you might think that any building, especially a small one, would have a hard time asserting itself next to this behemoth. But the recently completed Switch Building, at 109 Norfolk St., manages to do exactly that.

The eastern façade of this six-story residential structure is enlivened by bay windows at each level. From a recessed surface of Galvalume metal panels, these aluminum windows protrude 18 inches in alternation from northeast to southeast in such a way as to create the semblance of a bank of light switches, hence the name. This not only increases, from the inside, the views up and down Norfolk Street. It creates, from the outside, a distinctively textured surface that remains fixed in the memory of anyone who sees it.

The building’s five residential stories rise above an elegantly simple Neomodernist art gallery whose glass façade is shaded by a fine, thin canopy of hot-rolled steel. In the rear of the building, a similarly austere geometric integrity is maintained in glass and steel balconies that pick up the alternating patterns of the front of the building by being set either to the north or south of the façade.

Granted that the switch business of the main façade is something of a gimmick, and granted that the rest of the building remains comfortably within the traditional cubic envelope. Even so, it is refreshing to see that someone is making an effort. The “someone” in question is nArchitects, a young team whose principals are Eric Bunge and Mimi Hoang. This firm is so young and so cutting-edge that, according to its own Web site, it has completed only two other projects to date, both of them more in the nature of installations than of architecture. One of these was Windshape, two spindly towers that were superimposed upon ancient battlements in the south of France and that were meant to shift in the wind. The other was that charming canopy, resembling a massive exercise in wickerwork, that nArchitects unfurled in 2004 across the courtyard of P.S.1 in Queens. To date, it has surely been the most successful contribution to that institution’s annual MoMA/P.S.1 Young Architects Program.

Several blocks west of Blue and the Switch Building, at the point where Delancey, having become Kenmare Street, comes crashing into Lafayette, stands One Kenmare Square, designed by Richard Gluckman of Gluckman Mayner Architects. I reviewed this project about two years ago, when, due to the exigencies of writing, I was seeing it in a less than completed state.

Because this building’s distinctly curving façade aspires to leave a mark on the cityscape, it fits in with a discussion of Blue and the Switch Building, and so I take this opportunity to say that it is somewhat better than I first conceived. Not only does it provide a striking architectural statement at the crucial intersections of Lafayette and Kenmare streets. Seen in profile, its gently winnowing façade resembles the famed Line of Beauty, that undulous, serpentine shape that was so dear to the Mannerists and to William Hogarth. Seen straight on, however, it achieves a compact and understated seriousness that also recalls the dazzling curvacity of Oscar Niemeyer’s Edificio Copan in Sao Paolo, Brazil. And yet, for all that, it works perfectly at the intersection of Kenmare and Lafayette.