Julie Iovine, the Wall Street Journal's architecture critic, cites Barclays Center as one of the top achievements in architecture this year, saying the excitement of bringing a professional sports team to Brooklyn is matched by the arena's design. In particular, she writes about the building exterior and the oculus.

The architects animated a very basic arena form, covering it with rusted steel panels—thousands of them, each one slightly different in size—turning something ponderous, dynamic. In a bold gesture at street level, a swooping oculus projects out over the subway and commuter train stairs.

Meanwhile, Norman Oder, critic and chronicler of Barclays Center and Atlantic Yards, writes about how the oculus, the arene's defining feature, was more or less an afterthought once a plan to build a Frank Gehry-designed skycraper at Atlantic and Flatbush had to be postponed, maybe even abandoned.

• Zaha Hadid, Farshid Moussavi, Louis Kahn and the Best of 2012 in Architecture - Julie M. Iovine - Wall Street Journal
• The plaza view of the arena was never planned- Norman Oder - Atlantic Yards Report