The Best Architecture of the 21st Century

1. Main image: From left: Gando School, Sala Beckett, Elbphilharmonie, Casa de Musica Composite: n/a
Mon 16 Sep 2019 16.03 BST
25
Cineroleum, London, UK 2010
There have been few moments of architectural theatre as strange and wonderful as the
Cineroleum, a temporary cinema erected in a disused petrol station on Clerkenwell Road one
summer. The moment of brilliance came when, at the end of each screening, the silvery Tyvek
curtain walls of the auditorium were unexpectedly whisked up, leaving the audience exposed on
the side of a busy main road for all passing traffic to see. Fun handmade details included
decorative ceiling tiles vacuum-formed on site and intricate Formica marquetry tables and stools,
setting the tone for Assemble collectives’s signature low-cost craft. Read more here.
24
Children Village, Canuanã School, Brazil 2017
Providing elemental shelter on a heroic scale, the Children Village – by Aleph Zero with Marcelo
Rosenbaum – is a model of architectural ingenuity in a remote rural region of Brazil. Offering
boarding accommodation for 540 pupils, the two identical buildings each consist of a vast roof,
stretching 165 metres by 65 metres, supported on a forest of slender wooden columns above a
village of freestanding dormitory rooms, built of mud bricks dug from the site. The little rooms
are designed with perforated, breathable walls, allowing natural cross-ventilation, and are
connected by an upper level of wooden walkways and play decks, creating an airy veranda with
the feeling of a meandering treehouse. Read more here.
23
Muzeum Susch, Switzerland 2019
A flying roof, a bamboo airport, a marooned galleon and a park in the sky
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2. Alpine chalet, primitive grotto and Bond villain’s lair in one, Voellmy Schmidlin’s Muzeum Susch
is one of the most unusual and evocative spaces for art that has been built in recent years. It is
located on the site of a 12th-century monastery in a rambling complex of buildings that formerly
housed a vicarage, hospice and brewery, supplemented by a series of dramatic subterranean
spaces that have been dynamited out of the mountainside. Combining local vernacular
techniques with crisp new additions, the young architects have created a magical place where the
historic fabric, contemporary art and raw geology of the landscape collide. Read more here.
22
Bait Ur Rouf Mosque, Dhaka, Bangladesh 2012
Tucked into the corner of a city block in the dense Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka, this little brick
mosque by Marina Tabassum is a poetic essay on how natural light can be used to maximum
effect. Formed from a square concrete pavilion that is surrounded by a cylindrical brick drum, in
turn enclosed in a perforated brick cube, the gaps between the geometries allow shafts of light to
wash over the walls from above, while the ceiling of the central prayer hall is punctured by a
constellation of holes that cast a mesmerising dappled pattern across the bare floor.
21
Blue House, London, UK 2002
On a side street in Hackney, standing like a clapboard billboard, the Blue House by FAT signalled
the revival of wit, humour and reference in architecture, coming as a bold breath of fresh air in the
early 00s, when postmodernism was still a dirty word. A literal interpretation of a live-work
building, its facade combines the iconography of an office block and a suburban home as a stage-
set cutout, masking a complex interior that nods to Venturi Scott Brown and Adolf Loos, with
winding stairs, window seats and carefully layered spaces. Read more here.
Mesmerising pattern … the prayer hall at Bait ur Rouf Mosque Dhaka,
Bangladesh. Photograph: Sandro di Carlo Darsa/MTA

3. 20
Teshima Art Museum, Japan 2010
A cosmic bubble of white concrete bulging out of the ground, the Teshima Art Museum by Ryue
Nishizawa is less a museum than an art installation. Visitors enter the space shoeless, through a
narrow funnel, to be swallowed by a dreamy white world where the 25cm-thick concrete shell
forms a vast 40 metre x 60 metre cave lit by two oval apertures. A site-specific work by artist Rei
Naito sees droplets of water seep through the ground from tiny springs, forming glistening
rivulets that trickle across the floor. Soft, sensual minimalism at its most distilled.
19
Gando School, Burkina Faso 2001 12
The “rural high-tech” school buildings Francis Kéré has built in his home village of Gando, 125
miles south-east of Burkina Faso’s capital of Ouagadougou, stand as a compelling, climate-
conscious alternative to steel, glass and air-conditioning. Kéré designed the primary school while
he was a student in Germany, and it embodies his low-energy, low-cost principles: a pair of simple
rectangular volumes made of mud bricks, crowned with a “flying roof” of vaulted corrugated
metal, providing extra shade and encouraging air flow. A model of gadget-free ecological
elegance. Read more here.
Cave … Teshima Art Museum, Japan Photograph: Isabel Choat
Calming … Madrid Barajas Airport, Spain. Photograph: Anthony
Weller/View/Rex/Shutterstock

4. 18
Madrid Barajas Airport, Spain 2005
Richard Rogers achieved a rare thing in Madrid: creating an airport that doesn’t make you
desperate to escape. From its gently undulating bamboo ceiling, to its forest of rainbow-coloured
branching columns, to the large circular openings that bring daylight deep into its lower levels,
itprovides a soothing balm for the stresses of international travel. Designed with Estudio Lamela,
it has a calming quality that is hard to convey in photographs, from the soft acoustic to the
merciful lack of fluorescent lighting.
17
Beijing National Stadium, China 2008
The most dazzling Olympic stadium of modern
times, Herzog & de Meuron’s Beijing Bird’s Nest
is far more sophisticated than simply a symbol
of China’s emerging nationalist might. Created
with Ai Weiwei, its taut latticework shell of
crisscrossing columns and beams creates a
beguiling space between the pitch and the
plaza outside, a Piranesian world of dramatic
flying staircases and secluded corners, washed
by a feverish play of light and shadows. The
open structure allows crowds to filter in from
all sides, drawing people into the atmospheric
glade of tilting steel trunks, a world apart from
the usual cattle-herding arena infrastructure.
Read more here.
16
Bruder Klaus Field chapel,
Mechernich, Germany
2007
This is the ultimate in elemental shrines by the architect’s architect, the reclusive mountain-
dwelling mystic Peter Zumthor. An enigmatic concrete tower stands in a field, with a layered,
sedimentary texture, as if hewn from the Earth. Walk through a triangular opening and you find a
gnarled, blackened cave that tapers to a teardrop roof light. It is the product of a suitably witchy
ritual: concrete was cast over a pyramidal pyre of tree trunks, then the wood was burned out from
within. The result is wonderfully primal. Read more here.
The Bird’s Nest. Photograph: AFP

5. 15
Peckham Library, London, UK 2000
Standing on the edge of a square as a bright green inverted L-shape crowned with a jaunty orange
beret, the Peckham Library by Will Alsop summed up an era of millennial optimism. It features a
double-height reading room raised on the architect’s trademark wonky columns, with a seductive
interior landscape of curvaceous wooden pods on angled stilts. It captured the public imagination
and had the desired effect of attracting younger readers: the library welcomes three times the
borough’s average of 15- to 17-year-old members. Read more here.
14
Xiangshan Campus, China Academy of Art, Hangzhou
2002 13
A poetic rallying cry for craft in the face of China’s rapid urbanisation, the Xiangshan Campus has
a timeless air. Nestled in a bucolic landscape on the edge of Hangzhou, the 20 buildings for
studying, working and living fuse ancient traditions of Chinese architecture with a strikingly
modern outlook, reusing more than 2m salvaged tiles and bricks from the site to form a richly
textured collage of materials, combining finely crafted timber elements with rugged, rough-cast
concrete. Designed by Amateur Architecture Studio, it marked the emergence of a new vernacular
that the country’s younger generation of architects have since embraced. Read more here.
13
Sala Beckett, Barcelona, Spain 2014
An ingenious reworking of a 1920s workers’ club into a new theatre, the Sala Beckett shows how
adaptive reuse can be a magical art form and how materials can be mined from a site and
redeployed with added value. Think John Soane meets Gordon Matta-Clark. Architects Flores y
Prats conducted an exhaustive archaeological survey of every element of the building before
taking their chainsaw and scalpel to remake it in the most exquisite bricolage, crafting a place that
revels in the layers of history once latent in the site. Read more here.
Captured the public imagination… Peckham library, south London.
Photograph: Martin Godwin/The Guardian

6. 12
Fuji Kindergarten, Tokyo, Japan 2007
’Tezuka Architects’ Fuji Kindergarten puts a wild sense of fun at the centre of its design.
Conceived as a great doughnut with a playground deck on the roof through which climbable tree
trunks poke, it is designed to encourage freeform learning. Sliding doors allow the classrooms to
be opened up to the playground, while gargoyles channel rainwater, creating waterfalls for kids to
play in during wet weather. The kind of building that makes you wish you were four again. Read
more here.
11
Quinta Monroy housing, Iquique, Chile 2004
When the budget to rehouse 100 squatter families didn’t stretch to cover them all, Elemental
decided to build them each half a house – and let the occupants finish the rest themselves,
according to their needs. The terraced design provided a basic concrete frame, with kitchen,
bathroom and a roof, allowing residents to fill in the gaps and stamp their own identity on their
homes in the process. The value of the properties has since increased five-fold, while the model
has been rolled out in different forms across South America. Read more here.
10
Playground deck … Fuji Kindergarten. Photograph: Katsuhisa
Kida/Fototeca
Half of a good house ... the Quinta Monroy housing project in
Iquique, Chile. Photograph: Cristobal Palma

7. Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Germany 2016
Like a great glass galleon marooned atop an old brick warehouse on Hamburg’s waterfront, the
Elbphilharmonie by Herzog & de Meuron is a project of pharaonic proportions. More than seven
years late and 10 times over budget, it finally proved to be worth the pain. It stands as an ocean
liner of architectural virtuosity, with an eye-watering level of bespoke craftsmanship that few
other buildings of the century can match. From the curved escalator-ride entrance sequence
through a spangle-studded tunnel to the hand-blown glass lamps and coral-like surface of the
auditorium, it is a camp temple of wonder. Read more here.
9
UTEC university campus, Lima, Peru 2015
Built with the muscular solidity of a building from another era, Grafton Architects’ new campus
for UTEC university has the raw mineral heft of a geological formation. Huge concrete fins march
along the spine of the building, supporting laboratories and classrooms and rising up on either
side of a nave-like void that provides a social route through the complex. Heroic yet intimate, its
aerial ballet of staggered terraces and flying walkways creates an enticing network of open-air
spaces to sit and meet, embracing the outdoor possibilities of the local climate. Read more here.
8
Vasconcelos Library and Botanical Gardens, Mexico
City, Mexico 2007
Going to look for a book has never been so thrilling. Walking into the lofty hall of Alberto Kalach’s
Vasconcelos Library, it’s impossible not to be awed by the hanging stacks of shelves that climb
either side, forming a vertiginous Blade Runner metropolis of books. This deep, multilevel canyon
is crisscrossed by gantries, cantilevered staircases and projecting platforms, while reading areas
enjoy natural light at the edges of the building, with views of the lush botanical gardens. One of
the most exhilarating interiors of the century.
7
Casa da Música, Porto, Portugal 2005
Heft … Grafton Architects’ UTEC in Lima. Photograph: Iwan Baan

8. Looking like a faceted concrete meteorite that crash-landed on the edge of a roundabout in Porto,
the Casa da Música by OMA is one of the most spirited cultural buildings of the century. Its
cascading aluminium stairs draw you into a world of twisting spatial drama, where a public route
spirals up around the central auditorium, offering views through rippling glass walls. It feels
intimate and grand in turns, decked out with a punk collage of materials from gold-leafed timber
to traditional handpainted Portuguese tiles and surrounded by an undulating piazza that has
become a skateboarders’ nirvana. Read more here.
6
21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa,
Japan 2004
Few projects embody Japanese architecture’s quest for ethereal lightness as successfully as this
miniature city of art, designed by Sanaa. A wafer-thin halo hovers over a complex of different-
sized galleries and community facilities housed in discreet cubic pavilions, arranged on a street-
like grid and forming a jumbled labyrinth through which visitors may drift. Punctuated by open
courtyards, the little village of white cubes is enclosed in a diaphanous bubble of glass, providing
constant connection with landscape outside. It is built with a delicacy and precision rarely
matched elsewhere.
5
High Line, New York, US 2009 14
No landscape project has spawned as many imitators as the High Line, the transformation of an
abandoned elevated railway into a public park along the west side of Manhattan’s Meatpacking
District by James Corner Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Its true power lies in
providing visitors with a different perspective of the city, allowing people to float above the
congested streets on a linear green lung with unexpected views along the way. It’s almost too
Perspective … New York’s High Line park. Photograph: Busà
Photography/Getty Images

9. popular for its own good, having become a teeming tourist trap and unintentionally catalysed the
rapid gentrification of the surrounding area. Read more here.
4
Seattle Central Library, US 2004
A teetering stack of terraces enclosed in an angular fishnet stocking of steel and glass, OMA’s
Seattle Central Library is one of the most inventive public buildings in the US. Reasserting the
importance of books at a time when their future is in doubt, it is a living hymn to the Dewey
Decimal Classification system: the collection is arranged on a continuous spiral ramp, while
generous public spaces offer dizzying views through gaping atria with the feeling of being on a
ship’s deck. Open, daring and democratic, it is a brilliant model for the 21st-century urban library.
3
Neues Museum, Berlin, Germany 2009
A masterful thesis in how to treat a war-ravaged building, the Neues Museum is a tour de force of
restoration, repair and bold new addition. Built in 1855 and heavily bombed during the second
world war, the building was brought back to life by David Chipperfield and Julian Harrap using
painstakingly restored murals and mosaics along with new insertions that echo the old. Where
there was nothing left to restore, new elements were introduced in a stripped-back form, most
notably the magnificent central stairwell. It marked the first chapter of Chipperfield’s ongoing
work on Berlin’s Museum Island, recently joined by the Parthenon-like James Simon Gallery. Read
more here.
2
Grand Parc, Bordeaux, France, 2016
While UK councils continue to bulldoze “failed” postwar housing estates, French architects
Lacaton & Vassal have shown how new life can be breathed into ailing concrete tower blocks.
Grand Parc is the most substantial example to date of their philosophy: “Never demolish, never
remove or replace, always add, transform and reuse!” The project – with Frédéric Druot and
Christophe Hutin – saw three 1960s blocks wrapped with a new skin, extending the flats by four
metres and adding full-height windows, all on a budget of just €65,000 per home and without the
residents having to move. It is a model for how thousands of such buildings around the world
could be improved, rather than razed. Read more here.
‘Always add, transform and reuse’ ... Grand Parc, Bordeaux, by
Lacaton & Vassal, Frédéric Druot and Christophe Hutin. Photograph:
Philippe Ruault

10. 1
Tate Modern, London, UK 2000
The mother of all loft conversions, Tate Modern was one of the world’s most breathtaking public
buildings when it opened at the very start of the millennium, and it remains so today. The then-
unknown Swiss duo of Herzog & de Meuron excavated a captivating sequence of spaces out of
Giles Gilbert Scott’s colossal 1950s power station, from the momentous sloping entrance into the
gaping turbine hall, to the processional routes through the airy galleries. Finely tuned to the spirit
of the place, it set the bar for the imaginative reuse of industrial infrastructure for the next two
decades – and, most likely, for the rest of the century. Read more here.
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Breathtaking … Tate Modern, London. Photograph: Mood
Board/Rex/Shutterstock

11. Topics
Best culture of the 21st century
Tate Modern
Social housing
Museums
Regeneration
Libraries
Universities
features