Once a decaying industrial city, Bilbao took on new verve with this stunning composition for a Guggenheim Museum on a former derelict industrial site. Gehry’s creation drew 1.3 million visitors to northern Spain in its first year. It also spawned countless imitators worldwide, all of whom sought to emulate its popularity, aptly dubbed the Bilbao effect. Seen in this light, this design achieved immediate cult status and will be remembered as one of the 1990s most influential ad impressive buildings. (more…)

Britain’s first public art gallery was crated thanks to the will of Sir Francis Bourgeois, who bequeathed his private collection to the public in 1811, together with a request that his friend Sir John Soane design it. The picture gallery opened in 1817. Soane’s design has since become the inspiration for a number of museums and galleries worldwide. (more…)

Sir John Soane’s House is a magical, labyrinthine space and a must-visit for anyone with an interest in design, architecture, arcane history, and the illusions that can be played with light, shade, and mirrors. The building is situated in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the largest public square in London. (more…)

With his smooth-skinned, highly engineered, and perfectly finished buildings, Norman Foster introduced the High-Tech Modernism of the United States to his native England. Early projects were two buildings in the unlikely setting of East Anglia: first, the curvy, curtain-walled Willis Faber offices in Ipswich, and then this, the University of East Anglia. (more…)

This project is located on the outskirts of Fort Worth, Texas, in the centre of large park, adjacent to one of the masterworks of ht 20th century, the Kimbell Art Museum by Louis Kahn. Naturally, the major challenge of the design was to provide a harmonious relationship between itself and Kimbell’s. (more…)

After the dramatic earthquake that took place in 1995, the authorities of Hyogo prefecture and those of the city of Kobe proposed the reconstruction of the oceanfront of the city as a symbol of the physical and moral recovery of the community. This symbol is located to the east of the city, at one end of the harbour where important iron and steel industries stood. (more…)