Celebrating 125 Years: The Past
RECORD’s Top 125 Buildings: 101-125
BMW Welt | 2007 | Munich | Coop Himmelb(l)au
Photo © Duccio Malagamba, courtesy Coop Himmelb(l)au
Oslo Opera House | 2007 | Oslo | Snøhetta
Photo © Erik Berg, courtesy Den Norske Opera & Ballett
Olympic Sculpture Park | 2007 | Seattle | Weiss/Manfredi
Photo © Benjamin Benschneider, courtesy Seattle Art Museum
Limoges Concert Hall | 2008 | Limoges, France | Bernard Tschumi Architects
Photo courtesy Bernard Tschumi Architects
Ningbo Historic Museum | 2008 | Ningbo, China | Amateur Architecture Studio
Photo © Wikimedia user Siyuwj/Creative Commons
Iberê Camargo Foundation | 2008 | Porto Alegre, Brazil | Alvaro Siza
This may be Siza’s absolute masterpiece. The tension between continuous movement—the dream of so much modernist museum design, as in the Guggenheim—and the need for orthogonal rooms is resolved in one of the richest museum experiences anywhere: interconnected yet restful. The ramping corridors that link one floor to the next are expressed on the facade as distinct elements and are works of intense visual experience. The entrance sequence for the museum is ingeniously engineered into an impossible site, between the riverside highway and a cliff. —Barry Bergdoll
Photo © Felipe Neves/Creative Commons
Cathedral of Christ the Light | 2008 | Oakland | Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
Photo © Cesar Rubio, courtesy SOM
Beijing Capital International Airport, Terminal 3 | 2008 | Beijing | Foster + Partners
Photo © Nigel Young/Foster + Partners
Herning Center of the Arts | 2009 | Herning, Denmark | Steven Holl Architects
Photo © Thomas Mayer, courtesy Steven Holl Architects
Neues Museum | 2009 | Berlin | David Chipperfield Architects
Photo © Ute Zscharnt/courtesy David Chipperfield Architects
MAXXI National Museum of XXI Century Arts | 2010 | Rome | Zaha Hadid Architects
Photo © Iwan Baan
Aqua Tower | 2009 | Chicago | Studio Gang
Photo © Stephen Hall/Hedrich Blessing, courtesy Studio Gang
North Carolina Museum of Art | 2010 | Raleigh | Thomas Phifer and Partners
Photo courtesy North Carolina Museum of Art
Poetry Foundation | 2011 | Chicago | John Ronan Architects
Photo © Steven Hall/Hedrich Blessing, courtesy John Ronan Architects
Burj Khalifa | 2010 | Dubai | Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
More than six years after its opening, SOM’s Burj Khalifa remains the world’s tallest completed skyscraper. The 2,717-foot-high, 163-story building has a tri-lobed plan that makes the tower appear like a stalagmite that grows naturally out of the earth. But the shape is also the product of the integration of architecture and structure: the three wings buttress the central concrete core. This gives way to an internal steel structure at the 156th floor that carries the mostly unoccupied spire to its tip. —Joann Gonchar
Photo courtesy SOM/© Nick Merrick/Hedrich Blessing
International Commerce Centre | 2011 | Hong Kong | Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates
Photo © Tim Griffith, courtesy KPF
Barnes Foundation | 2012 | Philadelphia | Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects
Photo © Tom Crane, courtesy Barnes Foundation
CCTV Headquarters | 2012 | Beijing | OMA
Photo © Ian A Holton/Creative Commons
Heydar Aliyev Centre | 2013 | Baku, Azerbaijan | Zaha Hadid Architects
Here Hadid had a project with enough scope to prove her long-evolving theses about architecture as a topographical field and about the interaction of the building with the ground around it. The building grows from a field highly articulated with ramps, gardens, and pools. By verticalizing its curving plan, the building becomes a mountainous topography of fluid form and space. The design also realizes the promise of the computer as an agent of architectural liquefaction, bending even the technology of the standard space frame into enveloping curves. —Joseph Giovannini
Photo © Helene Binet, courtesy Zaha Hadid Architects
Shenzen Bao’an International Airport, Terminal 3 | 2013 | Shenzhen, China | Studio Fuksas
Photo courtesy Archivo Fuksas/Studio Fuksas
Novartis Building 337 | 2013 | East Hanover, New Jersey | Rafael Viñoly Architects
Photo courtesy Rafael Viñoly Architects
GL Events Headquarters | 2014 | Lyon, France | Studio Odile Decq
Photo © Studio Odile Decq/Roland Halbe
The High Line | 2014 | New York | James Corner Field Operations, Diller Scofidio + Renfro
Photo © Studio Dubuisson
Matmut Atlantique Stadium | 2015 | Bordeaux, France | Herzog & de Meuron
Photo courtesy Herzog & de Meuron Basel
Shanghai Tower | 2015 | Shanghai | Gensler
Photo courtesy Gensler
To commemorate Architectural Record’s 125th anniversary, our editors have chosen to honor 125 of the most important works of architecture built since the magazine’s founding in 1891. This was not an easy task. We started by polling a group of distinguished critics and scholars for nominations, but the final list is ours. While many inclusions are obvious, others may be surprising, or a little controversial—as are some omissions. And, we know, all 125 might not make the list at RECORD's next big birthday: time inevitably changes not only our tastes, but how we understand history.
Click through the slideshow above, and visit the pages below, to see all the buildings on our list.
