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The best buildings in the world.
A tour through the best recent architecture. From Herzog & de Meuron’s Bird’s Nest to Peter Zumthor’s Brunder Klaus Chapel, through Renzo Piano’s Academy of Sciences.
According to the critics, they are the twelve most important buildings constructed in recent years. In the midst of the world financial crisis, which has left its mark on construction, there stand a dozen dazzling architectural jewels that range from the grandiose to the humble.
The first category includes the stadium designed by the Swiss architects, Herzog & de Meuron, a skein of steel named 'Bird’s Nest', which surprised the world in the inauguration ceremony of the Chinese Olympic Games. Next to it, the swimming pools by PTW Architects, a crystalline prism baptised ‘Water Cube’.
Meanwhile, in northern Europe, shine the Snohetta opera house in Oslo (Sweden), with its sculptural volumes, and the auditorium, in the shape of a translucent blue cube designed by the French architect, Jean Nouvel, in Copenhagen (Denmark).
In this new global shift towards the sustainable and the social, stands the library, ‘Biblioteca España’, in the Columbian city of Medellin, the work of the Italian architect, Giancarlo Mazzanti, which seeks to be a driving force behind the regeneration of the city. All of which without forgetting the complex, Espacio de las Artes, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, designed by Herzog & de Meuron.
In the area of sustainability, Renzo Piano, a leading name in global architecture, is responsible for designing the Academy of Sciences in San Franciso (USA), which is set in Golden Gate Park and it is a declaration of love for sustainable construction.
Glass vertigo
Within this green trend, Seoul’s Women’s University, designed by the French architect, Dominique Perrault, a green passageway that plays with glass curtain walls, also draws one’s attention.
On his part, the American, David Chipperfield, has brought back to life the most damaged building in World War II of all those standing in Berlin’s Museum Island.
In this exclusive tour there is also room for Spanish architects like Nieto & Sobejano, and Francisco Mangado. The first have recuperated a 16th century castle, in semi-ruins since the 17th century, buried deep in the heart of Halle (Germany).
Closer to home, in Zaragoza, with his mind on the International Expo ‘Water and Sustainable Development’, Mangado erected a forest of ceramic columns that takes us back to Classical times.
The last building is by the Swiss, Peter Zumthor, master of masters and winner of the Pritzker prize, who has constructed a humble chapel in Mechernich (Germany) using concrete and burnt timber. The chapel has an open oculus at the top to let in rain and light.
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Published in Finances and Services by Miguel Ángel García Vega on 17/06/2010
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