Around the world by the urban icons of the XXI century

1Absolute World (Mississauga, Toronto, Canada) The city of Mississauga, developed as a suburb of Toronto, in Canada, is today better known internationally thanks to Absolute World: two residential skyscrapers within the set of five Absolute City Center towers that rotate on their axis twisting up to over 50 plants tall.

They are known as Marilyn Monroe, for their curves.

Her design was chosen in an international contest in which the population was invited to vote, and the winner was announced in another iconic Toronto building, this time from the 20th century: the CN Tower.

They were completed in 2012 and that year they were voted among the best new skyscrapers in the world by the Chicago Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.

David Giral alamy

2The Walt Disney Concert Hall (Los Angeles, USA) The exterior of the Walt Disney Concert Hall, with its extravagant shapes, paneled in stainless steel, trademark of the Frank Gehry house, has been found to resemble a ship with the Puffed candles, with a budding flower, with a piece of origami.

Those who have lived a musical evening in the undulating interior of Douglas fir walls and ceilings of their main room liken the experience to being inside a cello.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic headquarters, made possible by an initial donation of $ 50 million from Lillian Disney, widow of the cartoon mogul for whom she is named, opened in 2003. Al Seib getty images

3Seattle Central Library (Washington, USA) Experts say that the great merit of the Seattle Central Library, in Washington, is to have redefined its role “as an institution dedicated not exclusively to books, but as a store of information where all the powerful media forms, new or old, are presented equally and legibly ”(the quote is from WikiArquitectura).

Formally, the building that established the career of architect Rem Koolhaas sports futuristic lines, a steel and glass facade as an exterior face and an interior design in the form of superimposed boxes, with a spiral structure covered with bookshelves.

The year of its opening (2004) it received 2.3 million visitors.

Education Images getty images

4Torre Mayor in Mexico City (Mexico) In Mexico City they compare their Torre Mayor (the skyscraper on the left, in the photo), built in 2003, with what the Empire State means for New York.

Mexicans agree that this 225-meter, 55-story tall skyscraper, designed by Canadian Paul Reichmann, has been key in the rebirth of Paseo de la Reforma, due to its innovation and its own location, that of the old Chapultepecl cinema.

Although taller and more modern buildings have grown around it, this tower, considered one of the safest in the world (even during its construction, where there were no serious accidents or deaths), has already remained an icon of the city.

Sergio Mendoza Hochmann getty images

5Peking National Stadium (China) Beijing National Stadium, also known as Bird's Nest, was the star architectural dish of the 2008 Olympic Games. It hosted the opening and closing ceremonies, athletics events, the final of the football, and the Paralympic Games that year.

Its spectacular network of interlaced metal mesh, designed by the Swiss Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron (2001 Pritzker Architecture Prize winner), became the center of attention for visitors, cameras and flashes from all over the world.

Side b of the project speaks of its enormous cost and its little use since then.

In 2012, a headline in 'The Guardian' described it as an "empty monument of China's magnificence."

Best View Stock getty images

6Guangzhou Opera House (China) Guangzhou, the Chinese capital of electronics, wanted to stage its flourishing, modernity and cultural development with an imposing building, the Opera House, signed by Zaha Hadid and completed in 2010. Conceived, according to description from the renowned architect's own studio (who died in 2016), as two twin pebbles, eroded, "in perfect harmony with its location by the river."

If on the outside everything is a fluid dialogue between architecture and nature, on the inside the latest technology reigns, in the auditorium, with 1,800 seats, and in a smaller room, with 400 seats, designed, among other functions, for artistic 'performances' .

Bildagentur Prism Getty Images

7Yokohama International Maritime Passenger Terminal (Japan) In 1995, the design of the then young couple of architects Alejandro Zaera and Farshid Moussavi, at the head of Foreign Office Architects (FOA), based in London, won the competition to make the Japan's largest maritime terminal in Yokohama, the second most populous city in the country after Tokyo.

The project, which had won out over 660 other proposals from 41 countries, took eight years to materialize, and was not inaugurated until 2002. A beautiful and undulating landscape, on the edge of the bay, that flows between land and sea, eliminating the limits between the two, something that, according to the experts, is one of its greatest benefits.

yuriz getty images

8Museum of Contemporary Art Siglo XXI de Kanazawa (Japan) What is most striking about the Museum of Contemporary Art Siglo XXI de Kanazawa, Japan, is that its circular shape eliminates any reference to the front and back, and invites you to begin an exploration free at any point on its perimeter.

It has glass walls and five doors open to all directions.

It began operating in 2004 to exhibit experimental contemporary art.

It is the brainchild of the architectural couple formed by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, founders of SANAA studio and 2010 Pritzker architecture winners. Aldo Pavan getty images

9 Sendai Media Library (Japan) Since it opened in 2001, the Japanese city of Sendai Media Library, a multi-storey glass container spanned by a series of tubular structures protruding from the ceiling, has been a focus of international attraction.

The idea of ​​a transparent, open and fluid space, which users define according to their needs, is materialized above all through what is not in the design created by the Japanese Pritzker winner Toyo Ito: neither beams nor walls nor bedrooms.

The institution installed in the building defines it as "an architecture that blurs the boundaries between inside and outside, interpreters and audiences, as well as service providers and users."

View Pictures getty images

10Hotel Marina Bay (Singapore) One of the icons of Singapore, the Marina Bay hotel, open since 2010, displays all its Asian luxury over the bay, within the Marina Bay Sands, which is a complex of buildings crowned by three hotel towers of 55 plants each, supported on which rests a single platform as an open terrace with a panoramic pool, which gives the whole a certain air of a three-prong comb.

There is also a convention and exhibition center, a shopping center, an art and science museum, two theaters, six restaurants, two floating pavilions and an impressive casino.

All built on 20 hectares of land and designed by Moshe Safdie Architects.

fiftymm99 getty images

11Burj Khalifa (Dubai, United Arab Emirates) Opened on January 4, 2010, the Burj Khalifa, the top of a two-square-kilometer complex built next to Sheikh Zayed Avenue in Dubai, is the tallest building at 828 meters of the world;

also one of the most photographed.

Its design evokes the structure of the 'hymenocallis', a desert flower that inspired Adrian Smith, architect of the tower.

It comprises 1.85 million square feet of residential space and 300,000 square feet for offices, plus lounges, health and wellness facilities, four swimming pools, two observation decks, the Armani Hotel Dubai and Armani Residences (luxury apartments and flats) .

Tom Dulat Getty Images

12Museum of Islamic Art of Doha (Qatar) When in December 2008 the Museum of Islamic Art of Doha opened, located on an artificial island at one end of the bay, Ángeles Espinosa greeted it from EL PAÍS as a “jewel in the crown of a Sheikh Hamad al Thani's ambitious plan to turn his country into a cultural center of the Middle East.

The building, which explores Islamic art across three continents and 1,400 years of history, is the work of the American architect Ieoh Ming Pei, who, upon receiving the commission, dedicated himself to traveling the world knowing the masterpieces of Islamic architecture .

He landed in Spain by the Alhambra in Granada, but finally came to light when he discovered the simplicity of the geometric shapes of the Mosque of Ibn Tulun in Cairo.

Nadine Rupp Getty Images

13Royal Opera House in Copenhagen (Denmark) The Danish national opera house, considered one of the most modern (and expensive) in the world, occupies 41,000 square meters, and five of its fourteen floors are underground.

In reality, the Royal Opera House in Copenhagen is made up of two venues: the old one, which has been left for concerts and Baroque works, and the modern building, inaugurated in 2005, clad in Jura Gelb limestone from southern Germany and Sicilian marble.

the ceiling of the main auditorium is adorned with 105,000 sheets of 24-karat gold leaf (kilo and a half of gold in total).

It is a donation from the AP Møller Foundation and Chastine McKinney Møller to the Danish people, and was designed by the Danish architect Henning Larsen.

Tim Graham Getty Images

14BMW Welt (Munich, Germany) They say from BMW that the BMW Welt (BMW World), inaugurated in 2007 in Munich next to the headquarters of the automobile group and opposite the Olympic Park, “unites past and present under one roof”.

This elegant futuristic building is an impressive dealership with a vehicle exhibition (including motorcycles and Formula 1) and rooms for organizing conferences and cultural events.

It has become a tourist attraction in the German city, with numerous visitors coming to see the latest launches of the brand and visit its museum or factory.

It has a space for children, restaurants, bars and an auditorium.

Walter Bibikow getty images

15The Agora of the City of Arts and Sciences of Valencia (Spain) At the end of 2009, the Agora of the City of Arts and Sciences of Valencia was inaugurated, without being finished, the impressive 70-meter-high construction conceived like a large covered plaza, between the Principe Felipe Science Museum and the Oceanographic.

It has taken a decade to close its cover which, contrary to what the original project indicated, no longer consists of movable slats.

With its modernity and avant-garde lights and its shadows of cost overruns and underutilization, the Agora and, by extension, the entire City of Arts and Sciences designed by the architect Santiago Calatrava, have forever changed the urban orography of the city.

The building will host the future CaixaForum València, which is scheduled to open in 2022. Prisma by Dukas Presseagentur GmbH alamy

16Setas de Sevilla (Spain) The Metropol Parasol project, officially renamed Setas de Sevilla after its opening, shades the Plaza de la Encarnación, and is the largest wooden structure in the world: 150 meters long, 70 meters wide and 28.5 meters high.

And several levels: the Antiquarium Museum in the basement;

the food market and a shopping area at street level;

a diaphanous space of 3,500 square meters, five meters high, called Plaza Mayor.

Above it, six parasols, connected to each other, in curved shapes crown the structure and form a path of walkways with a viewpoint at its highest point from which you get beautiful views of the city center, and that was the last part to be inaugurated in 2011. alejandro ruesga

17The Gherkin (London, United Kingdom) If you are walking through the City, ask a Londoner to tell you how to get to 30 St Mary Ax, and notice that he doubts, ask him better about The Gherkin, literally The Gherkin, which is like, Due to its shape, this iconic neo-futurist skyscraper is popularly known, the first green skyscraper to be built in London, which rises 180 meters high and 40 floors above the financial heart of the British capital.

It was designed by architect Norman Foster and his longtime partner, Ken Shuttleworth, and was officially opened in spring 2004. Alexander Spatari getty images

18Harpa (Reykjavik, Iceland) During 2008 and 2009, the economic crisis paralyzed the Harpa building project, which was finally inaugurated in 2011, and in 2013 it received the Mies van der Rohe Award.

Home to the Icelandic Opera and Symphony Orchestra, this concert and conference center has become one of Reykjavik's great icons.

It is located on the shores of the Kollafjörður fjord, "on the border between land and sea" according to the description of the design that emerged from the collaboration of the architecture studio Henning Larsen Architects and the artist Olafur Eliasson.

It has been defined as a "great sculpture" that reflects the sky and the port space of the Icelandic capital.

ullstein bild getty images

19MAXXI National Museum of the Arts of the XXI Century in Rome (Italy) To plant a National Museum of the Arts of the XXI Century in no less than Rome, where layers and more layers of history come to the visitor's path almost at every corner, it was necessary to do it big.

At least that is what the Ministry for Cultural Assets and Activities thought, which commissioned the architect Zaha Hadid to set up a headquarters “in innovative and spectacular forms” for MAXXI in the Flaminio neighborhood.

Some 29,000 square meters of curvilinear walls, different heights and multiple environments in a succession of galleries illuminated by natural light.

Since 2010, and with the permission of the Colosseum, the Eternal City is open to contemporary architecture.

View Pictures getty images

20The Mercury City Tower (Moscow, Russia) The Mercury City Tower, which was completed in 2013, lost two years later that kind of architecture race of the tallest still in Europe.

It is an impressive 338.80-meter skyscraper in the Moscow International Business Center (in the photo, the slim copper-colored tower), which has surpassed other European cities such as Paris or London in number of mega-constructions.

Some people compare it to a flagpole with its flag unfurled, or to a great stairway to heaven.

Those who have seen it live say that its copper-colored glazing gives it a fantastic appearance when the sun shines on its facade, on the banks of the Moskova River.

Dzmitrock87 getty images