Best Buildings Of The Decade (PHOTOS, POLL)

Every decade brings with it new buildings that stir the imagination and push the limits of what was sought possible in terms of design. In the slideshow below we take a look at 10 of the best buildings to be constructed (if not entirely finished) over the course of the last decade. Vote for your favorite, and let us know in the comments what other architectural visions deserve a place on the list.

Beijing National Stadium, Beijing (2008)

The "bird's nest" was the architectural highlight of the 2008 Olympics. The lines on the outside are based upon traditional Chinese ceramic patterns. However, despite costing over $420 million, the building has been largely redundant since 2008. Designed by Herzog and de Meuron, Ai Weiwei.

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Comments

[savvysearch]

11:20 PM on 01/17/2010

Disney Hall should have made the list. Best building in the US. It's whimsical, optimistic, and impressive, and has a sense of enjoyment and humour.

I disagree that Moneo's cathedral is uninteresting. It's deceptively simple but the interior space is magnificent and dare I say, it's even more interesting to look at than Disney Hall.

[Jose Luis]

08:39 PM on 12/28/2009

While I agree that the Walt Disney Concert Hall is a greater marvel than the Cathedral, I disagree that it's that horrible. It is a bold and striking structure that maybe not all can appreciate, but it's still magnificent in it's own right.

[10028]

07:27 PM on 12/27/2009

This is a disappointing list. It is simply the most published buildings of the last 10 years from the architecture magazines, which for the last 50 years have focused on "avant garde" objects. It ignores that we are in an environmental and economic crisis that requires better place making and less ideological modernism. In a nutshell, we need walkable and sustainable cities, towns and neighborhoods, while the buildings on the list are object buildings that make us say "Wow."

Rem Koolhaas has admitted that his buildings look silly if you put them all together in a photoshopped collage. Why? Because they have so much emphasis on being different that they are incapable of combining to make places bigger than one building. If we are going to lower our carbon footprints (far and away the biggest per capita in the world) we need places that will make us want to get out of our cars and live more urban lives (even if that "urban life" is in a walkable small town with a railroad to an employment center, aka a "city"). Most of the buildings here fight against that.

[PresidentRobertBooth]

01:16 PM on 12/23/2009

Allianz Arena

[maryt5]

09:21 AM on 12/21/2009

What about the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao?

[dpmol]

06:24 PM on 12/27/2009

these polls are idiotic

[kcinpa]

11:31 PM on 12/20/2009

Note to author regarding the Burj Dubai. This building is slated to open Jan 2010. The decade does not end until Dec 31st 2010.

[linzybel]

07:32 PM on 12/20/2009

I've seen the current top two - not far apart in Beijing - and I thought the Water Cube was cooler than both of them.

[zozazumi]

04:41 PM on 12/20/2009

Glass and steel, glass and steel. The only way modern architects can create identifiable buildings is to bend, twist, and angle. To me, they're all sterile, with no sense of welcome, character, or artistic merit. At street level they present bland faces that urge pedestrians to keep moving, nothing to see here.

[truenortherner]

05:40 PM on 12/22/2009

Agreed, They're all just modern versions of fascist architecture ... lacking human scale or sensibilities.

[deluk]

04:27 PM on 12/20/2009

Hmmm the Millenium Dome (London) cost 74 million dollars? If only, it cost £740 million pounds, (1,500 million dollars approx) There are better, far cheaper new buildings in London.

[Scruffyboo2]

03:36 PM on 12/20/2009

Re the building Cathedral of our Lady of Angels in Los Angeles. It says that the building has moved Catholic architecture into the 21 century ... too bad Catholic ideas couldn't have made the trip also.

[Jose Luis]

08:24 PM on 12/28/2009

I think the Walt Disney Concert Hall is a better building than the Church.

[joefoss]

01:08 PM on 12/20/2009

What about that neat-looking Gehry building at M.I.T.?

[brooklyncitizen]

12:25 PM on 12/20/2009

Typical that only male architects made this list- they still dominate the field of Architecture, though I'm sure there were plenty of female team members charetting on these projects.

What about Zaha Hadid's BMW Central Factory in Leipzig? Instead we get the redundancy of phallic architecture by SOM and Foster...ugh.

Also very male is perspective of architecture as object rather than space. THe whole point to Architecture is the spatial composition contained by an envelope .

As objects and spaces however Rem Koolhas never disappoints- and Gehry's buildings are always exciting sculpture. Haven't seen Moneo's Cathedral but his spaces are usually beautiful and poetic as is his choice of material.

[BlueDemon508]

05:14 PM on 12/21/2009

Indeed where is Zaha Hadid? I think she does really important work.

[joefoss]

12:01 PM on 12/20/2009

=To the untutored eye, at first sight, it's remarkable how "ugly" many of these buildings are. How their designers have ignored, if not consciously abandoned, long-standing architectural/aesthetic principles, such as harmony and balance, not to mention "form follows function"--think Saarinen's soaring TWA building at JFK, which, itself, looks like it's about to fly!
=But, on further viewing, the shapes assume a new meaning (post-aesthetic?). They're proud, defiant,
individualistic--even "beautiful"?--because they are unique in creating their own definition of what "looks good"!

[truenortherner]

05:49 PM on 12/22/2009

The beauty of architecture, like all things artistic, is in the eye of the beholder. I am opposed to the 'untutored eye' concept, it speaks to a form of elitism.
I believe beauty is an opinion based on personal values and aesthetic preferences. Education in the arts allows one to speak to the reasons they find this or that beautiful, and to appreciate the expression behind the art.

[co-sine]

11:22 AM on 12/20/2009

Prince Charles commenting on the Venturi annex to the National Gallery in London. "A monstrous carbuncle." More biting, Frank Gehry's Experience Music Project on the grounds of the Seattle World's Fair beneath it's most famous landmark, "look's like the Space Needle threw up." Everyone's a critic.

[Amalek]

10:04 AM on 12/20/2009

There is cross country skiing inside the Bird's Nest today.