Famous / Popular / Great / World : Building

Austrian architecture practice Coop Himmelb(l)au has completed the Dalian International Conference Center in China. Located by the harbour in the city of Dalian (located in the southernmost part of the Liaodong Peninsula in the Liaoning Province), the building features a sweeping, faceted facade and, on the inside, a 1600-seat theatre and concert hall, a primary conference room for up to 2500 delegates (that can be turned into a banqueting hall, an exhibition gallery or extra seating for the concert hall), and six additional conference spaces whose capacity varies between 300 and 600 seats…

The Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs, Ark., The small but soaring glass and cross-braced pine chapel, designed by the late E. Fay Jones, the 1990 AIA Gold Medalist, nestles into an eight-acre woodland setting on a sloping hillside in the Ozark Mountains. It stands 48 feet with 24-foot-wide by 60-foot-long dimensions for a total of 1,440 square feet. Its 425 windows, made of 6,000 square feet of glass, filter woodland light across its upward diamond-shaped pine trusses to form ever-changing patterns of light and shadow throughout the day and night…

Situated on a former coal mine in Lens, a quiet town in northern France, the newly opened branch of the Musée du Louvre stands as a stunning essay in transparency and geometry. Designed by the Japanese firm SANAA in collaboration with the Manhattan studio Imrey Culbert…

The private club Haesley Nine Bridges designed by Shigeru Ban Architects & KACI International, located in Yeoju in Gyeonggi Province, opened in 2009. On the strength of the best facilities & service and the brand synergy, it has become Korea’s most luxurious golf course brand. Haesley provides the best course condition thanks to the installation of the world’s first 18-hole SubAir & Hydronics system. With its unique wooden column timber structure, Haesley’s clubhouse won three prestigious global architecture awards…

The Hive, Britain’s first joint university and public library, offers a rich variety of resources for students and researchers. This library in Worcester, England, by architects Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, The scheme accommodates the county archives and records office, history centre, archaeology service and multi-agency customer service centre, in addition to commercial and retail space. The Hive is additionally set to become one of the world’s most sustainable buildings with a 50 per cent reduction in carbon emissions, and a BREEAM “Excellent” rating…

The Horizontal Skyscraper, designed by Steven Holl Architects and completed in 2009, is a mixed-use building that includes offices for the Vanke Co., a conference center, restaurant, an auditorium, a hotel, apartments and a large public park. By raising the 1,296,459 sf building on eight cores — as far as 50 meters apart and positioning the building right under the 35-meter high limit of the area…

Designed by Beijing-based MAD Architects, These two 56- and 50-storey towers feature elliptical-shaped slabs that are twisted around a central vertical axis resulting in a curvaceous shape that has prompted the Marilyn Monroe nickname. The rotating slabs presented two key structural challenges. The rotation of every floor meant that the engineers had to calculate the maximum load on every structural element…