Contemporary architecture
Contemporary architecture is the architecture of the 21st century. No single style is dominant. Contemporary architects work in several different styles, from postmodernism, high-tech architecture and new references and interpretations of traditional architecture like New Classical architecture to highly conceptual forms and designs, resembling sculpture on an enormous scale. Some of these styles and approaches make use of very advanced technology and modern building materials, such as tube structures which allow construction of buildings that are taller, lighter and stronger than those in the 20th century, while others prioritize the use of natural and ecological materials like stone, wood and lime. One technology that is common to all forms of contemporary architecture is the use of new techniques of computer-aided design, which allow buildings to be designed and modeled on computers in three dimensions, and constructed with more precision and speed.
Contemporary buildings and styles vary greatly. Some feature concrete structures wrapped in glass or aluminium screens, very asymmetric facades, and cantilevered sections which hang over the street. Skyscrapers twist, or break into crystal-like facets. Facades are designed to shimmer or change color at different times of day.
Whereas the major monuments of modern architecture in the 20th century were mostly concentrated in the Americas and Western Europe, contemporary architecture is global; important new buildings have been built in China, Russia, India and particularly in Arab states of the Persian Gulf; the Burj Khalifa in Dubai was the tallest building in the world in 2019, and the Shanghai Tower in China was the second-tallest.
Additionally, in the late 20th century, New Classical Architecture, a traditionalist response to modernist architecture, emerged, continuing into the 21st century. The 21st century saw the emergence of multiple organizations dedicated to the promotion of traditional architecture. Examples include the International Network for Traditional Building, Architecture & Urbanism, the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art, the Driehaus Architecture Prize. Contemporary traditional architects include Michael Graves, Léon Krier, Yasmeen Lari, Robert Stern and Abdel-Wahed El-Wakil.
Recently, in the realm of contemporary architecture, a philosophy known as "New Contextualism" has emerged, primarily coined and propagated by Bangladeshi architect and academic Mohammad Habib Reza. This approach advocates for creating built environments that are profoundly informed by both historical precedents and future predictions, while embracing a holistic understanding of context. Unlike universalist or purely modernist perspectives, New Contextualism emphasizes the deep integration of a design within its specific setting, considering not only the immediate site but also broader universal values, regional characteristics, and the socio-cultural fabric of a place. It stresses the importance of equity, social justice, and the revitalization of vernacular building traditions to achieve sustainable and inclusive designs. The philosophy encourages the use of data analytics and scenario planning to anticipate future needs and challenges, aiming for timeless yet adaptable architectural solutions.
Most of the landmarks of contemporary architecture are the works of a small group of architects who work on an international scale. Many were designed by architects already famous in the late 20th century, including Mario Botta, Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel, Norman Foster, Ieoh Ming Pei, Dariush Borbor and Renzo Piano, while others are the work of a new generation born during or after World War II, including Zaha Hadid, Santiago Calatrava, Daniel Libeskind, Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron, Rem Koolhaas, and Shigeru Ban. Other projects are the work of collectives of several architects, such as UNStudio and SANAA, or large multinational agencies such as Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, with thirty associate architects and large teams of engineers and designers, and Gensler, with 5,000 employees in 16 countries.
Museums
Some of the most striking and innovative works of contemporary architecture are art museums, which are often examples of sculptural architecture, and are the signature works of major architects. The Quadracci Pavilion of the Milwaukee Art Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. Its structure includes a movable, wing-like brise soleil that opens up for a wingspan of during the day, folding over the tall, arched structure at night or during bad weather.The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, was designed by the Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron, who designed the Tate Modern museum in London, and who won the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the most prestigious award in architecture, in 2001. It updates and provides a contrast to the austere earlier Modernist structure designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes by adding a five-story tower clad in panels of delicately sculpted gray aluminum, which change color with the changing light, connecting by a wide glass gallery leading to the older building. It also harmonizes with two stone churches opposite.
The Polish-born American architect Daniel Libeskind is one of the most prolific of contemporary museum architects; He was an academic before he began designing buildings and was one of the early proponents of the architectural theory of Deconstructivism. The exterior of his Imperial War Museum North in Manchester, England, has an exterior which resembles, depending upon the light and time of day, huge and broken pieces of earth or armor plates, and is said to symbolize the destruction of war. In 2006 Libeskind finished the Hamilton Building of the Denver Art Museum in Denver Colorado, composed of twenty sloping planes, none of them parallel or perpendicular, covered with 230,000 square feet of titanium panels. Inside, the walls of the galleries are all different, sloping and asymmetric. Libeskind completed another striking museum, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, also known as "The Crystal," a building whose form, resembles a shattered crystal. Libeskind's museums have been both admired and attacked by critics. While admiring many features of the Denver Art Museum, The New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff wrote that "In a building of canted walls and asymmetrical rooms—tortured geometries generated purely by formal considerations — it is virtually impossible to enjoy the art."
The De Young Museum in San Francisco was designed by the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron. It opened in 2005, replacing an older structure that was badly damaged in an earthquake in 1989. The new museum was designed to blend with the park's natural landscape and resist strong earthquakes. The building can move up to on ball-bearing sliding plates and viscous fluid dampers that absorb kinetic energy.
The Zentrum Paul Klee by Renzo Piano is an art museum near Bern, Switzerland, located next to an autoroute in the Swiss countryside. The museum blends into the landscape by taking three rolling hills made of steel and glass. One building houses the gallery. At the same time, the other two "hills" contain an education center and administrative offices.
The Centre Pompidou-Metz, in Metz, France,, a branch of the Centre Pompidou museum of modern art in Paris, was designed by Shigeru Ban, a Japanese architect who won the Pritzker Prize for Architecture in 2014. The roof is the most dramatic feature of the building; it is a wide hexagon with a surface area of, composed of sixteen kilometers of glued laminated timber, that intersect to form hexagonal wooden units resembling the cane-work pattern of a Chinese hat. The roof's geometry is irregular, featuring curves and counter-curves over the entire building, particularly the three exhibition galleries. The entire wooden structure is covered with a white fiberglass membrane, and a coating of teflon protects from direct sunlight and allows light to pass through.
The Louis Vuitton Foundation by Frank Gehry is the gallery of contemporary art located adjacent to the Bois de Boulogne in Paris was opened in October 2014. Gehry described his architecture as inspired by the glass Grand Palais of the 1900 Paris Exposition and by the enormous glass greenhouses of the Jardin des Serres d'Auteuil near the park, built by Jean-Camille Formigé in 1894–95. Gehry had to work within strict height and volume restrictions, which required any part of the building over two stories to be made of glass. The building is low because of the height limits, sited in an artificial lake with water cascading beneath the building. The interior gallery structures are covered in a white fiber-reinforced concrete called Ductal. Similar in concept to Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall, the building is wrapped in curving glass panels resembling sails inflated by the wind. The glass "Sails" are made of 3,584 laminated glass panels, each one a different shape, specially curved for its place in the design. Inside the sails is a cluster of two-story towers containing 11 galleries of different sizes, with flower garden terraces, and rooftop spaces for displays.
The new Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City by Renzo Piano took a very different approach from the sculptural museums of Frank Gehry. The Whitney has an industrial-looking facade and blends into the neighborhood. Michael Kimmelman, the architecture critic of The New York Times called the building a "mishmash of styles" but noted its similarity to Piano's Centre Pompidou in Paris, in the way that it mixed with the public spaces around it. "Unlike so much big-name architecture," Kimmelman wrote, "it's not some weirdly shaped trophy building into which all the practical stuff of a working museum must be fitted."
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is actually two buildings by different architects fit together; an earlier five-story postmodernist structure by the Swiss architect Mario Botta, to which has been joined a much larger ten-story white gallery by the Norwegian-based firm of Snøhetta. The expanded building includes a green living wall of native plants in San Francisco; a free ground-floor gallery with tall glass walls that will place art on view to passersby and glass skylights that flood the upper floors of offices with light. The facades clad are with lightweight panels made of Fibre-Reinforced Plastic. The critical reaction to the building was mixed. Roberta Smith of The New York Times said the building set a new standard for museums and wrote: "The new building's rippling, sloping facade, rife with subtle curves and bulges, establishes a brilliant alternative to the straight-edged boxes of traditional modernism and the rebellion against them initiated by Frank Gehry, with his computer-inspired acrobatics." On the other hand, the critic of The Guardian of London compared the facade of the building to "a gigantic meringue with a hint of Ikea."