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 interpretations of traditional 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 United States and western Europe, contemporary architecture is global; important new buildings have been built in China, Russia, Latin America, 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.

Parallel to this, a counterculture to the modernist and post-modernist architecture that dominated the second half of the 20th century developed during this period. The 21st century saw the emergence of multiple organizations dedicated to the promotion of local and/or traditional architecture. Examples include the International Network for Traditional Building, Architecture & Urbanism (INTBAU), the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art (ICAA), the Driehaus Architecture Prize, and the Complementary architecture movement. Prominent architects of the new traditional wave include Michael Graves, Léon Krier, Yasmeen Lari, Robert Stern and Abdel-Wahed El-Wakil, among others.

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 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 giant 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

File:Millwaukee Museum from south-west.jpg, The Quadracci Pavilion of the Milwaukee Art Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin by Santiago Calatrava (2001)
File:Dallas Meadows Museum 1.jpg, Meadows Museum in Dallas, Texas, USA by HBRA architects (2001)
File:Ft Worth Modern 02.jpg, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, Texas by Tadao Ando (2002)
File:ImperialWarMuseumNorth01.jpg, Imperial War Museum North in Manchester, England by Daniel Libeskind (2002)
File:WalkerArt.jpg, Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota by Herzog & de Meuron (2005)
File:M. H. de Young Memorial Museum.jpg, De Young Museum in San Francisco by Herzog & de Meuron (2005)
File:Paul-klee-zentrum-ansicht-zoom.jpg, The Zentrum Paul Klee in Berne, Switzerland by Renzo Piano (2005)
File:Denver Art Museum.jpg, The Denver Art Museum in Denver Colorado, by Daniel Libeskind (2006)
File:New Museum in New York City 2015.JPG, New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City, by SANAA (2007)
File:ROMCrystal3.jpg, The Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada by Daniel Libeskind (2007)
File:Millennium_Gate,_Atlanta,_USA.jpg, Millennium Gate Museum in Atlanta, Georgia, USA by ADAM Architecture (2008)
File:Metz (F) - Centre Pompidou - Außenansicht.jpg, The Centre Pompidou-Metz, in Metz, France, by Shigeru Ban (2010)
File:Opening Day, Titanic Belfast, 31 March 2012 (81).JPG, The Titanic Museum in Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom, by Eric Kuhne and Associates (2012)
File:The Whitney Museum, New York City in 2015.JPG, Whitney Museum of Art in New York City by Renzo Piano (2015)
File:New SFMOMA.jpg, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art by Mario Botta (front) and Snøhetta (2016)
File:SFMOMA ceiling architecture.jpg, Ceiling of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art by Snøhetta (2016), covered with fiber-reinforced plastic

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 (2005), 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 (born 1946) 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 (2002), 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 (2007), 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 three feet (91 centimeters) 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 Berne 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 (which is almost entirely underground to preserve the fragile drawings of Klee from the effects of sunlight). At the same time, the other two "hills" contain an education center and administrative offices.

The Centre Pompidou-Metz, in Metz, France, (2010), 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 (2014) 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

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