Home Notifications Newsletters Next Share

The 56 coolest works of architecture in Europehttps://www.businessinsider.in/the-56-coolest-works-of-architecture-in-europe/56-the-slide-like-urbis-building-in-manchester-uk-contains-a-national-football-museum-/slidelist/53613983.cms2021-07-26T12:45:01+05:30

The 56 coolest works of architecture in Europe

Jul 26, 2021, 12:45 IST

56. The slide-like Urbis building in Manchester, UK, contains a National Football Museum.

55. The bizarre-looking Vodafone Headquarters in Portugal shrugs off the conventional straight lines you might expect from a corporate entity.

54. The remains of St. Andrew's Cathedral in Scotland provide a haunting setting for a brisk walk.

53. The Triangeln station in Malmö, Sweden, looks more like a portal into the future than a train.

52. The playful Dunmore Pineapple building in Scotland has been entertaining visitors since its creation in 1761.

51. At 387 feet, Scandic Victoria Tower — designed by architect Gert Wingårdh — is the tallest building in Stockholm. The tower's stunning facade, comprised of mismatched mirrors, reflects the sky.

50. The Aqueduct of Segovia in central Spain was built by the Roman Empire in the 1st century and dominates the central square.

49. Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin conceived by German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in the 1960s has a Modernist design with clean lines and plenty of glass to allow light in.

48. Station Arnhem in the Netherlands was transformed in 2015. Its swanky new transfer hall has a contemporary feel, supported by twisting steel columns.

47. Holmenkollen Ski Jump in the village of Holmenkollen, just outside of Oslo, isn't just for brazen skiers to jump off — the stainless steel structure also offers spectacular city and fjord views from a platform at the top.

46. Frank Gehry transformed the Marques de Riscal winery in Spain's Basque Country into a visual spectacle.

45. The beautifully designed Svalbard Global Seed Vault, on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, stores hundreds of thousands of seeds, with the aim of protecting them in the event of a global apocalypse.

44. Marvel at what is considered to be the last great Prussian baroque palace, the New Palace, in Sanssouci park in Potsdam, Germany.

43. The Spittelau District Heating Plant in Vienna is beamed directly from the wacky mind of esteemed artist and architect Hundertwasser.

42. The spectacular Miramare Castle overhangs the Italian coast near Trieste.

41. The trippy Markthal in Rotterdam's Blaak market square is the work of MVRDV — the team that led the "Superdutch" architectural movement.

40. Renzo Piano's Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre is built on top of an artificial hill in Athens.

39. Watch tourists' jaws drop as they look up in the Great Court — designed by Norman Foster — at the British Museum.

38. The Catherine Palace just south of St. Petersburg was where the Russian Tsars spent their summer months.

37. This bubble-shaped pod at the Ceratto Winery overlooking the vineyards in Alba, Italy, is designed to resemble a grape.

36. The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin, Germany, is a perfect mashup of World War II ruins and early 1960s architecture.

35. Made out of glass, limestone, and titanium, Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain shimmers in the sunlight.

34. Aula Medica, an auditorium complex at Sweden's Karolinska Institute, is an imposing, leaning tower with multi-coloured, triangle panels echoing its flat-iron shape.

33. The main terminal at Spain's Bilbao Airport, designed by Santiago Calatrava, is one of the most beautiful in the world.

32. Le Corbusier's Chapelle La Notre Dame du Haut, a tiny chapel near the French town of Ronchamp, is a bold 20th-century masterpiece.

31. The Louis Vuitton Foundation is a mesh of glass sails nestled in the Bois de Boulogne park in Paris.

30. The M by Montcalm building in east London provides an optical illusion that leaves passers-by dazzled.

29. Designed by the architect Colin St John Wilson, the Grade I-listed British Library is home to the world's largest collection of books — and a stunning, sleek interior made up of wavy staircases and sharp lines.

28. Zaha Hadid's extension of the Ordrupgaard Museum near Jægersborg Dyrehave in Denmark is encased in black lava concrete, which changes colour from grey to black depending on the weather.

27. The Pompidou Centre in Paris, designed by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, contains a modern art museum, a music centre, and a well-stocked public library.

26. The Clyde Auditorium, or "The Armadillo," in Glasgow the most stylish place to enjoy a concert north of the border.

25. Mestia Airport in Georgia, which serves passengers visiting a nearby ski resort, was designed in just three months.

24. The curved structure of wine museum La Cité du Vin, designed by XTU Architects in Bordeaux, France, evokes the shape of a vine, wine glass, and other wine-related motifs.

23. Unlike most skyscrapers, the 256-foot and 344-foot-tall towers of Bosco Verticale (which translates to “vertical forest”) in Milan are adorned with greenery, decorated with over 700 trees and 90 types of plants.

22. It's not hard to see what makes Alhambra — a historic palace/fort in Granada, Spain, that's an ode to the country's Moorish past — a World Heritage Site.

21. Completed in 2010 by the firm WAM Architecten, the four-star Inntel Hotel in Amsterdam looks more like a LEGO structure rather than a pile of houses stacked on top of each other.

20. The shops nestled into the Ponte Vecchio arch bridge in Florence, Italy, were once home to butchers' shops, but are now occupied by souvenir-sellers.

19. The 15th-century Basilica of Santa Maria Novella stands out even among Florence's distinguished architecture.

18. The 'Dancing House" in Prague was created by Frank Gehry to replace a neo-renaissance building that had been bombed in the Second World War.

17. Among London's most beautiful buildings, St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel and King's Cross Clocktower stand out on Euston Road thanks to their striking Gothic Revival facade, designed by the architect George Gilbert Scott.

16. The Royal Pavilion in Brighton, UK, ambitiously merges British and Indian culture.

15. The €164 million (about £137 million) HARPA Concert Hall in Reykjavik, Iceland cuts through the country's harsh climate with sharp diagonal lines.

14. The Torre Galatea Figueras in Catalonia, Spain, is a museum for Salvador Dalí.

13. The Frauenkirche in Dresden was destroyed during the Second World War, but its beautiful restoration was completed in 2004.

12. The Norwegian oil and gas company Statoil has one of the coolest office spaces in Oslo, Norway.

11. The sleek Opera House in Oslo is made up of a maze of 1,100 rooms.

10. The "Ideal Palace" in Hauterives, France, is the result of more than 33 years work by the French postman Ferdinand Cheval.

9. The Church of Colònia Güell in Catalonia, by Antoni Gaudí, was never fully completed, but it is still unmissable.

8. The Palace of Italian Civilisation, nicknamed the "Square Colosseum," is one of Rome's more simple yet subtly beautiful buildings. Today, the building serves as the headquarters of the designer Fendi.

7. At an astonishing 290,000-square-feet, the Emporia mall in Malmo, Sweden, is the largest shopping centre in Scandinavia.

6. The undulating concrete roof of Bodegas Ysios, a winery in Spain's Rioja Alavesa, is used to produce the region's iconic wine.

5. Temppeliaukio Church in the Finnish capital of Helsinki was built into a rock by architect brothers Timo and Tuomo Suomalainen before opening in 1969.

4. The world's largest solar furnace can be found in Odeillo, France. It can reach temperatures of more than 3,000 degrees Celcius.

3. The 118-foot-tall zinc roof on the glass-fronted Riverside Museum, designed by Zaha Hadid, makes a startling impression on the shore of the Clyde River in Glasgow.

2. The exterior of Gare do Oriente, a train station in Lisbon designed by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, is made up of spires and large, skeleton-like wings.

1. The Lutheran Hallgrímskirkja in Reykjavík is the largest church in Iceland. The design — by state architect Guðjón Samúelsson — represents the flowing lava of Iceland’s active volcanoes.

Next Story Private Equity Investments

View All Latest