Image via Complex Original
No matter where you live in America, you’ve probably been surprised by how quickly cities can change. One day you walk outside and see a skyscraper that definitely wasn’t there yesterday, a parking garage where there was a park before, or your corner store turned into a Walmart. Sometimes these buildings seem conventional or interchangeable, but sometimes they are a little bigger, more beautiful, or just different than the neighbors.
All across the country, these special new structures are transforming our cities and changing the way we see and interact with our environment and with each other. Whether through dazzling design, innovative building and engineering technologies, or sheer force of scale or strangeness, some of these buildings are especially impressive and exciting to see. Here are The 25 Most Awe-Inspiring U.S. Buildings Erected in the Last 25 Years.
Whitney Museum
Location: New York City
Architect: Renzo Piano
Year: 2015
The newest on the list, Renzo Piano’s new building for the Whitney Museum of American Art in downtown New York City opened on May 1. From the outside, it’s not the biggest or most beautiful museum building, even in Piano’s oeuvre, but on the inside it expertly maximizes its limited footprint to create incredible spaces for galleries, cafes, education and conservation centers, storage, offices, and any number of other uses housed in the building, all while highlighting views of the Hudson River and High Line Park. Furthermore, it was built with environmental practices in mind, becoming one of the city’s first LEED-certified museums.
1111 Lincoln Road
Location: Miami
Architect: Herzog & de Meuron
Year: 2010
Unlike most notable architectural achievements, 1111 Lincoln Road is not a grand cultural center or a fancy office tower. Rather, it is a parking garage. But with about 300 parking spaces at a $65 million dollar construction cost, it is one of the most high-end parking lots there is (that’s over $200,000 per spot). The thin post-and-lintel structure was designed by one of the most renowned architectural firms in the world, Herzog and de Meuron. The ground level does include several retail and commercial office spaces, and the top level is available as an event venue—yes, you can have your wedding in a parking garage! It has even become an attraction in its own right: tourists wander in to take pictures, runners jog through the rows of cars, and parkers linger at their cars to take in the views of South Beach.
Austin City Hall
Location: Austin, Texas
Architect: Antoine Predock
Year: 2004
The stunning Austin City Hall is not only a civic building but a social and cultural meeting place as well, with outdoor public plazas and an amphitheater for performances and events. Antoine Predock’s design emphasizes forms and materials that connect the urban center to the natural landscape and take advantage of the building’s location on Lady Bird Lake. A jutting, angular copper and glass façade atop a limestone base contrasts the grid of the streets, in line with the city’s ethos of “Keep Austin Weird.”
Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Location: Troy, N.Y.
Architect: Grimshaw
Year: 2008
The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy is truly awe-inspiring for its incredible ship-in-a-bottle design. A rounded red cedar concert hall appears to almost float inside the exterior glass walls.
Perot Museum of Nature and Science
Location: Dallas
Architect: Thom Mayne/Morphosis Architects
Year: 2012
The Perot Museum building in Victory Park, Dallas, designed by Thom Mayne and Morphosis architects, is in many ways a culmination of the museum’s natural and scientific pursuits. The cubic stone building seems colossal and prehistoric, like the rock cities of The Flintstones, while the bolt of glass that cuts through it is much more Jetsons. It also has a living roof planted with drought-resistant plants indigenous to the area, a rainwater collection system that contributes to the building’s sewage and irrigation, and solar energy heating. It achieved the highest possible rating for green buildings, actively demonstrating the principles of sustainability, engineering, and technology.
Seattle Central Library
Location: Seattle
Architect: OMA
Year: 2004
The Seattle Central Library sparkles in the city’s downtown, not least because it is of tessellated diamond-shaped glass panes that compose the exterior. The panes let in lots of natural light to the open interior spaces, perfect for reading and studying. It also features an innovative Book Spiral system, an unbroken ramp that climbs the buildings floors, allowing guests to browse books by subject, via Dewey Decimal categorization, without abrupt breaks in categories or having to walk up stairs. Should you wish to change levels more quickly, however, neon-yellow-lit escalators will take you up and down the floors and provide a very Instagram-able experience along the way. It was conceived by architects Rem Koolhaas and Joshua Prince-Ramus of the Dutch Firm OMA (now REX), who also designed the incredible cantilevered CCTV building in Beijing.
James B. Hunt Jr. Library, North Carolina State University
Location: Raleigh, N.C.
Architect: Snohetta
Year: 2013
The James B. Hunt Jr. Library at NC State in Raleigh is the library of the future, designed by the Norwegian firm Snohetta. The library uses BookBot, a robotic book storage conveyor system. Instead of browsing shelves and picking out books, patrons browse virtually and retrieve books. The BookBot allows for more books to be stored in less space, so the overall building is smaller than other libraries housing the same amount of material. The striated metallic exterior evokes the lateral motion of a conveyor belt while the interior spaces remain open and interconnected to promote social flow.
Barclays Center
Location: Brooklyn
Architect: SHoP
Year: 2012
Located smack dab in the middle of downtown Brooklyn, Barclays Center is the new home to the Brooklyn Nets, and next season, the New York Islanders. SHoP Architects wrapped the exterior in “preweathered” steel panels designed to evoke Brooklyn brownstone architecture, but also to preempt the effects of inclement weather and reduce the need for repairing and replacing newer-looking materials. Jay Z inaugurated the arena with its first concert in September 2012.
Walt Disney Concert Hall
Location: Los Angeles
Architect: Frank Gehry
Year: 2003
Frank Gehry conceived his plan for the Walt Disney Concert Hall all the way back in 1987, but due to financial and civic setbacks, construction was delayed for over a decade. The building finally opened in 2003 as a premiere architectural and acoustical venue. The undulating sculptural forms and shiny steel surfaces characteristic of Gehry’s work reflects the light and motion of the city. The concert hall interior is not only aesthetically arranged but very meticulously acoustically engineered, precisely calibrating the curved ceilings, audience seat distribution, and the specially-designed irregular organ pipes for the optimal sonic experience.
California Academy of Sciences
Location: San Francisco
Architect:Renzo Piano
Year: 2008
After California Academy of Sciences opened in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, Italian architect Renzo Piano said he wanted to “lift up a piece of the park and put a building under,” which is just about what he did. Its most prominent exterior feature, the “Living Roof” is an expanse of rolling green grass and plants that nurture the birds and the bees of the park, and also help to regulate the light, heating, and cooling for building. The gallery houses a rainforest habitat, planetarium, and aquarium. It is situation directly across the plaza from another notable work of architecture, Herzog and de Meuron’s de Young Museum building, which opened just a couple of years earlier in 2006.
Aspen Art Museum
Location: Aspen, Colo.
Architect: Shigeru Ban
Year: 2014
Elegant in its simplicity, Japanese architect Shigeru Ban’s design for the Aspen Art Museum is a beautiful latticed wood cube. The woven exterior lined by an interior glass wall allows for views of the surrounding mountains from inside and glimpses of the museum’s art and activity from the outside. A rooftop sculpture garden is the city’s only public rooftop, and a glass elevator acts as a “moving room” gliding up the levels.
Aqua
Location: Chicago
Architect: Studio Gang Architects
Year: 2009
Chicago’s undulating Aqua tower comprises 87 stories of residential units, hotel rooms, and retail spaces. Designed by Jeanne Gang of Studio Gang Architects, it is the largest project ever awarded to a female-led American firm. The name refers to the wave-like exterior made up of unique curved balconies that climb the building, as well as because of its close proximity to Lake Michigan.
Milwaukee Art Museum, Quadracci Pavillion
Location: Milwaukee
Architect: Santiago Calatrava
Year: 2001
Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava designed the Quadracci Pavilion, an expansion of the Milwaukee Art Museum. The dramatic building demonstrates Calatrava’s signature blend of pointed, buttressed, and vaulted Gothic elements with nautical imagery. The curved building is topped with a glass roof, capped with an enormous brise soleil, a pointed sunshade that spans over 200-feet wide. The shade is responsive to its environment; when winds reach 23 miles per hour for any period over three minutes, the wings retract to lessen resistance. The wings also open and close with the museum’s operating hours, usually 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily.
Kauffman Center for Performing Arts
Location: Kansas City, Mo.
Architect: Safdie Architects
Year: 2011
Kansas City itself stars at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. Two half-shell-shaped domes contain two separate theaters for the city’s ballet, opera, symphony, and theater groups, while the south elevation and guest lobby is an enormous glass wall offering a wide view of the city.
Urban Outfitters Corporate Campus
Location: Philadelphia
Architect: Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle Ltd.
Year: 2010
As amazing as the Googleplex and Facebook HQ are supposed to be, with all-you-can-eat cafeterias, free massages, and indoor skating rinks, the buildings that compose those Silicon Valley office parks are hardly anything to look at. The Urban Outfitters Corporate Campus in Philadelphia, designed by Meyer Scherer & Rockcastle Ltd., is quite the opposite. Winner of a 2010 AIA Honor Award in Architecture, the building combines contemporary design with a beautiful reconstruction of an existing building in the Navy Yard. Exposed red brick, steel beams, natural wood, and lots of sunlight dominate the buildings, which house the head offices for Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, and Free People stores.
Bullitt Center
Location: Seattle
Architect: Miller Hull
Year: 2013
Known as the greenest commercial building in the world, Seattle’s Bullitt Center office building displays amazing feats of eco-engineering and green construction. It is entirely energy and carbon neutral thanks to a large solar array on the rooftop, and water-and-sewage-independent thanks to a system that takes advantage of the city’s year-round rainy weather. Tenants are even subtly encouraged to go green in their commutes. As in, there are no parking spaces for the building—only bike racks.
Contemporary Art Center
Location: Cincinnati
Architect: ZahaHadid
Year: 2003
For her first project in the United States, Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid designed the Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati, which opened in 2003. The building is made up of stacked rectangular elements of white concrete, contrasted by a swath of black aluminum in the center. Curvilinear forms that are characteristic of Hadid’s designs are subtly incorporated at the base of the building, where the concrete walls of the museum curve seamlessly into the city sidewalks. This feature, referred to as the “urban carpet,” is meant to create continuity between inside and out, presenting the museum as an approachable public space.
Denver International Airport, Jeppesen Terminal
Location: Denver
Architect: Fentress Bradburn Architects
Year: 1995
Set against the picturesque backdrop of the snowy Rocky Mountains, the Denver International Airport is also capped by white peaks in the form of tented rooftops. Completed in 1995, DIA was early in a line of international airports designed by Fentress Bradburn Architects. The original plans included a state-of-the-art (by 1995 standards) computerized luggage sorting system, but it never worked as intended and ultimately delayed completion by nearly two years. It was, however, an early adopter of green building practices, as the fabric roofs and glass curtain walls reduced energy and heating use by allowing lots of natural light.
Cathedral of Christ the Light
Location: Oakland
Architect: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
Year: 2008
The Cathedral of Christ the Light is a surprisingly subdued example of a Catholic cathedral, usually covered in ornate décor and representations of saints. This is an abstract, curved glass form, enclosing a wood-lined interior structure around a 58-foot-tall image of Christ in relief. The cathedral was designed by the firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, making it a sibling to such famous landmarks as the Willis Tower and the Burj Khalifa.
Denver Art Museum
Location: Denver
Architect: Daniel Libeskind
Year: 2006
The jagged rhomboid shapes of the Denver Art Museum’s Hamilton Building are inspired by the surrounding Rocky Mountains and the crystal formations found therein. It was designed by Daniel Libeskind, the designer of the master plans for the former World Trade Center site. The imposing, titanium-clad exterior is amazingly sculptural in itself, but the interior of the building has met mixed reviews. The hard-pointed angles and unconventional shapes outside create strange corners and tight spaces inside that some say are not ideal for displaying or viewing art.
Mall of America
Location: Bloomington, Minn.
Architect: Jon Jerde
Year: 1992
Opened in 1993, the Mall of America in Bloomington is much more than just a shopping center. The 4.8 million square-foot building features a full-sized indoor theme park complete with multiple roller coasters, an aquarium, and a life-size Barbie Dream House. Some locals even use the mall as a gym of sorts—the mall’s pathways are marked for fitness walkers. Architect Jon Jerde, who passed away earlier this year, masterminded designs for many shopping centers including the Universal City Walk in Los Angeles and the Bellagio in Las Vegas. A Phase II expansion of the Mall is currently underway, which will add to it the state’s largest water park, on-site hotels, and more than double the overall square footage and retail space.
Clark Art Institute
Location: Williamstown, Mass.
Architect: Tadao Ando
Year: 2014
The focal point of the Clark Art Insitute’s landscape is a set of tiered reflecting pools. Conceived by architect Tadao Ando as a unifying element for the campus and its surroundings, the pools orchestrate a unified composition among the diverse architectural characters of the Clark Center, the Museum Building, the Manton Research Center, and the varied landscape beyond.
Paris Las Vegas
Location: Las Vegas
Architect: Joel Bergman
Year: 1999
The Paris Las Vegas may not be an architectural wonder like many of the others on this list, but its extreme kitsch factor is awe-inspiring nonetheless. The immersive Parisian-themed hotel and casino is designed in every aspect to mimic some part of Paris, with replicas of monuments like the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, Montgolfier balloon, and La Fontaine des Mers.
Lakewood Church
Location: Houston
Architect: Studio RED
Year: 2005
The awe-inspiring element in Houston’s Lakewood Church is not so much the building as its repurposing. The Compaq Center, a sports arena and the former home of the Houston Rockets, has become a place of worship for the congregants of Lakewood Church, led by celebrity pastor Joel Osteen. The five-story, 700,000 square-foot complex holds three packed weekly services for nearly 15,000 people each, and the sermons are also televised internationally.
U.S. Bank Tower
Location: Los Angeles
Architect: Henry N. Cobb/Pei Cobb Freed & Partners
Year: 1989
This icon in Los Angeles is the tallest building in California. It is commonly known as the Library Tower because it is located across the street from the Central Library, and because it had to purchase air space from the library in order to be built so high. It was designed by Henry N. Cobb of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, who also created the Louvre Pyramids, and was completed in late 1989—just barely within our 25-year cutoff). The cylindrical structure is designed to withstand an earthquake of 8.3 magnitude on the Richter scale and offers views of the city around the circumference, but the large amount of interior space away from the windows in the center of the building make for somewhat undesirable real estate in today’s market. Plans are in the works to turn the building into a tourist attraction like New York’s Empire State Building, with an observation deck, restaurant, and a lounge that’s open to the public.