Design and Art news, reviews, comments and original features

100 Most Unique Buildings In The World

1:21 AM EST 12/6/2023

The combination of art, architecture, and engineering has given us breathtaking man-made marvels over the centuries, from the formidable pillars of the Parthenon in Greece to the avant-garde experiments of Danish troublemaker Bjarke Ingels and everything in between.

What makes a building great? The great American Architect Louis Kahn once said:

"A great building must begin with the immeasurable, must go through measurable means when it is being designed, and in the end must be unmeasured."

To him, a great building is one born out of something immeasurable, which is to say, the imagination. Then, it must be translated with tools of convention. It must be scaled within the rules imbued by architectural and artistic methodology. Still, somehow, even after the rigidity of this process, the resulting product must be one of utter beauty and awe to the point where interpretation is impossible. It becomes, in the end, a thing of drastic marvel.

The following buildings are seemingly examples of Kahn's sentiment. Though they're all vastly different achievements in the field of architecture of modern art, one thing binds them: hunger. Great design, after all, is all about hunger. A great designer is insatiable and restless. They seek. They seek some more. Then, they consider every possible facet: space, location, materials, laws, standards, and a million more elements. They take precious care of the details because they know art is all about the nuances or the little things that seemingly don't matter. Then, finally, they have to be wise enough to know when to follow the rules, break some, break all, and ultimately have enough courage to create something extraordinary.

The following buildings you're about to see come from designers whose hunger for innovation has allowed them to create the finest architectural landmarks this world has ever seen.