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Celebrating 125 Years: The Past

RECORD’s Top 125 Buildings: 51-75

Top 125 Buildings

Yale Art and Architecture Building | 1963 | New Haven | Paul Rudolph

Frank Lloyd Wright, an inspiration to Paul Rudolph, broke the box, but he broke it horizontally. It was Rudolph, a master of space and the section, who broke it vertically: the section of the A + A building is a Robie House plan turned vertically, its 36 levels making the building a stepladder through interlocking volumes. Space is vectorial and experiential, and, once Postmodernism was dispatched, the building proved to be an exciting lesson for generations of architecture students.
—Joseph Giovannini

Photo © Ezra Stoller/ ESTO

Top 125 Buildings

Berlin Philharmonic Concert Hall | 1963 | Berlin | Hans Scharoun

Photo © Manfred Brückels/Creative Commons

Top 125 Buildings

Vanna Venturi House | 1964 | Philadelphia | Venturi & Short

Photo courtesy VSBA Architects 

Top 125 Buildings

Yoyogi National Gymnasia | 1964 | Tokyo | Kenzo Tange

Photo © Wikimedia user Rs1421/Creative Commons

Top 125 Buildings

Marina City | 1964 | Chicago | Bertrand Goldberg

Photo courtesy Geoffery Goldberg

Top 125 Buildings

Salk Institute for Biological Studies | 1965 | La Jolla, California | Louis Kahn

This is Kahn’s answer to the urbanistic vision of Renaissance Italy, combined with a magical fountain channeling water across the space to the ocean in a move that recalls gardens of Mughal India and Renaissance villas like Tivoli and the Villa Lante. It is an inspired synthesis and reformulation that never disappoints, no matter how many times you visit. The Salk is arguably the defining work of the greatest American architect. —Marvin Trachtenberg

Photo courtesy Salk Institute for Biological Studies

Top 125 Buildings

Whitney Museum of American Art | 1966 | New York | Marcel Breuer and Associates

Photo courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art/Ed Lederman 

Top 125 Buildings

Habitat 67 | 1967 | Montreal | Moshe Safdie

Photo © Timothy Hursley/courtesy Safdie Architects 

Top 125 Buildings

National Center for Atmospheric Research | 1967 | Boulder, Colorado | I.M. Pei & Partners

Photo © Ezra Stoller/ESTO 

Top 125 Buildings

Ford Foundation Building | 1967 | New York | Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo & Associates

Photo © Ezra Stoller/ESTO 

Top 125 Buildings

Montreal Biosphere | 1967 | Montreal | Buckminister Fuller

Photo © Leo Gonzales/Creative Commons 

Top 125 Buildings

Gwathmey Residence and Studio | 1967 | Amagansett, New York | Charley Gwathmey

Photo © Scott Frances/OTTO 

Top 125 Buildings

San Cataldo Cemetery | 1971 | Modena, Italy | Aldo Rossi

Photo © Maria Lucia Lucetti & Paolo Tedeschi/courtesy Visit Modena 

Top 125 Buildings

Kimbell Art Museum | 1972 | Fort Worth | Louis Kahn

At the Kimbell, Kahn has achieved a magical synthesis between the calm order of the museum’s naves and the heroism of the concrete roof, merging vault and beam in order to convey both natural and artificial light. The diagonal movement between the galleries takes you from one painting to the next in the smoothest manner possible, the rigid order of architecture being totally dissolved on the way.
 —Jean-Louis Cohen

Photo courtesy Library of Congress 

Top 125 Buildings

Munich Olympic Stadium | 1972 | Munich | Frei Otto and Günter Behnisch

Photo courtesy Olympiapark München  

Top 125 Buildings

Centraal Beheer | 1972 | Apeldoorn, Netherlands | Herman Hertzberger

Photo courtesy Architectuurstudio Herman Hertzberger

Top 125 Buildings

Sydney Opera House | 1973 | Sydney | Jørn Utzon

Photo © Flickr user Simone.Brunozzi/Creative Commons 

Top 125 Buildings

Museo di Castelvecchio | 1973 | Verona, Italy | Carlo Scarpa

Photo © Flickr user Leon/Creative Commons

Top 125 Buildings

Centre Georges Pompidou | 1977 | Paris | Studio Piano & Rogers

Photo © Denancé Michel/ courtesy Renzo Piano Building Workshop 

Top 125 Buildings

Gehry Residence | 1978 | Santa Monica, California | Frank Gehry

Photo © Tim Street-Porter/OTTO 

Top 125 Buildings

Thorncrown Chapel | 1980 | Eureka Springs, Arkansas | E. Fay Jones

Photo © Randall Connaughton/courtesy Thorncrown Chapel 

Top 125 Buildings

Sangath | 1981 | Ahedabad, India | Balkrishna Doshi

Photo courtesy Vastushilpa Foundation 

Top 125 Buildings

Vietnam Veterans Memorial | 1982 | Washington, D.C. | Maya Lin Studio

Photo courtesy National Park Service

Top 125 Buildings

National Assembly Building of Bangladesh | 1982 | Dhaka, Bangladesh | Louis Kahn

Photo © Nahid Sultan & Saiful Aopu/Creative Commons

Top 125 Buildings

Neue Staatsgalerie | 1984 | Stuttgart, Germany | James Stirling, Michael Wilford & Associates

Photo © Wikimedia user Jaimrsilva/ Creative Commons

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September 1, 2016

To commemorate Architectural Record’s 125th anniversary, our editors have chosen to honor 125 of the most important works of architecture built since the magazine’s founding in 1891. This was not an easy task. We started by polling a group of distinguished critics and scholars for nominations, but the final list is ours. While many inclusions are obvious, others may be surprising, or a little controversial—as are some omissions. And, we know, all 125 might not make the list at RECORD's next big birthday: time inevitably changes not only our tastes, but how we understand history.

Click through the slideshow above, and visit the pages below, to see all the buildings on our list.


1-25    26-50    76-100    101-125

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