Vanity Fair’s ‘Top 22’ most important works of architecture since 1980

Vanity Fair magazine asked 52 of the worlds “starchitects” (.e., folk who design expensive boxes that look good in magazines and treatises) to select the five most important buildings, bridges, or monuments constructed since 1980 and the greatest work of architecture thus far in the 21st century.

What they came up with instead was 132 pieces of starchitecture (i.e., expensive boxes that looks good in magazines and treatises), of which these are their top 22. [Hat tip Archinect]

Surprising news from the survey?
Nothing at all by the best architect to to have emerged in recent years, Santiago Calatrava.

Most unsurprising news from the survey? 
Only these four structures out of all the twenty-two are worth a damn.

 Millau Viaduct, France, Michel Virlogeux & Norman Foster

Lloyds of London, Richard Rogers

Vietnam War Memorial, Washington, D.C., Maya Lin

Hong Kong Shanghai Bank, Hong Kong, Norman Foster

And the very best news from the whole survey? 
According to Vanity Fair writer Matt Tymaur in his interview with Charlie Rose, “Po-Mo is dead.”

Well, thank Galt for small mercies.

Russia Tower – Foster + Partners

 
Look what Norman Foster and Associates has designed for the skies over Moscow -- a building that at 610m with 118 floors is intended to be Europe’s tallest. 

And this, below, is its peak.  Isn’t it amazing what you can do with concrete and steel and double-glazing?

London City Hall – Norman Foster [updated]

Margaret Thatcher abolished the Greater London Council in 1986, and with it the job and power base of the loathsome ‘Red Ken’ Livingstone -- a popular move that began the neutering of what she called later “the left-wing municipal socialists and their front organisations,” “returning their functions (which we had already limited) to councils closer to their people.”

Auckland is just about to do the reverse.

When Tony Blair’s Government reconstituted the folly in 2000, the first “Mayor of Greater London” -- a position only barely accountable to the Greater London Authority -- was the newly resuscitated Red Ken Livingstone.  And his “home” was this Glass Egg, built to house the house the new Authority’s debating chamber and its ever-burgeoning number of bureaucrats, which cost Londoners the princely sum of £43,000,000.

Almost his first move was upon moving into this new monument to the new bureaucracy, designed by Norman Foster, was to impose on Londoners driving in and out of central London a swinging tax to pay for the palace and the busybodies within.

Naturally, the 440 stickybeaks and paper shufflers which the building was designed to house have exploded in number since then.

And this political model of wretched profligacy is now to be replicated in Auckland.  With, undoubtedly, an architectural one to follow.

Rust never sleeps.

UPDATE: Says Hugh Pearman:

London’s new City Hall . . . suffers from fatal delusions of grandeur. . . It is a medium-sized office building on steroids, pumping itself up to landmark scale. Trying to look like something else. And of course it is something else, another phenomenon of our times: a camera-friendly visitor attraction.

Because this is also architecture as set design.

Very, very expensive set design.

Firenze high speed rail station - Norman Foster

Proposed Firenze High Speed Rail Station by Norman Foster. Just the sort of train station in which a man wouldn't mind alighting.

LINK: High speed station - Firenze la città nuova

RELATED: Architecture

Architecture Film Festival '06

The Architecture Film Festival '06 kicks off around the country on 1st September.

I tell you this with trepidation because I haven't booked for any sessions yet, and I'm told that bookings are going "tremendously well."

Films this year on Santiago Calatrava, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe (pictured right), Norman Foster's 'Erotic Gherkin,' the energy of Lagos as seen by Rem Koolhaas, Marion Mahoney and Walter Burley Griffin (former Frank Lloyd Wright alumni and the designers of Canberra) and more, much more.

But don't let me persuade you too much of its merits, or I won't get a seat myself.

LINK: JASMAX Film Festival '06: Celebrating Architecture - JASMAX

RELATED: Architecture, Films

Millau Viaduct - Michel Virlogeux & Norman Foster

Yep, I've posted pics of this cable-stayed bridge before, but by crikey it's a marvel, and this (erroneously named) Powerpoint presentation here gives you some idea of its contruction.

What an achievement!

LINK: The longest bridge in the world - Metacafe

RELATED: Architecture

Millau Viaduct - Michel Virlogeux & Norman Foster

The world's tallest bridge, an unusual enough accolade: the cable-stayed Millau Viaduct by British Architect Norman Foster, opened in 2004, spanning the Tarn River in France's southwest.

LINKS: Millau Viaduct - Nicolas Janberg's Stucturae
Millau Viaduct - Wikipedia

TAGS: Architecture