Tour 100 of the Most Influential Buildings from the Last 100 Years

Architecture expert John Hill’s comprehensive new book 100 Years 100 Buildings (Prestel, $40) highlights an important structure from each of the past hundred years. It begins with London’s Holland House, built by Hendrik Petrus Berlage a century ago and considered to be the first steel-framed building in Europe. Today, Norman Foster’s ultramodern 2004 skyscraper 30 St. Mary Axe (a.k.a. the Gherkin) is reflected in Holland House’s front windows. The enlightening volume rounds out with downtown L.A.’s Broad museum , completed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in 2015 and still the hottest ticket in town. High-profile highlights from around the globe include Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye (1931), Frank Lloyd Wright’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1959), and Jørn Utzon’s Sydney Opera House (1973), while lesser-known works are sprinkled throughout.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s iconic Barcelona chair was originally designed for the 1929 Barcelona Pavilion in its namesake Spanish city.

Philip Johnson’s Glass House (1949) in New Canaan, Connecticut, is now owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and is open for tours during the summer and early fall.

In 1943 Frank Lloyd Wright received the commission for what we know today as the Guggenheim—or, more officially, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. The structure was completed in 1959, in a prime location on Fifth Avenue adjacent to Central Park.

The Salk Institute (1965) in San Diego, California, was designed by Louis I. Kahn. The central plaza was left as an open space to highlight the site’s natural beauty.

Montreal’s Habitat 67 housing complex on the Saint Lawrence River was designed by Moshe Safdie for Expo 67, the main event of Canada’s centennial celebrations.

Louis I. Kahn designed a new library for New Hampshire’s Phillips Exeter Academy in the 1960s.

Zürich’s Stadelhofen Station was reworked and expanded by Santiago Calatrava in 1990, after his plan won a 1983 design competition.

The Bloch Building (2007) at Kansas City, Missouri’s Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art was designed by Steven Holl Architects. The museum expansion appears as five boxes aboveground, but is actually one continuous building below.

Álvaro Siza’s Fundação Iberê Camargo (2008), a Porto Alegre, Brazil, museum dedicated to the work of Iberê Camargo, is reflective of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim museum in Manhattan.

Los Angeles’s newest museum, the Broad, was completed in 2015. The Diller Scofidio + Renfro–designed structure garners as much attention as the works it houses.