# The most iconic buildings of modern architecture

The 20th- and 21st-century landmarks that architecture magazines such as Arch2O and Parametric Architecture always name as the icons of modern architecture, with architect and year.

- 117 votes · 26 items
- Nov 21, 2025 · Mitchell Anderson
- https://even.best/en/l/447/the-most-iconic-buildings-of-modern-architecture

## Top 20

1. **Sydney Opera House** (14 · ▲14 ▼0) — Jørn Utzon, opened 1973. Its sail-like shells made it a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2007.
2. **Fallingwater** (7 · ▲10 ▼3) — Frank Lloyd Wright, 1935-1939, Pennsylvania. A house cantilevered over a waterfall.
3. **Burj Khalifa** (6 · ▲6 ▼0) — SOM (Adrian Smith), 2010, Dubai. The world's tallest building, at 828 metres.
4. **Villa Savoye** (5 · ▲6 ▼1) — Le Corbusier, 1928-1931, Poissy. His 'five points of architecture' in one house.
5. **Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum** (5 · ▲6 ▼1) — Frank Lloyd Wright, 1959, New York. A spiral ramp gallery on Fifth Avenue.
6. **Seagram Building** (5 · ▲6 ▼1) — Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson, 1958, New York. The model glass-and-bronze skyscraper.
7. **Barcelona Pavilion** (5 · ▲5 ▼0) — Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, 1929; rebuilt in 1986. 'Less is more' in marble, glass and steel.
8. **Bauhaus Dessau** (5 · ▲5 ▼0) — Walter Gropius, 1925-1926. The school building that gave modern design its name.
9. **Notre-Dame du Haut, Ronchamp** (4 · ▲4 ▼0) — Le Corbusier, 1955. A sculptural concrete chapel.
10. **Salk Institute** (4 · ▲4 ▼0) — Louis Kahn, 1965, La Jolla, California. Concrete and a channel of water pointing to the Pacific.
11. **Glass House** (4 · ▲4 ▼0) — Philip Johnson, 1949, New Canaan, Connecticut. Walls made entirely of glass.
12. **CCTV Headquarters** (4 · ▲4 ▼0) — Rem Koolhaas and OMA, 2012, Beijing. Two leaning towers joined at the top.
13. **Brasília Cathedral** (3 · ▲3 ▼0) — Oscar Niemeyer, 1970. Sixteen concrete columns reaching for the sky.
14. **Heydar Aliyev Center** (3 · ▲3 ▼0) — Zaha Hadid, 2012, Baku. A building without a single straight line.
15. **The Gherkin (30 St Mary Axe)** (3 · ▲3 ▼0) — Norman Foster, 2004, London. The bullet-shaped tower of the City.
16. **Casa Batlló** (2 · ▲4 ▼2) — Antoni Gaudí, remodelled 1904-1906, Barcelona. Modernisme with a dragon-scale roof.
17. **Centre Pompidou** (2 · ▲3 ▼1) — Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, 1977, Paris. Its pipes and escalators on the outside.
18. **Lloyd's Building** (1 · ▲3 ▼2) — Richard Rogers' 1986 'inside-out' building in the City of London.
19. **Louvre Pyramid** (1 · ▲2 ▼1) — I. M. Pei, 1989, Paris. Glass and steel in the courtyard of a royal palace.
20. **Guggenheim Museum Bilbao** (0 · ▲1 ▼1) — Frank Gehry, 1997. Titanium curves that transformed a city: the 'Bilbao effect'.
21. **Chrysler Building** (0 · ▲1 ▼1) — William Van Alen, 1930, New York. Art Deco crown, briefly the world's tallest.
22. **Farnsworth House** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Mies van der Rohe's glass-walled weekend house in Plano, Illinois (1951).
23. **Casa da Música** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Rem Koolhaas's angular concert hall in Porto, opened in 2005.
24. **Elbphilharmonie** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Herzog & de Meuron's concert hall built on a brick warehouse in Hamburg (2017).
25. **Unité d'Habitation** (-1 · ▲2 ▼3) — Le Corbusier, 1952, Marseille. The prototype of modern housing blocks.
26. **TWA Flight Center** (-1 · ▲0 ▼1) — Eero Saarinen's 1962 terminal at JFK Airport, now the TWA Hotel.

How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.