Best architecture of the 2010s: the decade’s top buildings

1. Heydar Aliyev Center, Baku, Azerbaijan, by Zaha Hadid Architects (2012)

In brief: Clean sweep

Probably the quintessential project of Zaha Hadid, the great Anglo-Iraqi architect who died in 2016 at the age of 65, this flowing, folding design instantly achieved iconic status and graced a thousand magazine covers. Despite her death, the legacy of “the queen of the curve” continues to shine on through the work of her firm. It has recently completed the twisting Leeza Soho in Beijing, which has the world’s highest atrium; the Morpheus hotel in Macau, which appears to have melted in the centre; and the starfish-shaped Beijing Daxing Airport, designed to handle 100 million passengers a year by 2040.

The Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai (ALAMY)

2. Burj Khalifa, Dubai, by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (2010)

In brief: Reach for the sky

The decade began with quite a bang as the world’s tallest building flung open its doors to the public and was almost immediately used for adrenaline thrills by a pair of base jumpers. But while the 828m Burj is a graceful tower in its own right, the real star is the engineering that made it possible: a new Y-shaped structure, called the “buttressed core” and which derives its inspiration from cathedrals of old, was devised to give the Burj sufficient strength, while 26 carefully modelled “setbacks” were incorporated towards the top to stop dangerous vortices forming behind the building that might pull it over.

The Shard has become a symbol of London’s ambition (ALAMY)

3. The Shard, London, UK, by Renzo Piano Building Workshop (2012)

In brief: Making a point

Our own super-tall skyscraper that, at 310m, was the highest in Europe for a while. It divided opinion when completed, mostly due to its astonishing size. One commentator described it as “a spike through the heart of historic London”, but it has become an accepted, even loved, symbol of the capital’s ambition and dynamism. Inspired by a Canaletto painting of a city of spires and sails, it remains the most accomplished recent addition to the capital’s skyline and is vastly better than most of what has been built across the Thames in the City.

432 Park Avenue, the world’s tallest residential building (ALAMY)

4. 432 Park Avenue, New York, US, by Rafael Viñoly (2015)

In brief: Thin air

No less controversial, the best of the “super-skinnies” and still the world’s tallest residential building was quickly denounced as everything that was wrong with New York’s property market and the country’s extreme wealth inequalities, but was revolutionary in terms of its design. The brainchild of Rafael Viñoly, the pencil-thin tower offered little in terms of modesty, with its marble interiors and $30 million penthouses, but is actually a rather elegant addition to the Big Apple’s skyline and has even starred in advertisements for the Sky Atlantic TV channel.

The Shed in Hudson Yards, Manhattan (GETTY IMAGES)

5. High Line, New York, US, by Diller Scofidio + Renfro (completed in sections between 2009 and 2014)

In brief: The right track

Staying with New York, perhaps one of the most extraordinary additions of the decade has been this one-and-a-half-mile park created on top of a disused railway line. Not only has it proved an unlikely tourist attraction and a spectacular venue for events — such as the mile-long opera staged in 2018 that featured 1,000 singers — it was also the catalyst for the development of the Hudson Yards district, which has been built on a 35,000-tonne platform above a metro marshalling depot. While the jury is out on Hudson Yards, at least the Shed, a unique, expanding cultural venue created by the same architects, adorns one end of this vibrant ribbon of green.

Wuxi Taihu Show Theatre, China (KRIS PROVOOST)

6. Wuxi Taihu Show Theatre, China, by Steven Chilton Architects (2019)

In brief: Top of the tree

If the Shed is utterly original, so too is this much smaller 2,000-seat theatre that takes its inspiration from a nearby bamboo forest in Yixing. With a screen of slender columns supporting a golden canopy of aluminium louvres, the building produces a complex interplay of light and shadow during the day and an attractive glow at night. It is one of the most accomplished of the raft of new Chinese buildings (albeit this one is designed by a Brit) that are inspired by and allude to native environments and topography. Ma Yansong’s Chaoyang Park Plaza in Beijing, which takes its form from the mountains of classical landscape paintings, is also an excellent example from the past few years.

The Abu Dhabi outpost of the Louvre (ALAMY)

7. Louvre Abu Dhabi, UAE, by Ateliers Jean Nouvel (2017)

In brief: Cover mode

One of a pair of astonishing museums completed in the Middle East by the French architect Jean Nouvel — the other being the Qatar National Museum, which opened this year and is based on a crystal formation called the “desert rose” — this outpost of the Louvre may draw on the collection of the French institution, but the architecture is unlike anything seen elsewhere, with an enormous filigree roof cast across a cluster of toothpaste-white exhibition spaces surrounded by water.

Bjarke Ingels’s Serpentine Pavilion (ALAMY)

8. Serpentine Pavilion, Hyde Park, London, UK, by Bjarke Ingels (2016)

In brief: Wall-to-wall brilliance

Proving that a temporary structure can be just as dazzling as the most expensive mega-project, at least in the right hands, the 2016 edition of the series, which was started by Zaha Hadid in 2000, was unquestionably the best. Bjarke Ingels’s deconstructed, unzipped wall proved to be simple yet thought-provoking, simultaneously indoors and outdoors, and fun but strangely spiritual. Hundreds of thousands came to visit it.

Europe’s first underwater restaurant in Norway (ALAMY)

9. Under, Norway, by Snohetta (2019)

In brief: Deep thinking

Touted as Europe’s first underwater restaurant and occupying a stormy promontory at the southernmost point of the Norwegian coastline, the monolithic concrete tube that forms a resilient shell belies a warm and inviting oak interior. This culminates in an enormous panoramic window looking on to the seabed five metres below the waves. Once the astonished customers have departed, the venue doubles as a marine laboratory and will eventually form the spine of an artificial reef populated by mussels.

Villa Verde Housing in Constitución, Chile (ELEMENTAL)

10. Villa Verde Housing, Chile, by Alejandro Aravena and Elemental (2013)

In brief: No half-measures

Last but most certainly not least, a project that shows what an important role the profession can play in the most difficult circumstances. An 8.8-magnitude earthquake and tsunami that killed more than 500 people in 2010 destroyed 80 per cent of the buildings in Constitución. Tasked with rebuilding the town, Aravena, who would win the 2016 Pritzker prize, had an ingenious idea. Residents would be provided with half of a good-quality house (which is enough to live in on its own) and encouraged to build the other half according to their tastes in their time. Anything they might have struggled with — the foundations, plumbing and electricity — had already been done for them, and workshops and manuals were freely available. The result is a series of unique homes that are far bigger and better than state funding could have supplied alone.