Contemporary architecture is the architecture of the 21st century.

No single style is dominant;

contemporary architects are working in a dozen different styles, from postmodernism and high-tech
architecture to highly conceptual and expressive styles, resembling sculpture on an enormous scale.
The different styles and approaches have in common the use of very advanced technology and
modern building materials, such as Tube structure which allows construction of the buildings that are
taller, lighter and stronger than those in the 20th century, and the use of new techniques
of computer-aided design, which allow buildings to be designed and modeled on computers in three
dimensions, and constructed with more precision and speed.
Contemporary buildings are designed to be noticed and to astonish. Some feature concrete
structures wrapped in glass or aluminum screens, very asymmetric facades, and cantilevered
sections which hang over the street. Skyscrapers twist, or break into crystal-like facets. Facades are
designed to shimmer or change color at different times of day.
Whereas the major monuments of modern architecture in the 20th century were mostly concentrated
in the United States and western Europe, contemporary architecture is global; important new
buildings have been built in China, Russia, Latin America, and particularly in the Gulf States of the
Middle East; the Burj Khalifa in Dubai was the tallest building in the world in 2016, and the Shanghai
Tower in China was the second-tallest.
Most of the landmarks of contemporary architecture are the works of a small group of architects who
work on an international scale. Many were designed by architects already famous in the late 20th
century, including Mario Botta, Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel, Norman Foster, Ieoh Ming Pei and Renzo
Piano, while others are the work of a new generation born during or after World War II,
including Zaha Hadid, Santiago Calatrava, Daniel Libeskind, Jacques Herzog, Pierre de
Meuron, Rem Koolhaas, and Shigeru Ban. Other projects are the work of collectives of several
architects, such as UNStudio and SANAA, or giant multinational agencies such as Skidmore,
Owings & Merrill, with thirty associate architects and large teams of engineers and designers,
and Gensler, with 5,000 employees in 16 countries.

Some of the most striking and innovative works of contemporary architecture are art museums,
which are often examples of sculptural architecture, and are the signature works of major architects.
The Quadracci Pavilion of the Milwaukee Art Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin was designed by
Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. Its structure includes a movable, wing-like brise soleil that
opens up for a wingspan of 217 feet (66 m) during the day, folding over the tall, arched structure at
night or during bad weather.[1]
The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (2005), was designed by the Swiss architects Herzog and de
Meuron, who designed the Tate Modern museum in London, and who won the Pritzker Architecture
Prize, the most prestigious award in architecture, in 2001. It updates and provides a contrast to the
austere earlier Modernist structure designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes by adding a five-story
tower clad in panels of delicately sculpted gray aluminum, which change color with the changing
light, connecting by a wide glass gallery leading to the older building. It also harmonizes with two
stone churches opposite.[2]
The Polish-born American architect Daniel Libeskind (born 1946) is one of the most prolific of
contemporary museum architects, He was an academic before he began designing buildings, and
was one of the early proponents of the architectural theory of Deconstructivism. The exterior of
his Imperial War Museum North in Manchester, England (2002), has an exterior which resembles,
depending upon the light and time of day, huge and broken pieces of earth or armor plates, and is
said to symbolize the destruction of war. In 2006 Libeskind finished the Hamilton Building of
the Denver Art Museum in Denver Colorado, composed of twenty sloping planes, none of them
parallel or perpendicular, covered with 230,000 square feet of titanium panels. Inside, the walls of
the galleries are all different, sloping and asymmetric.[3] Libeskind completed another striking
museum, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada (2007), also known as "The
Crystal", a building whose form, resembles a shattered crystal. [4] Libeskind's museums have been
both admired and attacked by critics. While admiring many features of the Denver Art Museum, The
New York Times' architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff wrote that "In a building of canted walls and
asymmetrical rooms—tortured geometries generated purely by formal considerations — it is virtually
impossible to enjoy the art."[5]
The De Young Museum in San Francisco was designed by the Swiss architects Herzog & de
Meuron. It opened in 2005, replacing an older structure that was badly damaged in an earthquake in
1989. The new museum was designed to blend with the natural landscape of the park, and to resist
strong earthquakes. The building can move up to three feet (91 centimeters) on ball-bearing sliding
plates and viscous fluid dampers that absorb kinetic energy.
The Zentrum Paul Klee by Renzo Piano is an art museum near Berne Switzerland located next to an
autoroute in the Swiss countryside. The museum blends into the landscape by taking the form of
three rolling hills, made of steel and glass. One building houses the gallery (which is almost entirely
underground, to preserve the fragile drawings of Klee from the effects of sunlight) while the other two
"hills" contain an education center and administrative offices.[6]