Top 10 Best Architects In The World & Their Work

Being an Architect is one of the greatest feelings ever because it is among the most respectable profession in the world. Today in this article, we are going to reveal the top 10 best architects in the world and their remarkable pieces of work. There is a tough competition among the top 10 listings but it has concluded after analyzing multiple factors like the quantity of work, popularity, design charges, creativity & lot more. So, without wasting any time, let’s get started:

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Top 10 Best Architects In The World

10. I.M. Pei (Pei Ieoh Ming – Chinese American Architect)

One of the American-naturalized famous architects, I.M. Pei (Pei Ieoh Ming) is known for his large scale and sophisticated glass-clad buildings including the controversial glass pyramid at the Louvre Museum, Paris. Pei left China aged 18 and studied architecture at MIT and then under citoPitis at Harvard. He became an instructor than an assistant professor at Harvard before joining Webb & Knapp Inc., New York (1948-55).

He first achieved recognition for the Dallas Municipal Center (1966-78), which is built of concrete and resembles an upturned pyramid wedged into the ground. It is heavier in style than subsequent buildings, such as the 60- story John Hancock Tower in Boston, a slender glass-clad tower on a rhomboid plan described by the critic Charles Jencks as an “ice-blue Skyberg”. The fascination for pyramids surfaced again at the National Gallery of Art’s East Building (1978), where the simple stone and brick gallery is given interest in the roof constructed of small glass pyramids.

List Of Pie’s Major Work:

• Dallas Municipal Center, 1966-78.
• John Hancock Tower, Boston, Mass., 1973-7.
• East Building, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, 1978.
• I. Kennedy Library, South Boston, Mass., 1979.
• Bank of China, Hong Kong, 1984-8.
• Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, Dallas, 1989.
• Louvre pyramid, Paris, 1989.

9. Michael Graves (American Architect)

Michael Graves was one of the major figures of American Post-Modernism. He earned his graduate degree from the University of Cincinnati, Ohio and after that from Harvard. He became a professor at Princeton University in 1972. Famous architect Graves has become an amusing anti-Modern propagandist. Humour is an integral part of his architecture, and much of his recent work, especially for Disney, seems to be a celebration of kitsch. Due to his remarkable contributions, he is listed among the world’s most famous architects.

List Of Graves Major Work:

• Handselmann House, Fort Wayne, Indiana, 1967.
• Addition to Benacerraf House, Princetown, NJ, 1969.
• Fargo-Moorhead Cultural Center (bridge), Minnesota, designed in 1977.
• Kalko House, Green Brook, NJ, designed 1978.
• Public Services Building, Portland, Oregon, 1982.
• Humana Corporation Building, Louisville, Kentucky, 1983.
• Witney Museum Extension Project, NY, from 1985.
• Dolphin and Swan Hotels, Disneyland, 1989.
• Newark Museum, New York, 1990.

8. Mies Van Der Rohe (German Architect)

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, a very famous architect for his much-misunderstood dictum “Less is More”. He sought to create contemplative, emotionally neutral spaces through an architecture based on material honesty and structural integrity. The first seeds of this austere vision of architecture may have been planted when Mies attended mass as a schoolboy in the Palatine Chapel, Aachen.

Mies made a major contribution to the architectural polemics of the late 1920s as artistic director of the Werkbund-sponsored Weissenhof project, in which a model estate was constructed on a site outside Stuttgart as a test-bed for the white, functionalist housing of “Neues Bauen”. In addition to designing the site-plan and an apartment block, Mies commissioned house designs from sixteen leading Modernists, including famous architects – Gropius, Scharoun, Rehrens, Bruno and Max Taut, Oud, Siam, and Le Corbusier. He is one of the best architects in the world.

List Of Mie’s Major Work:

• Kiehl House, Berlin-Neuhahelsherg, 1907.
• Project: Krüller-Miiller House, Wassenaar, Holland, 1912.
• Project: Office Building, Friedrichstrasse, Berlin, 1921.
• Project: Glass Skyscraper, 1922.
• Wolf House, Guben, 1925-7.
• Monument to the November Revolution: Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, Berlin-Friedrichsfelde, 1926.
• Site planning and apartment building, Weissenhof Estate, Stuttgart, 1927.
• German Pavilion, Barcelona Exhibition, 1928-9 (rebuilt 1986).
• Tugendhat House, Brno, 1928-30. Model House and Apartment, Berlin Building Exhibition, 1931.
• Project: Reichshank, Berlin, 1933.

7. Louis I. Kahn (American Architect)

Louis Isadore Kahn was one of the foremost architects of the second half of the 20 century. He went to the United States in 1905 and has mastered the Beaux-Arts-inspired curriculum of Dean Paul Cret, he graduated with honor from the University of Pennsylvania in 1924.

Kahn received the AIA Gold Medal (1971) and the RIBA Gold Medal (1972) and was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1971). In his teaching and practice, Kahn profoundly influenced a generation of world-famous architects. He brought to both endeavors a Talmudic questioning of the first principles of architectural design. This fundamental inquiry led him to dwell on the relationship between the underlying Form of a project and its Design.

Kahn’s architecture is notable for its simple, platonic forms and compositions. Through the use of brick and poured-in-place concrete masonry, he developed a contemporary architecture of great power and monumentality. At the same time, his buildings invariably display a keen sensitivity to the nuances of site conditions through the artful manipulation of natural light. While rooted in the International Style Modernism of his age, Kahn mined both the Beaux-Arts education of his youth and a deeply felt aesthetic impulse to develop a personal architectural vocabulary of forms that has been a point of departure for many subsequent architects.

List Of Kahn’s Major Works:

• Yale Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut, 1951-3.
• Richards Medical Research Building, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1957-64. Salk Institute, La Jolla, California, 1959-65.
• New Capital of Bangladesh, Dacca, 1962-74.
• Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, 1966-72.
• Library and Dining Hall, Phillips Exeter Academy, New Hampshire, 1967-72.
• Center for British Art and Studies, Yale University, New Haven, 1969-74.

6. Le Corbusier (Swiss-French Architect)

Le Corbusier was the most important, influential and famous architect of the 20th century. Swiss by birth and trained as an artist in his home town under a fastidious teacher, L’Eplattenier, Charles Edouard Jeanneret (he adopted the pseudonym Le Corbusier only in the early 1920s) was a remarkably talented pupil.

He traveled widely in the Near and Middle East and worked his way through a study tour of Germany at a time when the ideas for a new architecture were being formulated. In 1908-9 he went to Paris to attend classes with Auguste Perret. Paris later became his métier: he was absorbed in the cultural and artistic life of the great city as an editor, writer, architect, and artist.

List Of Corbusier Major Work:

• Various villas in and around La Chaux de Fonds, Switzerland, 1908-16.
• Maison Citrohan (first project), 1920.
• Ozenfant Studio, Paris, 1924.
• Matson La Roche, Paris-Auteuil, 1925.
• Pavillon de [Esprit Nouveau, Paris Exposition, 1925.
• Villa Cook, Boulogne-sur-Seine, 1927.
• Houses, Weissenhof Estate, Stuttgart, 1927.
• Villa Stein, Larches, 1927.
• Villa Savoye, Poissy, 1928-9.
• Cite de Refuge, Paris, 1929-33.
• Maison aarte, Geneva, 1930-32.

5. Peter Eisenman (American Architect)

Prominent New York avant-garde critic, architect, and theorist. Eisenman studied at Cornell and Columbia Universities and then at Cambridge, England. He taught at Cambridge, Princeton and the Cooper Union in New York, where he was founder-director of the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, co-coordinating an ambitious program of lectures, seminars, research, and publications. Until recently he has built little but received critical attention for a series of controversial “anti-houses” which flout practicality in an attempt to create an autonomous abstract architecture. A 1988 MoMa exhibition in New York defined him and other architects as “Deconstructivist”, subverting received ideas about structure and function related to the earlier movement of Constructivism.

List Of Eisenman Major Work:

• House I (Bareholtz Pavilion), Princeton, N J, 1967-8.
• House II (Falk House) Hardwick, Conn., 1969-70.
• House III (Miller House), Lakeville, Conn., 1969-71.
• Apartments, Kochstrasse, Berlin, 1981-7.
• Wexner Center for the Visual Arts (extension), Ohio State University, Columbus, 1985-9. Bio-Centre, Frankfurt-am-Main, 1987-9.
• Guardiola House, Bay of Cadiz, Spain, 1988.
• Convention Center, Ohio, 1989

4. Frank O. Gehry (Canadian Architect)

Gehry’s strangest work is a fish-shaped restaurant in Japan, called “Fishdance”, and his most sophisticated is the Vitra Design Museum, Wein am Rhein. The jumble of plain white geometric shapes of the latter resembles a Russian Constructivist sculpture. Inside the museum is a calm top-lit space with galleries linked by bold curving ramps. His work was exhibited as part of the “Deconstructivist Architecture” show at MOMA, New York in 1988.

List Of Gehry Major Work:

• Gehry House, Santa Monica, 1978.9.
• Mid-Atlantic Toyota Distributorship Offices, Santa Monica, 1978.
• Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, 1981-4.
• California Aerospace Museum, Los Angeles, 1982-4.
• Fishdance Restaurant, Kobe, Japan, 1985.
• Vitra Design Museum, Wein am Rhein, 1989.

3. Renzo Piano (Italian Architect)

He is one of the most famous architects in the world. Piano’s use of technological function as a point of departure characterizes the work of what has become known as the “High-Tech” group of famous architects. This movement includes English designers such as Norman Foster, Nicholas Grimshaw, and Michael Hopkins. However, Piano’s desire to achieve a particular aesthetic quality is tempered by a concern for accommodating the user’s needs.

In his later work Piano has continued the structural experiments of the Pompidou Centre, applying them to a range of social and civic projects such as the residential quarter at Corciano in Perugia, the museum building for the De Menil Collection in Houston, Texas, and, most recently, a new football stadium in Bari, S Italy, built for the 1990 World Cup. The Stadio Nuovo continues Piano’s fruitful collaboration with the English engineer Peter Rice of Ove Arup and Partners.

List Of Piano Major Work:

• Centre Beaubourg, Paris (with Richard Rogers and Peter Rice), Paris, 1973-7.
• PATScentre Research Laboratories and Workshops, Cambridge, England (with Richard Rogers), 1975.
• Experimental residential quarter, Corciano, Perugia (with Peter Rice), 1978-82.
• Museum for the De Mend Collection, Houston, Texas, 1981.
• Stadio Nuovo, Bari (with Peter Rice), 1990.

2. Norman Foster (British Architect)

Leading British modern architect noted for his High-Tech structures. After service in the RAF, he received his architectural training at Manchester University School of Architecture (1956-61) and Yale University (1961-2).

One of his first projects, a house for Richard Rogers’s parents, was carried out with his late wife, and former partner, Wendy Foster, and Richard and Sue Rogers, working together as “Team 4″. Foster Associates was founded in London in 1967 and has grown into an enormously successful practice, with projects in many parts of the world.

Major projects include the controversial Reliance Controls Factory (1966-7), the much-admired black glass Willis Faber Dumas offices, Ipswich (1974-5), the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts (1976-8), what was described as the most expensive office building ever constructed, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank (1979-85), and the Stansted Airport Terminal (1980-90).

Over the years Foster has worked with a number of partners, who are all now well established in their own practices, including Birkin Haward and Michael Hopkins. The “High-Tech” vocabulary of the practice is uncompromising and clear in its exploration of technological innovation: technology produces form.

List Of Foster Major Work:

• Reliance Controls Factory, Swindon, 1966-7.
• Willis Faber Dumas offices, Ipswich, Suffolk, 1974-5.
• Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, Norwich, 1976-8.
• Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, 1979-85.
• M6diatheque, Maison Carree, Nimes, France, from 1984.
• Airport Terminal, Stansted, Essex, 1980-91.
• Kings Cross Redevelopment, London, 1988.

1. Antoni Gaudi (Spanish Architect)

Antoni Gaudi (25 June 1852–10 June 1926) is one of architecture’s most original and unusual talents. Also, know as Antonio Gaudí in English, he was one of the Spanish Catalan famous architects. The son of a coppersmith, pot and kettle maker, he was working in northern Spain at the time of an enthusiastic revival of all things Catalan and became absorbed in the idea of producing a style of architecture for the region.

Gaudi’s idiosyncratic and bizarre-looking architecture drew admiration from other avant-garde artists, including his fellow countryman the Surrealist painter Salvador Dali. The emergence of Gatlin’s entirely original style is to be found at the Palau Giiell in Barcelona (1885-9). Here, under the patronage of a textile businessman, Count Guell, Gaudi was given the opportunity to experiment with unusual, sculpted chimney pots and the use of tiled mosaic. These two features frequently occur in his later work.

Gaudi’s imagination was also given full rein on two housing projects in Barcelona, the Casa Batlló, (1905-7) and the exuberant Casa Mila (1905-7). Both incorporate strong maritime imagery. Gaudi’s undoubted masterpiece is the unfinished Expiatory Church of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, where he worked from 1884 until his tragic death in 1926 when he was knocked down and killed by a tram just outside the building. Work on the church charts the styles Gaudi evolved during his career as one of the famous architects in the history of architecture.

List Of Gaudi’s Major Work:

• Casa Vincens, Barcelona, 1883-5.
• Palau Gild, Barcelona, 1885-9.
• Workers’ community at Santa Coloma de Cement), Barcelona, 1891, and a chapel at the same site, 1908.
• Park Güell, Barcelona, 1900- 1911.
• Casa Batik., Barcelona, 1905-7.
• Casa Mila, Barcelona. 1905-7.
• Expiatory Church of the Sagrada Familia, Barcelona, from 1884.