Method to the madness

At first glance, you would assume this building looks like a completely random array of metal and glass. Well if you did, you would be completely right. As Gehry said himself "The randomness of the curves are designed to catch the light".

This building is in Bilbao, Spain; a port town. The natural contures and curves are also designed to look like a ship. This is an example of how Gehry builds to fit the environment.

Never a Detail Too Many

Peter Zumthor has a very unique way of looking at details and how each one interacts specially with the building and the other details around it. When starting a project, Zumthor likes to think of how the building will be used in the future, and who all will be using it. Along this same line of thought, Zumthor likes creating spaces that don't necessarily create direction, but let people wonder freely throughout the building. Peter Zumthor has very beautiful buildings, and known of which are overly flashy, but they have an over all simple style about them that makes the building need no artistic additions.

In Peter Zumthor's mind, details are not just decoration, they lead to the understanding of a whole. With that thought, Zumthor adds so many details to his buildings, details that no one besides a skilled designer would notice, that the seemly over bearing quality of those details blend together to create absolute simplicity. Zumthor has come to know, that "At the point in time when concrete materials are assembled and erected, the architecture we have been looking for becomes part of the real world." This line is a perfect example of Zumthor's work, having so much hard work and demanding the best materials, that in the end it all evens out and one doesn't really notice the minuscule details anymore.

For example, the time it must have taken to get the light right in the thermal baths in Vals must have taken a back breaking long time, just to add mood lighting. But it was all worth it for Zumthor, because artificial lighting wouldn't do for the aura that he was trying to create. In fact, lighting is a huge factor in almost all the buildings Zumthor designs. Even if he is just refurbishing an old house/building, which he does alot, it has to feel right.

Simplicity and Sustainibility

If Renzo Piano could change the way the George Pompidou Center looked, he would. The cultures center was his first design, and it is very unlike any of his other designs. His later designs are simple, yet sustainable. In the pictures above is George Pompidou Center. A culture center but also a good viewing place of Paris, it has attracted many people from the start.

The picture above is the Brancusi gallery Piano reconstructed. Believe it or not, it is right next to the George Pompidou Center. The contrast between the two designs is great, even from the outside.
In this photos above is Kansai International Airport. The airport was constructed on a 1-mile artificial island off of Osaka, Japan. It was built to sustain earthquakes and tycoons but Piano also made it simple and beautiful.

'Universal Space'

Shigeru Ban's main focus in his work is to create a 'univeral space' in the design. One way he has done that is by not just using a traditional four wall house with a couple windows splattered about. One exmaple of this would be Wall-less house.

The Wall-less house has no walls technically, but sliding glass panels that hide away instead. It seems to just be one wide open space with a few pieces of furniture scattered about. It is like you areone with nature in this indoor/outdoor house. This house has slidign glass panels that are hidden yet can be rolled out to protect the 'inside' of the house from weather.

Another example of the universal space concept is the Curtain Wall House. The Curtain Wall House has two walls in the back corner and separating the bathroom from the rest of the space, but just two big curtains as the front walls against the street, but like the Wall-less house, it has a glass wall the comes out by the balconies to protect the inside from weather.

Sharing a Common Language

In an interview with Renzo Piano, the interviewer asks him, "All of your art museums share a common language- art and transparency. Why?" I don't really remember the answer, but I do know that if you look at all of his designs after George Pompidou Center, there is always a light, cozy feeling to his designs.

Roofing is especially important to that feeling. An ever-occurring 1-inch ceiling to let natural light in while controlling the damaging sun rays, is his "leaves" technology. Made with renewable and environmentally safe materials, the "leaves" fulfills Renzo Piano's desire to create a comfortable environment, but also fulfilling the public's as well. Photo below, is Menil Collection.

The "leaves" are also transparent in the way too. Only having lighting for the art (if needed), the rest is natural light during the day. Menil Collection is the best example for this.

Movement

Many of Santiago Calatrava's creations involve movement. Some symbolize or create an illusion of movement, while some are like machines, and actually move.
Icarus is one of the machines he designed. It is composed of many curved white objects, shaped like a bar-magnet cut in half, with round ends. They are controlled by gears that time their movement, so it looks like a group of people doing the wave back and forth, but with only one arm each. Many of designs have similar curves, or sometimes arches.
In the ceiling he designed at the Jakem Steel Warehouse, there are column-like beams on the ceiling, that look as if they are about to fall. However, they are actually structurally sound.
He tends to draw inspiration from the area surrounding the building site, and many of his creations have an abundance of windows.