Architecture Survey, Last 30 Years

After I did the last post on Renzo Piano, I discovered that I've been gravitating towards articles I see relating to architecture!  It is really beautiful and amazing, so I thought I'd share this article with you.  Vanity Fair recently polled 52 of the brightest and best architects, professors and writers on architecture.  The poll included asking these individuals what they thought was the most significant building built in the last 30 years.  I looked through the responses and have listed and pictured the next 7 top responses below.  What beautiful work that's out there!
The top response was overwhelmingly Frank Ghery's Guggenheim Bilbao Museum (pictured below).   

Covered almost completely in glass, titanium, and limestone it definitely makes an impression.
But among the answers from the individuals polled, came out a few others that I was excited to research.

This is an interior shot of the Church of the Light in Osaka, Japan. Built by Tadao Ando in 1989.  The structure is made almost entirely of concrete with slits references the crucifix at the front of the church. 

This should be a familiar building to those who enjoyed the 2008 Olympics as much as I did!  This building, the Beijing National Stadium was completed in 2007 for the summer Olympics held in Beijing, China in 2008. The structure was built by

This is the exterior of the museum, built by Renzo Piano in 1987, that holds the Menil Collection.  The collection, located in Houston, Texas, is over 15,000 pieces in its entirety.  The structure was completed in 1987.

 The HSBC building in Hong Kong, completed in 2008.  The design was done by the British architect Lord Norman Foster.   In speaking about the lobby of the new building in referencing the old HSBC building it was "Conceived as a minimalist glass envelope, the new lobby is designed to be deferential to Foster's structure and appears almost to be part of the original."  This building seems to successfully have married the old structure to the new one.  

Saint-Pierre church in Firminy, France designed by Le Corbusier.  This was Le Corbusier's final project which wasn't even begun until 1971, six years after his death in 1965.  Le Corbusier is considered the father of urban planning and this was his last vision realized. 

Thermal Baths in Vals, Switzerland. Constructed by Peter Zumthor in 1996. Wikipedia describes the building "structure consists of solid walls of concrete and thin slabs of Vals gneiss broken and cut to size in the quarry just behind the village." Its so great when local materials are used for buildings. 

The Seattle Library is 11 stories of glass and steel, constructed by Joshua Prince-Ramus in 2004.