TIME Great Buildings: The World’s Most Influential, Inspiring and Astonishing Structures

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With a new age of great architecture in full flight, the editors of TIME explore the most astonishing structures of the 21st century, the most influential buildings of the past and the master architects who have helped shape contemporary life. Here are visions of great beauty, from the Taj Mahal to the Sydney Opera House. Here are icons that resonate with history: the Pyramids at Giza, the Ch?teau de Versailles, Britain’s Westminster Palace. Here are memorable homes, from Thomas Jefferson’s stately Monticello to Frank Lloyd Wright’s serene Fallingwater. Here are buildings touched by genius and sanctified by worship, marvels of engineering and lofty skyscrapers. Here are great eras of design, from the classical age to Art Nouveau to the International Style. Here are the most striking buildings of our time, from the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, to the Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai, which thrusts more than a half-mile into the heavens and became the world’s tallest building when it opened in 2010. And here are profiles and portfolios of five groundbreaking architects:20th century masters Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Frank Lloyd Wright, as well as contemporary visionaries Norman Foster, Frank Gehry and Santiago Calatrava.