20 most unusual architectural structures in Europe
Travels / / December 19, 2019
Typically, during a visit to foreign countries have lead to all sorts of excursions around historical places and try to capture the imagination of a pile of dates, names of royal personages, and legendary events. However, apart from the heritage of antiquity there is a lot of interesting modern buildings in Europe. In this article, we gathered the most spectacular of them, so you do not miss a single during his travels.
1. Vodafone office in Portugal
This project is the result of a competition organized by the telecommunications company Vodafone to build its headquarters in Porto. The project concept is intended to embody the company's motto "Life in Motion". Construction was started in 2008 and completed two years later.
2. Hotel Scandic Victoria in Sweden
Scandic Victoria Tower - is a skyscraper in Stockholm, Sweden. It is also known as the Victoria Tower, however Scandic name is used to distinguish it from the Victoria Tower, which is located to the south-west of the Palace of Westminster. The hotel has a height of 117 meters and is the tallest building in Stockholm, as well as the tallest hotel in the Nordic countries.
3. Railway Station Arnhem Netherlands
The building of the station in the Netherlands, was completely rebuilt in 2015. Its chic new room has a modern look thanks to the steel columns of the original form.
4. Marques de Riscal winery in Spain
Agriculture Herederos del Marques de Riscal can be called one of the most famous in the Spanish wine industry. The loudest of their project - the construction in 2006, "City of Wine» (Ciudad del Vino) by the famous architect Frank Gehry (Frank Owen Gehry). This is a large complex, which includes a winery, a five-star hotel with 43 rooms, a restaurant with author's cuisine and a wine spa.
5. Spittelau incineration plant in Austria
Hardly anyone outsider to guess what is in this building with a fun and unusual coloring. The plant was built in 1989 on the former site of the company for garbage recycling, closed after a fire. The enterprise can utilize up to 265,000 tons of waste per year, due to which the heated approximately 60,000 apartments in Vienna.
6. Markthal covered market in the Netherlands
Markthal - Market Hall in Rotterdam, located between the streets Binnenrotte, Hoogstraat and Blaak. It was opened on October 1, 2014 in the presence of Queen Maxima of the Netherlands. Markthal is interesting that under the same roof 228 residential apartments are located here, as well as commercial areas. Under the market is the largest in the city of a thousand car underground parking.
7. Courtyard of the British Museum in the UK
British Museum - the main historical and archaeological museum of the United Kingdom and one of the largest museums in the world, the second most visited among art museums after the Louvre. It is located in the Bloomsbury district. At the end of the XX century it was carried out remodeling the interior space designed by Norman Foster (Norman Foster), which still causes delight and surprise of all travelers.
8. Ceretto winery in Italy
Ceretto family is one of the principal owners of the Piedmont vineyards, which occupy over 160 acres in this corner of Italy. At the disposal of the family is four wineries and a number of restaurants that are built and decorated by the best designers of our time. The photo shows an observation deck at one of these establishments.
9. Guggenheim Museum in Spain
Guggenheim Museum - a museum of contemporary art, located in Bilbao, Spain. The museum is a permanent exhibition as well as temporary exhibitions both Spanish and foreign artists. The museum building was designed by renowned architect Frank Gehry, and was opened to the public in 1997.
10. Housing Aula Medica in Sweden
Karolinska Institutet - the largest in Sweden and one of the leading medical universities in Europe. Aula Medica is one of the buildings of the institution in which the audience of a thousand people for scientific conferences and lectures for the students.
11. Chapel of Notre Dame du Haut in France
This structure is called the most significant from an artistic point of view, the building of the XX century. Chapel built famous architect Le Corbusier (Le Corbusier) and perfectly inscribed into the surrounding landscape complex. Initially, non-standard building caused a storm of protests from local residents who refused to supply water to the temple and electricity, but by now the tourists who come to look at it, become one of the main sources of income population.
12. Exhibition Center Louis Vuitton Foundation in France
Louis Vuitton Foundation was created to support and develop creative freedom. His first manifesto was the construction of a completely unusual exhibition center in the Bois de Boulogne. The Louis Vuitton company said that the new museum is like a beautiful sailboat through openwork light design made of glass.
13. Exhibition Center The Armadillo in England
This is one of the main attractions of Glasgow, situated on the territory of the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Center. This is a fantastic structure built in 1997 by the famous architect Norman Foster. The three-storey building is a venue for international congresses, conferences and business meetings, as well as all kinds of exhibitions, cultural and recreational activities.
14. Skyscrapers Bosco Verticale in Italy
"Vertical Forest» (Bosco Verticale) - a residential complex consisting of two towers of 76 and a height of 110 meters. Two skyscrapers were built in Milan's Porta Nuova in 2009-2014. The peculiarity of this project lies in the fact that on the terraces surrounding each of the floors, arranged greenery: it planted about 900 trees, 5000 shrubs and 11,000 herbaceous tracks.
15. Inntel Hotel in The Netherlands
This hotel looks like a toy than indescribably happy tourists and residents. The building was built in 2010 in the center of Zaandam and consists of 12 floors. Its height is 39 meters. In total, the hotel has 160 rooms, in addition there are the Turkish and Finnish bath, pool, spa, meeting room, fitness center and restaurant.
16. Office center in the Czech Republic Dancing House
Dancing House - an office building in Prague in deconstructionism style, consisting of two cylindrical towers: normal and destructive. This building is an architectural metaphor for dancing couple, and thus acquired the name. Authors of the project - a Croatian architect Vlado Milunic (Vlado Milunic) and the Canadian architect Frank Gehry. Construction was carried out from 1994 to 1996.
17. HARPA concert hall in Ireland
The project was designed by the Danish firm Henning Larsen Architects in collaboration with the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson (Olafur Eliasson). The building has won one of Europe's most prestigious architectural awards for the unique style and bold design. The steel frame walls inserted glass panels in the form of cells of different colors with built-in LEDs that reflect and refract the outside light and create amazing beauty of the play of colors and halftones. Thanks to the glass walls and ceiling of the room filled with light and air.
18. Opera House Opera House in Norway
Norwegian National Opera in Oslo center. The theater was built by the state budget and is an institution controlled by the Government of Norway. It is the largest public building constructed in Norway since the construction of Nidaros Cathedral (around 1300).
19. Ideal Palace Palace in France
This unusual palace was built through the efforts of just one person - a simple French postman Ferdinand Cheval (Joseph Ferdinand Cheval). Miscellaneous-mail, every day he made his way to 25 kilometers, putting in a wheelbarrow stones of unusual shape. Of them for 33 years alone, in his spare time, day and night, in all weather conditions, with the most unpretentious tools he embodied in his life the architectural dream.
20. Emporia shopping center in Sweden
This mall immediately attracts the eyes of passers-by because of its unusual facade. It is located in the Swedish city of Malmo and is considered one of the largest in Scandinavia. Very spectacular and memorable building the shopping center designed by the architectural studio Wingårdhs.