The world's five most famous living architects

There are artists who changed the way we see the world around us, just as there are architects who radically changed our cities and our lives. With vision and inspiration, with talent and hard work, talented people designed and shaped the urban landscape. Museums, residences, airports, entire cities, became masterpieces through their designs and are admired all over the world.
We present to you five of the most influential living architects and their great work:

Frank Gehry
Although in six years Frank Gehry turns 100, he does not stop working. One of the most acclaimed architects of the 20th century, he has become famous for the deconstruction that characterizes most of his designs. The form in Gehry's buildings is never related to their function, but that makes them all the more wonderful.
Tourists from all over the world flock to see the architectural guru's masterpieces in Europe, but also around the world. He declares himself tireless and cannot imagine himself retiring.
Although his career took off after 50, when he decided to devote himself to his unconventional ideas, Frank Gehry was quickly recognized as a great. Main cause, the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, which architect Philip Johnson called "the greatest building of our generation".
A monumental building on the banks of the Nervion River with asymmetrical volumes and curved surfaces made of titanium, with which Gehry proved that architecture can revitalize run-down urban areas, subsequently causing the "Bilbao effect", i.e. a series of similar projects which began to be born in various parts of the world.

Gerry is also well known in America for the Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles. His other recognizable projects are Der Neue Zollhof in Düsseldorf, Germany and the Marqués de Riscal Vineyard Hotel in Spain and Disneyland in Paris. Everyone's favorite, the "swaying" building, Dancing House or Fred and Ginger in Prague, reminiscent of a dancing couple.

Frank Owen Goldberg, as his name is, was born on February 28, 1929 in Toronto, Canada to Russian Jewish parents. His father, Irving Goldberg, was born in Brooklyn, New York, while his mother was a Polish-Jewish immigrant. His maternal grandmother, Leah Kaplansky, inspired young Frank with a passion for architecture, building "future cities" with him, using scraps of wood from her husband's shop.
As he has revealed himself, his great love is classical music. "Most of all I like to create concert halls. I love classical music. How can you make a building communicate? How can you make the stage conducive to communication with the audience or the orchestra to share the audience's feelings? It's about the scale, the materials, the right placement of the detail."

Norman Foster
The architect behind the most important landmarks on the planet, such as the Gherkin skyscraper in London, and the one who at the same time "signed" the Hellinikon masterplan, goes by the name of Norman Foster.
The 88-year-old architect, almost half a century before he undertook the design of the first "green" residential Tower in the Marina of Agios Kosmas, stirred the waters of world architecture.
Since 1967, when he opened his office in London, until today he has undertaken hundreds of projects in over twenty countries of the world. Impressive range of designs, including from galleries and museums to airports and of course skyscrapers, private homes and offices.
Foster became the 21st recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1999. He has been awarded the Gold Medal of Architecture of the American Institute of Architects (1994), the Royal Gold Medal of Architecture (1983), and the Gold Medal of the French Academy of Architecture (1991). In 1990 he was knighted in the Queen's Birthday Honors, and in 1999 he was awarded a Life Peerage, The Lord Foster of Thames Bank.
The 470 awards, as well as the list of works he has signed, are impossible to mention in their entirety. But what should be mentioned is its architecture, which never entered into norms and molds. Foster loved technology and combined it with building design.
Among his early successes were the Willis Faber and Dumas Building, built between 1971 and 1975 in Ipswich, England, and later the Sainsbury Center for the Visual Arts, a gallery and educational institution at the University of East Anglia, Norwich.

His steadfast commitment to the principles of architecture as an art form, his contribution to the definition of an architecture of high technological standards, and his appreciation of the human values involved in producing consistently well-designed works were the elements that earned him the Pritzker Prize .
But Foster doesn't stop there. He travels at an unsustainable pace, changes countries almost every two weeks and continues to dream.

Jean Nouvel
Born to teacher parents in a small French province, Jean Nouvel seemed to have a preordained destiny. And yet, a pivotal meeting he had at 16 with a design teacher opened his eyes and led him down other paths. His parents may have resisted his decision to pursue the arts, but architecture seemed like the ideal middle ground. The great architect passed first at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1966 and received his degree in 1971.
Jean Nouvel has played a leading role in French intellectuals in the 70s, being one of the founding members of Mars 1976 and the French Association of Architects. Mars 1976, as he has mentioned, was a protest movement against the state, so that it does not repeat the same urban and architectural plans everywhere. "We didn't want universities, cities, etc. to be built the same way. We were defending diversity. The best way to protect an architect's rights is to defend the architecture itself."
There are buildings designed by Jean Nouvel that changed architecture forever. One such is the Arab World Institute in Paris, the Agbar Tower in Barcelona, the New Louvre in Abu Dhabi and the Cultural Conference Center in Lucerne. And the list is endless, as is the list of awards he has received.
In 1989 the Institute of the Arab World in Paris was awarded the Aga-Khan Prize for its role as a "successful bridge between French and Arab culture". In 2000 Jean Nouvel received the Golden Lion of the Venice Biennale. In 2001 he received three of the highest international awards: the Royal Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), the Praemium Imperial of the Association of Fine Arts of Japan and the Borromini Award for the Cultural and Convention Center of Lucerne.

His top honor was the Pritzker Prize in 2008, the highest honor for an architect.
Jean Nouvel's work, as stated on the website of Ateliers Jean Nouvel, “does not arise from style or ideology, but from an effort to create a unique concept for a unique combination of people, place and time. From his contextual approach and his ability to enrich with a true uniqueness all the projects he undertakes, buildings have emerged that consistently transform their surroundings and leave an indelible mark on the cities in which they are built."

Renzo Piano
At the age of 85, Renzo Piano is still as enthusiastic about each of his works as he was at the beginning of his career.

The architect, who is particularly well-known to Greeks, mainly from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, has put his signature on some of the most important buildings on the planet.
Paris, London, Athens, Berlin, New York and San Francisco. With his buildings, the Italian has left an indelible mark on the world's most famous cities and nothing stops him. The Georges Pompidou Cultural Center, the renovation of the old port of Genoa and Potsdam Square in Berlin, the Paul Klee Center in Bern, the new offices of the New York Times, and the California Academy of Sciences are all due to him.

As DW reports, conventions or traditions have never acted as a brake on the work of the famous architect. He was only 33 years old when in 1971 he undertook, together with his British partner, Richard Rogers, the construction of the new Museum of Modern Art in Paris, better known as the Center Pompidou.
Colored pipes and steps on the exterior surfaces and an electric staircase to dominate. The building then alienated many. Today, however, the Pompidou Center belongs to the most popular attractions and emblematic buildings of the French capital. "We were then a bit like little children in the game. We were, however, convinced that something would have to change", said Piano himself, reviewing his career so far.
Renzo Piano was born in Genoa in 1937, into a family with a tradition in the construction industry. While studying at the Polytechnic of Milan, he worked in the office of Franco Albini.
In 1971 he set up the Piano & Rogers office in London with Richard Rogers, with whom he won the competition for the Center Pompidou. He then moved to Paris. From the early 70s to the 90s he worked with engineer Peter Rice, with whom he shared Atelier Piano & Rice from 1977 to 1981.
In 1981 Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW) was founded, with 150 staff and offices in Paris, Genoa and New York. Since then, RPBW has been the vehicle for the development of some of Piano's most recognizable and important projects, such as the Kansai International Airport Terminal in Osaka, a wave-shaped landing and take-off pier that extends into the sea, awe-inspiring traveler, and the light-drenched Museum of the Beyeler Foundation, in Basel, Switzerland.
Of course, the revival of Potsdamer Platz (2000) in Berlin belongs to him, but also the new offices of The New York Times newspaper (2008) in Manhattan. And his dreams have no end...

Tadao Ando
At 77, Tadao Ado is one of the great masters of modern architecture - and he may never have received his degree.
A Pritzker Prize winner, he has designed hundreds of private and public buildings around the world, having reduced to the highest value in his work the beauty of simplicity and the balance of the natural and human environment.
His designs are characterized by the clever play of light and shadows, open and closed spaces and natural elements, both in their exterior and in the structural materials used. Thus, if we consider that the main colors found in his buildings are gray and white, we will understand that Ando's ultimate goal is not to create an aesthetically beautiful result, but to convince the viewer-visitor that the space embodies wisdom acquired through the senses.
Tadao Ato was born on September 13, 1941 in Minato-ku, Osaka, Japan, where he still lives today. He was raised in Asahi-ku, Osaka by his grandmother, from whom he took the name Ato.
His life was a turbulent one, spending most of his time mostly in the fields and on the streets. From the age of 10 until he was 17 he apprenticed with a carpenter in the workshop across the street from his house, making a series of model planes, ships and molds.
He also worked as a truck driver and boxer before turning to architecture. Self-taught, his studies began when he briefly worked alongside related professionals such as designers and town planners.
His initial interest in architecture was nurtured when he discovered a Le Corbusier sketchbook at the age of 15 in a used bookstore in Osaka. It took several weeks for him to save the money to buy it. Upon acquiring it, Ado says, “I've copied his early period drawings so many times, the pages have turned black. I often wondered silently how Le Corbusier had thought of this or that work.'
Tadao Ado has won many important awards, including the Gold Medal of the French Academy of Architecture (1989), the Carlsberg Prize (1992), the Pritzker Prize (1995), the VIII Premium Imperiale (1996) and the Royal Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of of British Architects (1997).
Among his most characteristic projects are the Row House in Sumiyoshi, Osaka, Rokko Housing I, II and III