Today we’re closing out the work week in style by celebrating the Top 10 Buildings from Around the World in 2021. With ground-breaking projects coming to us from Denmark, India, France (twice), Kenya, Greenland, China, Chile, Indonesia, and the USA, one thing that’s become abundantly clear is the ever-growing importance of social and environmental values and the power of architecture to be a force for good. Here are our 10 best projects from 2021 – Enjoy!
Kornets Hus by Reiulf Ramstad Arkitekter
Location: Hjørring, Denmark
The Jutland region, with its diversity of landscapes and long history, is in many ways the most continental region in Denmark. Hjørring has some of the oldest traces of settlements nationally and an established cultural landscape. The Kornets Hus – or grain house, is the realization of a new centre for the dissemination of the region’s rich food and farming culture. Located on the land of an existing farm and bakery, the new inspiration centre will offer visitors, locals and employees alike a facility for activity based learning centered around the importance of grain both to Jutland and human civilization.
The Rajkumari Ratnavati Girl’s School by Diana Kellogg Architects
Sitting atop numerous acres in the heart of the mystic Thar Desert in Rajasthan, India, stands The Rajkumari Ratnavati Girl’s School – a fantastical oval sandstone structure that blends seamlessly into the arid landscape. Set to open in July 2021, the school will serve more than 400 girls, from kindergarten to class 10, that live below the poverty line in the region where female literacy barely touches 36 percent.
La Samaritaine by SANAA, Lageneau Architectes, FRAA | Brugel Architectes Associés
This project is the renovation of La Samaritaine, a late-19th century “Grand magasin” in Paris. The site is of great historical significance and the footprint of the building extends from Rue de Rivoli to the Quai du
Louvre, overlooking the Seine. The design creates a “passage de La Samaritaine”, a new street with social and commercial activities that runs through the length of the existing building. It connects three full height courtyards, one existing and two new: each is unique in design and together they create an alternating sequence of indoor activity areas and spaces that are open to views of the sky.
Startup Lions Campus by Kéré Architecture
Location: Turkana County, Kenya
The Startup Lions Campus is an information and communication technologies (ICT) campus, located on the banks of Lake Turkana, Kenya. The project responds to the pressing challenge of youth unemployment faced in the region by offering high-level training and access to international job opportunities, allowing young entrepreneurs to thrive professionally without having to leave their place of origin. The campus will provide 100 new workstations and is the first step in an ambitious vision of spreading ICT networks in remote areas.
Ilulissat Icefjord Centre by Dorte Mandrup
Location: Kangia Icefjord, Greenland
In the harsh yet beautiful Arctic landscape surrounded by snow and ice, Dorte Mandrup has designed Ilulissat Icefjord Centre on the edge of the UNESCO-protected Greenland wilderness. Overlooking the Kangia Icefjord on the west coast of Greenland, 250 km north of the Arctic Circle, the building blends effortlessly into the landscape and offers a unique vantage point from which to experience the astonishing Icefjord and understand the dramatic consequences of climate change on this remarkable landscape.
Henderson Cifi Tiandi in Shanghai by Ateliers Jean Nouvel
The Former French Concession has long put its stamp on this part of Shanghai, and it was an honour for a French architect to design an urban space here in tune with its urbanism, its plane trees, narrow streets and inhabited landscapes. Between Ma Dang and Dan Shui streets, it was tempting to create a shortcut that would be an urban and commercial passageway, a sequence evoking vanished surroundings that have been completely reimagined and are new and modern; a high, narrow street that’s covered and protected…
INES Innovation Center by Pezo von Ellrichshausen
Location: Concepción, Chile
The architects were told that when resources are scarce, intensity compensates for high performance (because there seems to be a deep gap between ingeniousness and intelligence). Of course, they knew that any project is a reaction to its circumstances. This is an apparently simple, stable and regular building that contains an unexpected and exaggerated interior. This is the world of innovation; a continuous, fluid and open space that conceptual and physically translates the creative processes of academic practice, that sequential development of formal research or the reversible and multiple dimension associated with informal knowledge.
Wearecontents 
Wearecontents
Le Ray by Maison Edouard François
Location: Nice, France
Le Ray is home to a 25,000-m² mixed-use program including 350 apartments and 6,000 m² of commercial floor area. This residential project is certified BDM (sustainable Mediterranean buildings) and labeled BiodiverCity®, NF Habitat HQE. This project, located in town on the heights overlooking Nice, lies in the middle of a broad dale descending to the sea. A lovely urban boulevard runs straight down the middle of the dale, with one side densely urbanized and the other a chic and historic neighborhood of grand villas. On this latter side, nature is everywhere. A ten-minute tramway ride links the neighborhood of Le Ray to the city center. On the horizon, mountains and luxuriant hills surround the dale. One’s gaze finally comes to rest below on Nice’s old city center and the Mediterranean beyond. The landscape is typically luxuriant Mediterranean, with trees here and there reaching heights over 50 meters. This sun-drenched nature is watered by underground rivers.
The Arc at Green School by IBUKU
The Arc is the newest building on campus at the world-renowned Green School in Bali, Indonesia. The school has a 12 year history of breaking boundaries and expanding horizons and the Arc is the newest benchmark in that history, raising the bar for sustainable education around the world. The first building of its kind ever made, The Arc at Green School is built from a series of intersecting 14 meter tall bamboo arches spanning 19 meters, interconnected by anticlastic gridshells which derive their strength from curving in two opposite directions.
Hill Country Wine Cave by Clayton Korte
Location: Texas Hill Country, Texas
Located at the eastern edge of the Texas Hill Country, this private wine cave serves as a destination along a secluded bend of the Blanco River. Excavated into the north face of a solid limestone hillside, this shotcrete lined tube is protected on the east and west by tall oak and elm trees, allowing it to nearly disappear within the native landscape. The unassuming exterior entry court reveals a bit of mystery as it provides just a glimpse of what lies within. Heavy limestone boulders, collected from the excavation, and lush vegetation further camouflage the entry as you descend into the mouth of the cave.
