“It was the night before Christmas, and all through the Bauhaus…”
December brings with it many familiar things: colder days, longer nights, some pretty extreme weather, and a healthy dose of festive cheer. While some people are already enjoying their Christmas vacation, an architect’s work is never done, and many firms will be working hard to maintain progress on their projects into 2017.
In honor of all you hard working souls, we present you with a traditional treat for this convivial time of year, with an architectural twist. It is fair to say that the 24 windows on your advent calendar would be markedly more exciting to open if they were designed by the following architects — check out these icons of fenestration from the past 100 years as you count down to Christmas:
Window No. 1: Antoni Gaudí
Casa Batlló, Barcelona, Spain (1906)
Via Azur Tour
Window No. 2: Louis Sullivan
National Farmers’ Bank, Owatonna, Minn., United States (1908)
Via Wikipedia
Window No. 3: Frank Lloyd Wright
Robie House, Chicago, Ill., United States (1909)
Window No. 4: Gerrit Rietveld
Rietveld Schröder House, Utrecht, Netherlands (1924)
Via Ella in the NL
Window No. 5: Walter Gropius
Bauhaus Dessau, Dessau, Germany (1926)
Via M–Dash
Window No. 6: Konstantin Melnikov
Melnikov House, Moscow, Russia (1929)
© Natalia Melikova
Via The Constructivist Project
Window No. 7: Alvar Aalto
Sports Hall for the University of Technology Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland (1949)
Via Pinterest
Window No. 8: Mies van der Rohe
Farnsworth House, Plano, Ill., United States (1951)
Rendering by Max Gooday; via CGarchitect
Window No. 9: Le Corbusier
Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp, France (1954)
Via Colline Notre Dame du Haut
Window No. 10: Eero Saarinen
TWA Terminal, John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York, N.Y., United States (1962)
Via LE Miami
Window No. 11: Oscar Niemeyer
Mondadori Palace, Milan, Italy (1975)
© Ezio Beschi; via Flickr
Window No. 12: Carlo Scarpa
Brion Cemetery, San Vito d’Altivole, Treviso, Italy (1978)
Via Wikipedia
Window No. 13: Louis Khan
Jatiyo Sangsad Bhaban, Mohammadpur, Dhaka, Bangladesh (1982)
Window No. 14: Jean Nouvel
Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, France (1987)
Via Gallery Hip
Window No. 15: Peter Eisenman
Nunotani Corporation Headquarters, Tokyo, Japan (1992)
Via Pinterest
Window No. 16: Frank Gehry
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Bilbao, Spain (1997)
Via Wikipedia
Window No. 17: Rem Koolhaas
Maison à Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France (1998)
Via The Modern House
Window No. 18: Daniel Libeskind
Jewish Museum, Berlin, Germany (1999)
Window No. 19: Tadao Ando
Shiba Ryotaro Memorial Museum, Osaka, Japan (2001)
Via Pinterest
Window No. 20: Tom Kundig
Chicken Point Cabin, Northern Idaho, United States (2002)
Via Olson Kundig
Window No. 21: Norman Foster
30 St Mary Axe, London, United Kingdom (2003)
Via Urban Splatter
Window No. 22: SANAA
Zollverein School of Management and Design, Essen, Germany (2006)
Via Seier+Seier on Flickr
Window No. 23: Zaha Hadid
Guangzhou Opera House, Guangzhou, China (2010)
Window No. 24: Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron
Elbe Philharmonic Hall, Hamburg, Germany (completion planned for 2017)
© Carlos Guerreiro
Via 500px
For more glazed inspiration from contemporary firms across the globe, check out the ever-expanding Architizer database, now.