This animation by architect Andrea Stinga and graphic designer Federico Gonzalez depicts the best-known buildings of 26 famous architects, one for each letter of the alphabet.
Starting with Alvar Aalto's Säynätsalo Town Hall, The ABC of Architects flashes through an assortment of colourful cartoon buildings that includes Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Bilbao and Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye, before finishing up with Zaha Hadid's Pierres Vives.
"This work is an alphabetical list of the most important architects with their best known building," explain the producers."A lot of them have been left out with grief because we only need one for each letter and it's been an effort to have different nationalities."
See more animations by Federico Gonzalez on his website, or see more work by Andrea Stinga at Ombu Architecture's website.
Other animations on Dezeen include a sketchbook that comes to life in time with music and a futuristic rendering of the London 2012 Olympic Velodrome. See more animations on Dezeen.
Wrong flag used for Pelli's towers in Kuala Lumpur as well as for Quarenghi's Institute in St Petersburg!
Ana G, you might inform us of the correct flags?
Hi Ana, actually the flags indicate the nationality of each architect.
Amy/Dezeen
Then why is Domenech portrayed with the Catalonian flag, and not the Spanish flag Last time I checked Catalonia was a part of Spain.
The answer is that the Colombian designer who did this video is based in Barcelona and deals with nonsense nationalism. It’s a pity that he use this medium for politics.
What a mean-spirited comment. Domenech considered himself Catalan and worked at the Centre Nacional Català. In fact, in architectural terms, his style is known and widely recognised as Catalan Modernism, a style specific to Catalonia.
Moreover, if you research to overcome your ignorance, you will find that the statutes of autonomy officially give Catalan the status of nationality within Spain, therefore once can perfectly well (and legally) be defined as a Catalan.
Before you mention it, I'm not actually Catalan, but British, so I'm not engaging in 'nonsense nationalism', as you call it. I don't think the Colombian designer is intending to be political. If it bothered you so deeply, it suggests that the one playing politics is you. All nationalism is nonsense, so let people define themselves how they choose and get over it.
Hi Net
The people can define themselves however they. I agree with that, even if I think that any nationalism is nonsense (for more information, Nations and Nationalism by Ernest Gellner or Eric Hobsbawm).
But Catalonia is still part of Spain; maybe in the future it will be another country. You are also not right about what they want because until now nobody knows exactly what the majority in Catalonia want, because there hasn’t been any legal referendum (there should be one).
The statutes of autonomy of Catalonia was written from politics from Catalonia, not from Spain. And with a participation of 48.85% of the Catalan people. The introduction, where the nationality is defined, was defined as something similar to “absence of legal effect” in Spain.
I don’t have any problem if Catalonia wants to be a new country, if people want it. But actually Catalonia is considered part of Spain.
Pelli was born, studied and worked in Argentina.
Love it!
Although I would have preferred Zumthor at the end instead of Zaha Hadid.
Ok, so you would've taken away the one woman architect included here?
The halos over the trade center towers were a nice touch.
Zaha Hadid at the end? Eduardo Souto de Moura on the “E”? They don’t know how to list things alphabetically.
Actually the flag for Domenech (if we are talking about countries of origin) should be the Spanish flag since Catalonia, as far as I know, is not a country, yet, and maybe never will be.
Too fast. Can’t really take the info at this pace.
These would make great posters/postcards. Does anyone know if they're available?
Sorry Andy, this really isn’t the place for positive comments.
Excellent video… instead of just pointing to minor details or focusing on political issues why not to talk about the good idea it represents and how well it's done. Dezeen lately is full of haters :(
Congrats Federico! Lovely video!
Thank God!
Xenakis!
Cute, but too fast!
Haters? Nowadays highly politically correct people wrongly call you a hater when you are telling the truth. People no more want to listen to the truth. It’s better to avoid it and it’s very comfortable.
To the person that calls the other participant ignorant (obviously he is not a hater but an owner of the absolute truth) let me explain autonomy in Spain: do not categorize an autonomic region as a country. You can call yourself whatever you want but there is no legal support, nationality or even passport that represents that denomination internationally. So you are wrong my friend and that’s a fact.
I very much liked the presentation and I think it’s a very original way to mention and recognize world class architects. But if we think that something is not correct and could be better, we have the right to comment since the material was published and therefore the subject of public scrutiny.
I agree about Zumthor, and will have to look into Eduardo Souto.
Great job!!! :) You can try with the ABC Architects 2.0:
Ando, Big, Chipperfield, Diller+Scofidio, Eisenmann, Fehn, Gaudi, Holl, Ito, JDS, Kuma, Libeskind, Morphosis, Neutra, OMA, Pei, Quaroni, Rietveld, Snohetta, Terragni, UN Studio, Venturi, Williams+Tsien, Yamashita, Zumthor.