We've reached the final edition of our festive A-Zdvent calendar of architects, which wouldn't be complete without Zaha Hadid. The architect's recent built projects include the Heydar Aliyev Centre in Azerbaijan (pictured) and a new exhibition space for the Serpentine Gallery in London, but she is also working on a stadium for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and a Miami skyscraper.
Ma Yansong of Beijing studio MAD is the penultimate architect to appear in this year's A-Zdvent calendar. Featured here is his blob-shaped Ordos Museum in the Gobi desert, which is clad in polished metal tiles to resist sandstorms. The firm also recently presented a masterplan for China where buildings are designed to look like mountains and public spaces overlap with the natural landscape.
We've reached the final day of our festive countdown, so in the first of three final posts today here's Chinese architect Li Xiaodong, whose projects include a school that bridges a creek between two castles and a library clad with firewood (pictured).
Behind today's A-Zdvent calendar window is Brazilian architect Isay Weinfeld, who we recently interviewed about his new monograph and exhibition in New York. We've also featured a string of impressive São Paulo residences by the architect, including a house with a floating spiral staircase made from Brazilian ironwood and a home made up of seven boxy volumes, all made using different materials (pictured).
Today's A-Zdvent calendar features Rafael Viñoly and his Firstsite gallery wrapped in golden metal. New York architect Vinoly also made the headlines this summer after reports surfaced that his Walkie Talkie skyscraper in London was reflecting light intense enough to melt cars.
The next letter in our A-Zdvent calendar is U, for Dutch architecture firm UNStudio. Pictured is Galleria Centercity, a department store in South Korea, and the architects have also recently completed a shopping centre in China with over 42,000 shiny silver balls attached to its facade.
T is for Japanese architect Toyo Ito, whose Tama Art University Library is behind today's advent calendar window. Completed in 2007, the library comprises slender concrete arches that span lengths of up to 16 metres. Ito was also this year's Pritzker Prize laureate and his other projects include the Za Koenji Public Theatre in Tokyo.
Sou Fujimoto is the nineteenth architect to feature on our festive calendar. The Japanese architect, who claims to design structures "in between" architecture and nature, designed a cloud-like structure for this year's Serpentine Gallery Pavilion and previously completed a tiny wooden house built from a stack of chunky timber beams (pictured).
Famous for their collaboration on the iconic Pompidou Centre in Paris in 1977 (pictured), Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano both feature as the letter R in our A-Zdvent calendar of architects. Italian architect Piano recently completed an extension to Louis Khan's Kimbell Art Museum in Texas, while Rogers' London firm has just won a competition to design a new centre for social sciences at the London School of Economics.
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There aren't many architects whose names begin with Q, so our seventeenth A-Zdvent calendar entry is Belgian artist Arne Quinze, who built this 20 metre-high installation in Germany in 2009. Other architectural structures by Quinze include The Sequence, a canopy of tree-like forms installed outside the Flemish Parliament in Brussels, Belgium.
P is for Peter Zumthor in today's A-Zdvent calendar window. The Swiss architect designed a Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London in 2011, and was also responsible for the Brother Klaus Field Chapel in Germany (pictured) and a memorial to commemorate suspected witches in Norway.
Following our exclusive interview with Rem Koolhaas last month, Dutch office OMA is the fifteenth entry to our A-Zdvent calendar of architects. Koolhaas' firm recently completed De Rotterdam, a 44-storey group of interconnected glass towers in the architect's home city, and has also built two skyscrapers in China - the Shenzhen Stock Exchange (pictured) and the CCTV Headquarters building in Beijing.
N stands for late Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer in our fourteenth festive A-Zdvent calendar. This image by photographer Pedro Kok depicts the entrance to the Ibirapuera Auditorium in Sao Paulo, completed in 2005, while the architect's most famous projects include the National Congress of Brazil and the Cathedral of Brasília.
Dutch architect and MVRDV co-founder Winy Maas is the letter M in our daily A-Zdvent calendar. The firm's projects include the Balancing Barn (pictured), a house with a 15-metre cantilever, and a shop and office complex disguised as an old farmhouse, but which actually features walls made from glass.
Daniel Libeskind is the twelfth addition to our A-Zdvent calendar of architects. Pictured here is the New York architect's extension to the Dresden Museum of Military History, which features a pointed steel and glass shard through the skin of the historic museum, but he also recently unveiled plans to build an angular apartment block in Berlin.
Next up in our alphabet of architects is Kengo Kuma, the Japanese architect who has completed two contemporary art centres in France this year - the timber-clad art college and music school in Besançon and the FRAC arts centre in Marseille with a chequered glass facade (pictured).
Today is the tenth letter in our A-Zdvent calendar and features John Pawson. His British firm remodelled this old church in Augsburg, Germany earlier this year (pictured) and yesterday announced he'll be the latest designer of a holiday home for Alain de Botton's Living Architecture project.
Letter I stands for Japanese architect Arata Isozaki in the ninth window from our A-Zdvent calendar of architects. Isozaki's most famous projects include the Museum of Modern Art in Gunma, but he more recently completed an inflatable mobile concert hall in collaboration with artist Anish Kapoor and the Qatar National Convention Centre, where tree-like columns support an overhanging roof (pictured).
Following a preview of the nearly completed Pérez Art Museum in Miami this week, our eighth A-Zdvent calendar window features Swiss architecture duo Herzog & de Meuron. Here's a picture of their Vitrahaus showroom shaped like a pile of houses.
G is for Frank Gehry in our seventh A-Zdvent calendar window. The American architect's Guggenheim Museum in the Spanish city of Bilbao (pictured) famously sparked a trend for cities commissioning iconic buildings as catalysts for regeneration, while other high-profile projects include his Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the upcoming new headquarters for Facebook.
