The Meenakshi Amman Temple in Madurai, India, is a massive temple of Dravidian architecture laid out as a sacred cosmic mandala.It has 14 gateways densely covered with intricate carvings.The temple is dedicated to Lord Shiva who resides in the main central section

The Kailasa Temple at Ellora wasn't built stone by stone—it was carved top-down from a single massive rock.

Created in the 8th century, it is one of humanity's most astonishing feats of rock-cut architecture.

Thousands of tonnes of basalt were removed to reveal an entire temple complex, complete with courtyards, pillars and monumental sculptures.

The most incredible part? The builders essentially carved a mountain away until the temple was left behind.

1. Forbidden City, Beijing, China

2. Gyeongbokgung Palace, Seoul, South Korea

3. Itsukushima Shrine, Hiroshima, Japan

The way this building sits over the reflecting pool feels almost unreal. I really like the contrast between the massive concrete volume and the surrounding landscape. I always visit when have opportunity, is like 300km from my house

Hello! I have explored all 50 states and a couple countries taking pictutres of abandoned and unusual places. These are some of the wildest architectures that I have seen while exploring.

If you want to see more of my work check it out on insta: https://www.instagram.com/whimsicalruins/

1. "Goose Creek Tower" in Alaska by Phillip Weidner, unfinished
2. "World’s Largest Covered Wagon" in Nebraska by Kenneth Dahle, built in the 1960’s,
3. "Igloo City", in Alaska by Leon Smith, built in 1970s
4. "Pink Palace" in New York by David H. White, built in 1860
5. "The R.M. Knox House" in Arkansas by C.J. Faucette, it is one of the best remaining examples of Eastlake Victorian architecture, built in 1885
6. "Royse City Futuro House" in Texas by Matti Suuronen, built in 1960s
7. Russian Orthodox-style tiny church located in New York, 1972 by Ed Scherneck, built in 1972
8. "Reading between the Lines," in Belgium, by Pieterjan Gijs and Arnout Van Vaerenbergh, built 2011
9. "Bannerman Castle" in New York, by Francis Bannerman VI, built in 1918
10. "The Milk Can" in Rhode Island, by Charles Plant, built in 1931
11. "The Gingerbread House" in New Jersey, by Joseph Urban, built between 1928 and 1930

The Burroughs Wellcome Headquarters (demolished 2021) was a landmark brutalist and late modernist structure located in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.

Conceived as a structure that could continue growing. Its laboratories, offices and support areas could each be extended independently, with flattened hexagonal end walls indicating where new sections would attach.

Guarino Guarini's extraordinary 1670s dome on the Real Chiesa di San Lorenzo in Turin.

Photo, as ever, by me.

Text excerpted from National Historic Landmark Nomination (Summary before Description and first 2 paragraphs of Introduction to Statement of Significance):

"The General Motors Technical Center […] is nationally significant as one of the most important works of architect Eero Saarinen (1910-1961). The Technical Center represents several key aspects of this renowned architect's career. The first of these is that the Technical Center marks his emergence onto the international stage as an important designer independent of his work with his father Eliel, first bringing him to wide national attention and acclaim. The Technical Center project was embraced around the world as the embodiment of the spirit of the post-World War II age in America and of the prosperity and modernity of the nation and its people. The second of these is that this campus represents Saarinen's work not just as a creator of buildings, but as the planner/designer of total environments. At the Technical Center, Saarinen worked with and orchestrated key collaborators on the campus's buildings and their material details, construction methods, landscape, furniture and furnishings, and artwork, creating a design totality unparalleled in the period that established a key working method for the architect. Finally, the Technical Center is also significant as the first of four influential Saarinen suburban corporate campuses (along with later projects for IBM, Bell Laboratories, and John Deere), that set the design standard for this important post-World War II landscape and architectural type that represented a sea change in American business facilities.

While the Technical Center is also associated with a number of other nationally significant individuals, including automobile and industrial designer Harley Earl and General Motors executives Alfred P. Sloan and Charles F. Kettering, the Technical Center illustrates neither the areas of significance of these individuals nor, more importantly, the period in which the nationally significant achievements of these men were made. Further, while the nationally significant landscape architect Thomas Church was involved in the design of the Technical Center, it cannot be considered to be a signature design by Church. In contrast to the domestic projects for which Church is most widely known and recognized, and on which he himself wrote influentially for a large American audience, Church contributed aspects of the landscape to the Technical Center but was not the design leader for it. The project is undoubtedly characterized by a degree of technical and artistic collaboration, but under the principal design aegis and direction of Eero Saarinen.

[…]

Architectural historian Alice Friedman has noted in her recent American Glamor and the Evolution of Modern Architecture that, in his career cut short by his sudden death from a brain tumor in 1961, Eero Saarinen achieved an astounding amount of national success in his practice. As she further remarks, this success rested on a series of 'corporate headquarters and campus-like research centers for many of the household names of American industry and manufacturing' as well as 'plum government jobs.' Friedman accurately notes that these projects 'put a very public stamp of approval on Saarinen's distinctive approach to architecture, handing him the lion's share of responsibility for creating a new American style for the postwar age.' In contrast to other architects revered by their peers but relatively unknown to the American public, Saarinen's acclaim reached a broad audience through these projects. This acclaim was established by the General Motors Technical Center, which marked the point when Saarinen's career diverged from his collaboration with his father Eliel Saarinen. Eero had been leading certain design projects within the firm of Saarinen, Swanson and Saarinen before the Technical Center, and had been engaged in such important independent endeavors as his experiments in chair, structure, and house design with Charles Eames of the late 1930s and early 1940s, but his practice remained essentially subsidiary to Eliel's until the father's death in 1950. The Technical Center project allowed Eero's practice not merely to survive his father's death, but also to grow significantly beyond it, establishing a highly public, separate, independent identity. This identity was one that was recognized much more broadly than Eliel's own substantial professional reputation, beginning with, and thanks to the Technical Center project, along with the Jefferson Memorial project, which was begun at the same time.

As a number of authors have noted, Saarinen's collaborative approach with his clients was a key to the success of his projects with them: as Friedman puts it—'communicating the identity and meaning of the individual project,' by taking his cues from the corporate culture and identity of his clients. This collaborative method and tendency to vary his approach to style to express the nature of the project and the client, as opposed to the autocratic imposition of form in a project, was one that would later lead to mixed critical reception for Saarinen, although the reception of the Technical Center itself was almost universally laudatory. As his widow Aline remarked after the architect had died, 'the critics punished him often.' The architect Robert Venturi, who worked in the Saarinen office during the Technical Center project, encapsulated one key aspect of the objections to his methods in a critique of the firm soon after he left it, saying that Saarinen 'did not have a singular approach,' which Venturi took 'as a sign of weakness.' Saarinen's approach to clients such as GM was seen as pandering by some: for example, Manfredo Tafuri, the noted Italian architect, historian, theoretician and critic, derided Saarinen's approach as 'corporate advertising' and the influential historian, author, and Yale University professor Vincent Scully was at best lukewarm about Saarinen's approach, believing that Louis I. Kahn and Robert Venturi 'offered a much better way toward a reasonable future for architecture' than Saarinen's more eclectic strategy did. Despite this divided critical response to Saarinen's corporate work in his lifetime, the architect's collaborative and expressive method unquestionably made the architect one of, if not the most important designer in the American public imagination in the period: he was the architect who both captured and enormously influenced the post-war culture. The Technical Center was the project that created Saarinen's broad American stature and working method, and was deeply rooted in GM's own culture. In essence, it made Saarinen famous. It also caused his office to grow from a small staff to one of forty people, many of whom, including Gunnar Birkerts, Kevin Roche, John Dinkeloo, Cesar Pelli, Anthony Lumsden, Joseph Lacy, J. Henderson Barr, Olav Hammerström, and Venturi, went on to have extremely important careers as modernists. The Technical Center established Eero's identity as an independent, world class designer in his own right. It thus took his career beyond its early phase of its association with his father—in which Eero always stood to a certain extent in Eliel's shadow—to a nationally significant career ended prematurely in 1961."

I’m looking for some realistic career and business advice from people actively working in the industry or running their own studios.

I am a licensed architect who recently switched industries to work as a BIM Coordinator for a general contractor. Because of this pivot, I rarely touch the design or visual side of things anymore, and I find myself missing it. I have extensive past experience running renders, building complex models, and doing post-processing in Photoshop.

I’m strongly considering setting up a part-time architectural visualization business to run renders for clients after hours. Since I have limited free time outside of my standard 9-to-5, I want to see if this is truly worth pursuing.

Questions I have for this community:

Is this a viable side hustle anymore?

• With generative AI rendering tools rapidly advancing, are clients (contractors, small developers, local architects) still willing to pay a premium rate for custom part-time work, or is AI squeezing out the lower-to-middle tier of the market?

How do you compete in the market with cheaper overseas labor?

• As a part-timer based in the US (Washington DC area), my rates naturally need to reflect local living costs. Is it still possible to carve out a niche against low cost, high-speed overseas teams when you only have a few hours a week to give?

I'd love to hear from anyone who has successfully built an ArchViz side business while maintaining a full-time job. Is it worth the squeeze anymore, or has the landscape shifted too much?

Thanks in advance for your insights!

I love the look of classic Ottoman architecture, but aside from its ornate beauty it seems very practical to have upper floors that project out from the ground footprint, especially in places where land is very costly. Yet this is not a commonly seen feature in modern residential architecture.

What is stopping this design from being more widely used? Are there technical or legal limitations? Would the cost to build or maintain outweigh the added value of square footage and/or aesthetic? Why could the Ottomans do this 200 years ago but not us now?

A 3,000-square-meter religious building completed in 2024 in Julong Town in China.

At a height of 180 meters, it is Germany's tallest residential high-rise.

Total investment at around 250 million euros. Completion June 2020

Just read that the current design of Faisal Mosque was selected out of 43 proposals submitted in a competition. Is there any way I can have a glimpse of the other 42? Please guide. Thank you

hello, ive been thinking of studying architecture but im afraid that im overromantizing it..

i first got interested in it when i saw famous architects works and unique buildings. i love looking at concepts and sketches and building models.

however, i heard that its basically an ordinary 9-5 sitting job and looking at cad for 8 hours. and that very little part of the work is actually spent designing. this made me wonder whether i actually want to pursue it or not. am i just overglamorizing the work?