Built as part of the 1851 London World's Exhibition to highlight the qualities of emerging technologies in glass and steel, the Pavilion was originally installed in Hyde Park, before being moved to another part of the town. Destroyed by fire in 1936, it inspired many other buildings that made lightness and transparency a plus in spite of the bulky architecture of the past.

The Art Nouveau complex, commissioned by the Belgian Workers’ Party, was distributed over four floors in an irregular plot and was characterised by maximum functionality and ornamental sobriety (unlike other Horta's achievements). The building was demolished in 1965 and replaced by a skyscraper, not without controversy at what was considered an architectural crime.

The 187m, 47-storey building that housed the headquarters of the Singer Manufacturing Company, a famous sewing machine manufacturer, was in the years following its construction the tallest building in the world and a strongly recognised landmark in Manhattan. Community efforts to have it recognised as a historical landmark were useless: it was demolished in the late 1960s and replaced by the current One Liberty Plaza.

The Beaux Arts style building, originally a hub in early 20th century New York and a community landmark, was demolished in 1963 due to declining rail transit flows. In its place there is Madison Square Garden and the current version of Penn Station.

The complex was designed by the master of organic architecture, here still influenced by the Mayan revivalism that he was also experimenting with in the same years in Ennis House in Los Angeles.  Having survived earthquakes, the timeworn building was demolished in 1963 to make way for the third version of the hotel.

The Pavilion, conceived for the 1925 International Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Paris, was a full-scale prototype of a standardised dwelling composed of mass-produced elements, which aimed to promote the benefits of efficient and inexpensive technologies to meet housing demand and the need for quality housing in cities. It was widely opposed by the organisers of the event who tried to conceal it because of the disruptive, revolutionary message and explicit disavowal of Art Deco that the Expo represented. Decades after it was dismantled, a faithful copy was reconstructed in 1977 in Bologna, which now houses an exhibition venue.

The large social housing project was conceived to meet the city's pressing housing need in the post-war years. In the period immediately following its construction, living conditions in the complex slowly began to decline into deep socio-economic and environmental degradation. The demolition of the 33 mammoth buildings took place between 1972 and 1974 and was accompanied by an intense debate on public social housing policies that regarded the housing complex as an obvious symbol of national failure. The demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe was one of the first demolitions of modern architectural buildings and was described by architectural theorist and historian Charles Jencks as "the day modern architecture died".

Designed by one of the pioneers of Californian modernism, the visitor centre at the site of the Battle of Pickett's Charge during the American Civil War in 1863 housed an 1883 cyclorama by Paul Philippoteaux and an observation deck. Due to high maintenance and restoration costs, the building was demolished despite public protests and the fact that it was considered a site of outstanding historical and architectural importance.

In the era of the economic boom in which Italy looked to the future with optimism and freedom sped by on four wheels, in the footsteps of the American way of life, the Pavesi bridge-type autogrill between the Bettolle-Valdichiana and Chiusi-ChiancianoTerme tollbooths was a point of reference for tourists, holidaymakers and commuters who savoured a moment of relaxation here. Autostrade per l’Italia is replacing it with two turrets, more functional, less poetic. A memory of a somewhat naive and happily dreamy past that is unlikely to return

The building on the outskirts of Madrid was an example of the balance between lightness and materiality: the articulation of the floors, staggered 45 degrees apart, suggested the image of an Asian temple (the building was commonly referred to as 'the Pagoda') while the virtuosic use of rough concrete with traces of wooden formwork winked at Brutalism. Not recognised as a historical asset to be protected, it was demolished in 1999 to make way for a new tertiary building.

This mixed-use (residential and tertiary) complex is considered one of the most representative examples of the Japanese Metabolist movement, which saw the city and society as living organisms in continuous growth and transformation, to whose needs only technology could provide concrete answers. The intervention consisted of two interconnected towers containing 140 prefabricated, independent capsules, each replaceable every 25 years. Severely degraded over the years, it was demolished due to the high costs for its renovation.

The mammoth precast concrete complex consisted of two buildings (10 and 7 storeys, totalling 213 flats). Conceived as a manifesto of progressive social housing in opposition to the rigidity of the Modern Movement, the Smithsons' project developed the theme of collective housing in close connection with that of public space (from the vast central open space to the distributive paths at height) as an essential hub of community life and sociability. Although authoritative voices were raised to prevent its dismantling due to its advanced state of decay, the work was demolished: on the occasion of the 16th International Architecture Exhibition, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London exhibited a fragment of a façade of the complex in the Pavilion of Applied Arts.

The Brutalist complex was characterised by a 9-storey concrete quatrefoil tower with oval windows, cantilevered over a 5-storey rectangular body. Used as a maternity centre, with medical stations in the central core and patient wards in the four lobes, the complex curvilinear structure entered building history through the use of early computer-aided design techniques. The building was razed in 2013 when the owners, Northwestern University, needed to locate new medical research facilities in the area.

At 417m and 415m high, the twin towers were the tallest buildings in the world when they opened. The complex, built with the aim of revitalising Lower Manhattan, was inspired by the 1939 New York World's Fair exhibition, called the World Trade Center, based on an idea of global peace pursued through trade (a vision difficult to realise and drastically disregarded by history). The story of their destruction, due to the terrorist attack of 11 September 2001, is sadly well known.

The complex in the centre of The Hague, in a rapidly changing area, housed not only the dance theatre designed by OMA, but also a concert hall and a hotel by other designers. The theatre was divided into three parallel programmatic zones: the stage area and the 1,001-seat auditorium; the central area with the rehearsal studios; the area of the offices, dressing rooms and dancers' common rooms. The theatre had a structure of steel beams and girders, using metal cladding with sheet rock covered with stucco, marble and gold foil. The roof had a self-supporting structure of a double layer of trapezoid folded sheet steel.

Donated by the French to celebrate American independence, the 93 m high Statue of Liberty has dominated the entire bay of Manhattan since 1886. Since the days when it appeared, for many migrants, as the first 'face' of the United States of America, the iconic monument has become not only the symbol of the city but also of the possibility of realising one's dreams.

The 38 m high soapstone statue rising from the top of Corcovado is par excellence 'the' symbol of Rio de Janeiro and the entire country: it depicts Jesus Christ with outstretched arms embracing the entire city in an ideal gesture, redeeming humanity.

Located in the bustling Merlion Park, the 8.6m high sculpture spitting water represents the Merlion, a mythical creature with the head of a lion and the body of a fish regarded as the mascot and national symbol of Singapore. A little further away is a second 2m-high statue depicting a puppy (also of a Merlion, of course).

The five prismatic concrete towers of varying heights (up to 52 m) and flamboyant colours are an effective synthesis of architecture and sculpture: originally conceived as a fountain at the gates of Ciudad Satélite, on the outskirts of Mexico City, even today these 'needles' stuck in the sky are a powerful territorial landmark.

In the park dedicated to John Fitzgerald Kennedy in the heart of Philadelphia, the bright red, winking sculpture was designed to celebrate the birth of the United States of America in the site of their founding and the spirit of the 'city of brotherly love'.

At the extreme western tip of the Bahia de la Concha, there is one of Chillida's best-known compositions and strongly representative of the city: El Peine del Viento, a sculptural ensemble composed of pink granite terraces and three rusty iron elements set on the rocks, intended as one with the wind, water and waves. On very windy days, the air passes through a system of tubes emitting a magical, surreal sound.

Located in the Igor Stravinsky Square near the Centre Georges Pompidou, the joyful fountain consisting of a 580 m2 basin and 16 colourful aluminium sculptures that move thanks to water jets is a pleasant attraction for adults and children alike.

Coherently with Koons' expressive language, the monumental West Highland terrier puppy situated in front of the Guggenheim Museum and covered with petunias, marigolds and begonias on a stainless steel structure makes kitsch an effective marketing tool. As well as of Bilbao, it is a symbol of 'love, warmth and happiness', according to the artist.

As part of the redevelopment of Cadorna Station and the surrounding square designed by Gae Aulenti in 1997, the sculpture is intended as a monument celebrating Milan: an allusion to the colours of the metro lines, the shapes of the city's coat of arms, and the 'sartorial' and creative tools from which the 'fashion capital' originates.

Located in the middle of the AT&T Plaza in Millennium Park, the bean-shaped sculpture clad in 168 stainless steel plates, with no externally visible welds, is inspired by the fluid consistency of mercury: the reflective surface distorts the city skyline and multiplies the play of reflections, capturing the attention and curiosity of those passing under and around it.

Thanks to the far-sighted vision of its administrators, between the 1970s and 1980s Jeddah activated a process of urban development with contemporary art at its centre: more than 600 sculptures, conceived by the world's greatest artists - including Arnaldo Pomodoro, Henry Moore, Alexander Calder,... - were placed in squares, streets and roundabouts with the aim of evoking a sense of wonder and putting the spotlight on the city as a place of cultural and artistic innovation.

The three 'peeing statues' - Manneken Pis (1619), his little sister Jeanneke Pis (1985) and the little dog Het Zinneke (1998) - form an iconic monument of the city. The works, placed at the vertices of an imaginary triangle in the historic centre, refer to an expressive imagery - that of the urinating figure - that evokes the concepts of fantasy, innocence and bravado and, in this case, also the city's welcoming values and its capacity for interchange and integration.

The complex, considered a masterpiece of Brutalist architecture at an international level and today in a state of decay, is composed of four main buildings oriented along an east-west axis and immersed in a park, which house the different functional areas: offices and management, a boarding school for students, the teachers' building and a school. The plan-volume layout is characterised by a rigorous modular scansion, emphasised by the exposed concrete structure with constant pitch. Particularly innovative is the choice made by the architect, in agreement with the Institute's educators, to abolish the traditional dormitories in favour of duplex accommodation.

Situated at an altitude of 330 m on Monte Grisa, the sanctuary is nicknamed the 'cheese' by the people of Trieste due to its triangular shape. The complex, from which there is a spectacular view of the city, is characterised by two overlapping churches and an imposing structure in exposed reinforced concrete.

"This building introduced into school construction - perhaps for the first time in Italy - the identification of architecture with the structure, in this case very complex in the vaulting system": this is how Castiglioni described his work, considered by Pevsner to be one of the best examples of Brutalist architecture and, according to the critics, not without references to the expressionism of Poelzig and Mendelsohn (from the dramatisation of forms to the design of the openings). The complex consists of two in-line volumes - one of which is arched in plan and façade - of three storeys above ground, arranged on a block marked by a sequence of curvilinear prefabricated reinforced concrete sheds containing the common functions. The façade is punctuated by shaped partitions and iron-window panes that curve plastically towards the top.

The church fits into its context by openly detaching itself from the surrounding residential buildings, thanks to its marked upward movement. The front, doubled in the image reflected by the pool in front of it, is formed by a single elongated concrete triangle pierced by coloured windows, and is reminiscent on one side of Gothic spires and on the other suggests the idea of a tent pitched in the neighbourhood. The structure consists of reinforced concrete walls with steel beams supporting a porcelain aluminium sheet roof. Next to the church there are the parish buildings and clergy residences, distributed in a semicircle around a garden.

Reducing the so-called Casa Albero to a simple summer residence would be reductive, because the work designed by a family of architects (father, mother and son) for themselves is not just a beach house but an example of experimentation with a new architectural language in the field of housing. The work was conceived “in progress” in order to be continuously transformed, while maintaining a constant dialogue with nature. The complex consists of three buildings of different types: the house, with a repeatable modular structure made of raw concrete, glass and red steel; the ball, a 5-metre diameter sphere conceived as an external appendage to the house; the three cubes, cubic spatial modules interspersed with semi-modules containing the services, bedroom, living room and kitchen, in less than 40 square metres.

The building overlooking a hill in the Monte Mario urban park is characterised by an exposed concrete structural grid composed of C-shaped pillars and beams defining the general layout and the proportional ratio of elevations. Opaque envelope portions establish a dialogue with the glazing on the main façades. The work was a backdrop for some scenes of Elio Petri's film "Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto".

Located in the area north of the railway that since the war has become the site of expansion of industrial and commercial activities of the city, the multipurpose complex was created to accommodate, in addition to services and commercial activities, mini-apartments for workers of the Livestock Market. The monolithic building, characterized by a marked horizontality accentuated by the alternation of reinforced concrete floors with those of dark brick plaster, soon became a "black hole" of degradation and crime. Starting from the beginning of 2000, the complex has been the object of a regeneration intervention aimed not only to heal the physical degradation but also to face the deep-rooted social conflicts of the area: the project has provided for the dimensional revision of the lodgings to guarantee a better usability, the settlement of cultural and educational associations, the requalification of the external public spaces.

The house for a Piedmontese cement entrepreneur is a passionate homage to concrete, cast in wooden formwork in beams and slabs and used in Vibramac cement blocks in the shells. The stepped progression of the volume, supported in the central part by a circular reinforced concrete structure enclosing an iron spiral staircase, creates a playful contrast between the gravity of the masses and their casual detachment from the ground. The brightly coloured windows and doorframes cast lively brushstrokes on the rough, grey elevations.

The building reconciles the designer's Anglo-Saxon brutalism with the historical context of Michelangelo's Porta Pia: the complex is characterised by reinforced concrete volumes clad with travertine panels that seek a dialogue with the colour scheme of the Aurelian walls and alternate with glass surfaces with dark bronze aluminium frames.

The building stands out with its provocative and disruptive character in the Nomentano neighbourhood, contrasting with the composed uniformity of the surrounding twentieth-century villas and buildings. The building, characterised by a sequence of overlapping and projecting volumes, evokes the image of a tree spreading its branches into the sky. On the outside, the structure reveals the internal functional division: the cubic basement with two underground levels, visible from the street, with the auditorium and library, the garage, the archives and the printing shop; the ground floor with the entrance hall and the large hall, recognisable by the full-height glazing on two floors; the first floor with the meeting room, cantilevered from the entrance; the two upper floors, housing offices, marked by a continuous metal strip that emphasises the change of function.

The building is a manifesto of the purest Brutalism, recognizable in the virtuosic and plastic use of concrete, in the rough surfaces marked by the wooden formwork and in the dramatic and vibrant articulation of the structural masses, in a tight dialectic between light and dark. Now overwhelmingly transfigured in spirit, the memory of the original architecture remains and, with it, the nostalgia for a design vision that knew how to look to the essence without betraying architectural quality and refinement.

The multifunction complex originally named Residence Porta Nuova is a representative sign of the architectural activity of the 1970s in Milan and strongly established in the city's historical memory. The reinforced concrete structure is marked by a pronounced horizontal scanning where precast concrete stringcourses delimit continuous steel and glass curtain walls. Park associati studio recently carried out a retrofitting project that interpreted the original language with philological correctness, without sacrificing meticulous attention to contemporary detail. Gioiaotto was the first LEED Platinum-certified building in Milan.

The district, commissioned by the Terni Acciaierie company to replace the previous workers' village in order to increase the density of housing in the area, and only partially realized, is composed of four three-storey concrete buildings, with articulated stepped volumes housing 240 apartments, common terraces and roof gardens. The intervention has been the subject of a historically relevant participatory design process that involved designers, developers and residents, called to express their voice, including the need for public and private green spaces, places for social life and separation between vehicle and pedestrian flows. 

The "red dinosaur", so defined for the cyclopean structure, the unusual shape and the color of the facades, is a residential complex in the Gallaratese district conceived as a utopian micro-city idialoguing with Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation in Marseilles. The work includes five buildings of different heights grouped around central common spaces of aggregation (an amphitheater and two smaller squares) and numerous pedestrian paths that highlight the search for a dialectical relationship between living space and public space.

Corviale is the neighborhood-symbol of the degradation of the capital's suburbs. The complex, extending its cyclopic dimensions to a territorial scale (it is called "il Serpentone", “The Snake”), hosts about 4500 inhabitants and is composed of three buildings: the monumental main slab – a single 986-meter-long body on nine floors – a second lower volume, parallel to the first, and a third body rotated 45°. Franco Purini said that "Fiorentino had a conception of living as a heroic movement and that he wanted his mammoth housing machine to be a kind of community that would regulate itself by making collective interests prevail over individual ones". Unfortunately, this idealistic vision has not been supported by the facts but Corviale – despite all social problems still existing – is still a place of life and an interesting case study not only in architectural but also socio-economical terms.

With its cyclopean dimensions, the complex in Rozzol Melara strongly characterises the urban landscape of the city. Conceived as a semi-independent settlement system equipped with all basic services and infrastructures, rather than as a simple residential building, the project consists of two L-shaped bodies, one twice as tall as the other, grouped around a central courtyard and connected by a system of covered walkways and collective services. The building, made entirely of exposed reinforced concrete, appears compact and unified by a certain monumentality, emphasised by the rhythm of the macroscopic pillars with a 15-metre pitch that define overscaled arcades.

The Basilica and Sanctuary of Madonna delle Lacrime (the Virgin of Tears), considered to be the largest pilgrimage church in Sicily, is the result of a design competition launched in 1957, intending to represent the importance for devotees of a miraculous event that happened four years before. The sculptural complex with a circular layout is divided into two levels – the basilica at the top and the crypt below – and is crowned by a conical concrete roof, 103 m high, surmounted by a bronze statue of the Virgin Mary.

The complex is characterised by a salmon-pink concrete body in the shape of a truncated, inverted pyramid with a rectangular base, housing the municipal offices, placed on top of a glazed volume that includes exhibition rooms and a theatre.

The fish market in Naples is one of the major examples of the work of Luigi Cosenza, a leading figure in the Neapolitan architectural scene in the first half of the 1900s. Adhering to the principles of Rationalism, the first example in Naples, the covered market consists of a large main trading room and a series of ancillary trading spaces organized along the perimeter. The impressive barrel vault rests on iron reticular arches while the vertical heads of the building and its wide slits are closed by Saint-Gobain glass-cement, in one of the first applications in southern Italy. Although the market is restricted and subject to recovery projects, with reclamation works in progress, recent chronicles report illegal occupation acts.

This work by Renzo Zavanella is a refined example of early Rationalism, expressed in the volumetric composition and the definition of the construction details. It was designed between 1931 and 1932 as a residence for the directors of an industrial complex and is characterized by some avant-garde solutions in relation to the typology of the interior spaces, such as the double-height living room and the arrangement of niches to house the built-in wardrobes, and to the technology used, like the insertion of an air gap between the two reinforced concrete walls that form the closures. Studies are still underway for the recovery of this precious architectural testimony.

Inaugurated with the name of the hierarch Costanzo Ciano, this colony could accommodate up to 800 children. The complex is part of a green area of approximately 60,000 square meters with a planimetric scheme based on rigid symmetry. The central body was used for distribution, while the side pavilions were for dormitories and service spaces. During the war, the building was occupied by the Germans and later fell underused until it was definitively abandoned. Between the 70s and 80s Marcello Aliprandi and Pupi Avati used the Varese colony as a set for the films La ragazza di latta and Zeder.

The Marxer Institute is a rare example of brutalist architecture in Italy, commissioned by Adriano Olivetti to house production and research in the pharmacological field for the homonymous company. The complex is divided into two main volumes, which housed offices, research laboratories, and the production plant, and an existing building with the canteen and other functions. From the end of the seventies, the socio-economic transformations led to several changes of ownership and progressive underuse along with degradation processes fueled by the action of time and by acts of vandalism.

The Foro Boario was created to host livestock trading, exchange, and exhibition. The structural conception based on the iteration of a horizontal and vertical geometric module generates a large, bright, and airy covered space, whose architectural quality has earned various acknowledgments such as the In/Arch Award in 1969, the interest of the MoMA of New York, and a relatively premature monumental constraint as an element of active qualification and an episode of extremely high emergence in the surrounding urban environment, defined in a totally new way. Once the city's project to establish an international forum collapsed, this cathedral, as it was called by many, fell into disuse and is today at the center of interest of the Lille multinational Leroy Merlin.

The Ufo Bar was a small, today abandoned, nightclub on the coastal road out of Salerno, shortly after the Arechi stadium and near a service station. The building designed by Giovanni Giannattasio has the shape of a spherical cap pierced by small portholes. Two oblique walls mark the entrance and, once crossed the threshold, it seems to enter some Tatooine tavern from Star Wars. Theater of the Salerno nightlife until the end of the 1990s, the Ufo Bar has ceased activity since the authorities affixed the seals after some illegal activities were found upon inspections.

The dream of a house by the sea on the shores of a wild coast and the meeting with a visionary architect led to the conception and construction of a futuristic building: a sphere in reinforced concrete inextricably integrated into the surrounding marine landscape. The Binishell patent convinces a couple, director Michelangelo Antonioni and the actress Monica Vitti, to rely on Dante Bini to realize their home on the island of Budelli, in Sardinia. The house is built in a single casting of concrete using air pressure. The conclusion of the relationship between Antonioni and Vitti created the conditions for gradually abandoning the structure and the inevitable deterioration.

The expansion of the San Cristoforo station was commissioned to build a terminal for the transport of private cars along the Milan-Paris line. The construction was never completed due to the client's constant rethinking until the definitive abandonment of the works in 1991. Today we can virtually read the masses of the ruined skeleton and imagine the transit of vehicles in the area in front. The debate on the future of this unfinished building is destined to continue in the years to come in light of the transformation program affecting the Milanese railyards.

It was the early 1960s when the entrepreneur Mario Bagno bought the land in the district of Consonno and razed the few houses abandoned after the crisis in the agricultural sector to build a new Toyland. Focused on the tourism industry, Consonno housed shops, restaurants, sports fields, a dance hall, a luxury hotel, an amusement park, a zoological garden, a medieval castle as an entrance gate, and the notorious minaret. In 1966, the first of two landslides that would have marked the future of this place within ten years, isolated the town, showcasing the consequences of excessive overbuilding and land taking. It was the beginning of a gradual abandonment that turned the themed village into a ghost town.