Awesome Buildings

Next month, the Marina Bay Sands Casino and Resort in Singapore will be the proud home of the lotus flower-shaped, eco-conscious and world’s first ArtScience Museum, designed by Moshie Safadie.

Scheduled for construction in 2012 and expected to be in operation by 2014, the flowing, $85M Port and Cruise Service Center in the city of Kaohsiung, Taiwan will be designed by reiser + umemoto.

Michael Graves’ steeply sloped, Dutch-style peaked roofs and dormers compliment the historic surroundings of the Louwman Collection, the National Automobile Museum of the Netherlands.

The 2010 World Architecture Festival has honored the ultra-linear MAXXI, the National Museum of XXI Century Arts in Rome designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, with the World Building of the Year title.

Designed by renowned architect Frank Gehry, the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas has two faces – one surreal, and one rigid, to represent the left and right hemispheres of the brain.

The glulam lattice structure of France’s Centre Pompidou-Metz twists to touch the floor at 6 points in a vortex of wood and metal. At night the building revels in the glow of its beautiful hexagonal design.

Pay your last respects to this defunct 450 foot-tall nuclear cooling tower located in South Carolina as it finally meets its maker thanks to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.