Worried that their dynasty would disappear, the Nasrid sultans built this Red Castle in a strategic location over the city of Granada, ensuring that it became a paradise lost, dedicated to art, poetry and beauty.

The sculptural power of the science center in Wolfsberg, Germany, in which the plan is a landscape - the landscape of Zaha Hadid's experience. The building is the realization of an imaginative world that we know vividly through twenty years of abstract images. It permits us to experience space in ways that never seemed possible before.

In 1953, while going through his worst life-crisis, French designer Jean Prouvé built "his" house. Designed in haste, it embodies his most innovative ideas.

Built in Kyoto in 1743, this traditional Japanese architectural masterpiece portrays a different understanding of architecture and building. It is a typical 'machiya' (Kyoto traditional townhouse) and was one of the largest built during the Meiji period.

Built in 1050, the Abbey is one of the foremost pilgrim churches of the Christian world. Rational, svelte and light-filled Romanesque architecture that flies in the face of cliches.

In the most ambitious of the Mussolini regime's buildings, the leader of Italy's modern movement Adalberto Libera attempted the impossible combination of fascism with modernity. It reflects Libera's great ability to design ambiguously in a space, metaphysical language that sits on a knife-edge between modernism and neo-classicism.

The Spa of Vals-les-Bains, designed by Peter Zumthor, redefines the very concept of public bathing, a mise en scène of water in all its aspects.

A block of flats in Barcelona, the Casa Milà is an extraordinarily sculpted work created by the great Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi. The Art Nouveau apartments are expressionistic, fantastic, organic forms with undulating facades and roof lines.

For the 1964 summer Olympic Games in Tokyo, Kenzo Tange designed two concrete gymnasiums which evoke a sense of movement. Famous for their suspension roof design, they are regarded by many as being among the most beautiful buildings of the 20th century.

Known for his strange and deconstructed forms, Frank Gehry designed this monumental, but chaotic and abstract-looking sculpture in 1967. Covered in titanium, the curves on the building have been designed to appear random in order to catch the light.

In 1928, Pierre Chareau built the poetic and remarkable Maison de Verre, one of the unique buildings of the 20th century. Inserted into an existing building, the views dissolve through semi-transparent materials, juxtaposing metal and glass, almost taking it into the realms of Surrealism.

By inventing the villa, a new type of housing, in 1550, Palladio sought to combine aesthetics with utility. This rigorous and innovative approach was to have a lasting influence on Western architecture.

The visionary architect Claude Nicolas Ledoux, one of the earliest exponents of French Neoclassical design, built a monumental factory for the king of France at the end of the 18th century. It is pragmatic and utopian, an aesthetic revolution.