Barcelona's town planning is often lauded by architects due to its wide, communal street corners and diagonal thoroughfares. Modern architects are drawn to the city and several buildings in the city reflect the modern European style of design. Jean Nouvel's Agbar Tower is a large, egg-shaped spire with a three-layer construction of corrugated iron, glass and colored windows. Herzog and Meuron, an international firm with modern works in London and China, built the Forum building in Barcelona's El Maresme Forum. Other modern architects with projects in Barcelona include Frank Gehry, Norman Foster and Richard Meier.
Copenhagen features multiple award-winning modern design buildings. The most notable is the Royal Playhouse on the Waterfront in Copenhagen, which won the Royal British Institute of Architects European Award in 2008, 2009 and 2010. Forty percent of the building extends over the water and is complemented by oak wood decks, a glazed foyer as well as the theatre itself. The building was designed by Lundgaard & Tranberg Architects. Lundgaard & Tranberg Architects also designed two other RIBA award-winning buildings located in Copenhagen: the Wedge and the Tietgen Dormitory.
Berlin is teeming with modern architecture. The city boasts more than 460 buildings constructed in the modern style. The modern construction movement in Berlin occurred in four stages throughout the city's storied history beginning with its role as a Prussian city during the early 20th century, then as the capital of the Nazi empire before becoming a divided city under communist Russia until it became a reunified modern metropolis during the early 1990s. Prominent examples of modern European architecture in Berlin include the British Embassy, the German House of Parliament and the Max Planck Institute.
From the renovated factories that make up the KNSM Eiland to the slim, green-glass office building known as Rokin 99, Amsterdam has become a popular city among modern architects. The NEMO Science Museum that opened in 1997 was designed by architect Renzo Piano and resembles a ship rising and falling in the sea. In 2000, the world-famous Van Gogh Museum opened a new wing designed by architect Kisho Kurakawa that features an oval-shaped exhibition room modeled in the modern European style.
