A billion-dollar beanpole, a social housing revolution, a powerful memorial in Norway and the Tates wondrous watchtower our critic picks his 2016 architecture highlights
Jutting up behind Giles Gilbert Scotts stately temple of electricity like an aggressive brick Dalek, the Tate Modern Switch House is one of the strangest buildings to appear in 2016. And its power comes from its refusal to do anything that you might expect.
In an age when public buildings are supposed to be transparent and welcoming, it is opaque and brusque, a forbidding monolith that speaks more of a watchtower than a gallery of modern art. It meets the street not with arms wide open and a friendly smile, but with a fortified bastion wall of brown concrete, like a rammed-earth rampart. The entrance isnt grand and ceremonial, but takes the form of a low slot around the back, through which visitors shuffle like mice. The structure and materials are just as counterintuitive: the brick walls dont carry their load, they hang like chainmail, forming a kind of masonry veil draped over the chunky concrete skeleton within, only pierced by arrow-slit windows.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/dec/05/top-10-buildings-of-2016-oliver-wainwright