The world’s most Googled architects and designers

Who’s the most popular of them all? A list with many surprises and just as many confirmations.

1. Zaha Hadid Zaha Hadid’s first position is not a complete surprise but still it gives food for thought. Five years after she passed, the Iraqi-born architect remains at the very heart of the discourses on contemporary architecture, also thanks to the (hyper-)activity of her office Zaha Hadid Architects. The announcement of the arrival in Italy of the Hyperloop and the inauguration of Striatus Bridge – a prototype for a 3D-printed concrete bridge, exhibited in Venice as a side event to the 17th Architecture Biennale – have made headlines in summer 2021.

Zaha Hadid Hyperloop

Zaha Hadid Block Research Group, Zaha Hadid Architects, Striatus Bridge, Venezia, 2021.

Photo Chiara Becattini 

2. Frank Lloyd Wright It has already been four years since the large retrospective dedicated by New York’s MoMA to Frank Lloyd Wright, the master of organic architecture and the designer of the Kaufmann House and of the first Guggenheim Museum. His fame, though, doesn’t seem to be weakening, probably also thanks to the popularity and the continued success of the New York-based institution.

Frank Lloyd Wright Casa Kaufmann

 source Wikicommons / lachrimae72

Frank Lloyd Wright Guggenheim Museum, image from Domus 832, December 2000

3. Le Corbusier Le Corbusier è il grande sconfitto di questa classifica. Maestro per eccellenza del modernismo europeo razionalista, il progettista della Villa Savoye di Poissy e dell’Unité d’habitation di Marsiglia deve cedere il passo al rivale americano “organico”. Chissà quanta amarezza gli avrebbe provocato, proprio a lui che passò una vita a comunicare le sue opere ancora prima che a costruirle.

Le Corbusier View of the exhibition "Le Corbusier, Mesures de l'homme", Center Pompidou in Paris

Le Corbusier Pavillon Espirit Nouveau, Paris

4. Frank Gehry Frank Gehry’s architectures are flamboyant and over-the-top just as much as their creator. Since the times of Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum and of Los Angeles’s Walt Disney Concert Hall, the buildings by the Californian architect keep fascinating, shocking and raising debate. Case in point, the Luma Tower, the new shiny headquarters of the Luma Foundation, inaugurated in Arles in 2021, has certainly caused a stir. 

Frank Gehry Photo Christian Richters

Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain, 1997. From Domus 798, November 1997

Frank Gehry Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, United States, 2003. From Domus 863, October 2003

 Photo Richard Bryant/Arcaid

5. Oscar Niemeyer Snow-white, curvy, sun-drenched, Oscar Niemeyer architectures-sculpture have always met the favor of a large audience, even when critics took a distance from the Brazilian master, stigmatizing the reduction of his experimental attitude to mere formalism, style with no research. Niemeyer’s fifth position within this ranking seems to confirm his quintessentially pop inclination.

Oscar Niemeyer Headquarters of the French Communist Party, Paris

Photo courtesy of L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui. Domus 511 / June 1972; view internal pages

Oscar Niemeyer Niemeyer Centre, Avilès

6. Norman Foster Extremely prolific and always active in the contemporary debate on architecture and the city, Norman Foster earns a well-deserved sixth place. More that his presence here, what is surprising is the absence of his peer, friend and rival Richard Rogers.

Norman Foster Foster + Partners, Pavillon Vieux Port, Marseille 2013

Photo Nigel Young

Norman Foster Foster + Partners, Buenos Aires Ciudad Casa de Gobierno, Buenos Aires, Argentina 

7. Philippe Starck Philippe Starck is the very first star in the history of his profession, a skilled designer but also a communicator and a public figure in all respects. Forty years after he started his career, in the heyday of the postmodern age, Starck keeps designing objects that make the news. He also participated in the 2021 Milan Design Week, where he presented the outdoor furniture collection Serengeti for Janus et Cie.. 

Philippe Starck ANUS et Cie, Serengeti armchair

Philippe Starck Juicy Salif Alessi, 1988

8. Renzo Piano Renzo Piano is in many regards an atypical figure on the scene of world architecture. He stands out for his low-profile approach: he builds high-quality architectures, he actively participates in the debate on the transformations of the built environment, but he gently and decidedly rejects all forms of mediatization of his own self. This old-time moderation hasn’t prevented him from reaching the eight position in this ranking. Over the last few years, a lot has been said and written about his reconstruction of the Morandi Bridge in Genoa.

Renzo Piano Morandi Bridge, Genoa

Renzo Piano Renzo Piano Building Workshop, architects, in collaboration with Adamson Associates, The Shard, London Bridge Tower, London, United Kingdom, 2000-2012. 

Photo Michel Denancé

9. Antoni Gaudí Born in 1852, Antoni Gaudí is the crew’s senior, the most “ancient” of all the architects of the ranking. The public success of the master of Catalan modernism, a declination of Art Nouveau, is tightly connected to the rise of Barcelona, where he lived and built most of his major works, as a tourist destination.

Antoni Gaudí Palau de la Música Catalana, Barcelona

Antoni Gaudí La Sagrada Familia, Barcelona

10. Alvar Aalto Alvar Aalto has always been the most widely appreciated of the great modernists, also by non-specialists of architecture. Quite easily so: in fact, already in the 1920s he was advocating for a stronger organic relationship between architecture and nature, architecture and its user, while Le Corbusier speculated on machine-à-habiter, basically houses designed as cars. The Finnish master’s research themes are close to the sensibility of our age, engaged in the construction of new links between humankind and the environment.

Alvar Aalto Finalandia Hall, Helsinki, 1971 

Foto Alvar Aalto Musuem, Rune Snellman

Alvar Aalto Pimio Chair, 1931

Photo Alvar Aalto Museum, Martti Kapanen 

11. Tadao Ando Domus’s Guest Editor for 2021, Tadao Ando is the only Japanese included in the ranking. The strong symbolic component of his architectures, as well as his capacity to narrate them in openly literary and poetic terms, might have contributed to his success online.

Photo Studio Casali, Domus Archive

Tadao Ando Bourse de Commerce, Paris

Tadao Ando Teatrino of Palazzo Grassi, Venezia

12. Santiago Calatrava Those years are long gone when, in the 1990s and even later, Santiago Calatrava’s works were amongst the few to actually make headlines, and cities all over the world would line up to secure a snow-white bridge sculpted by the Spanish designer. Calatrava, though, remains a protagonist of internet searches about architecture, even now that other and more colorful architectural icons are under the spotlight.

Santiago Calatrava Station for the Lyon-Satolas TGV, Lyon 1994

Photo Paola De Pietri, from Domus 763 september 1994

Santiago Calatrava Church of Saint Nicholas in New York

Courtesy Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church 

13. Neri Oxman An architect and a scholar, Neri Oxman is the prototype of the successful contemporary researcher, who manages to profitably combine theoretical speculation and practical applications. With Mediated Matter, her team based at MIT’s Media Lab, she experiments particularly on materials, for instance perfecting organic composites that can replace plastic, such as the Aguahoja.

Neri Oxman 3D printing on glass

Neri Oxman 3D version of ancient death masks

14. Bjarke Ingels The student has become the master. Rem Koolhaas, the behemoth of contemporary architecture, doesn’t make it into the ranking of the 15 most clicked designers, but his former protégé Bjarke Ingels does. The Scandinavian architecture’s enfant terrible has become an adult and is now the prototype of a contemporary star architect. The announces of his projects and realizations follow one another in quick succession: the O-Tower in Hangzhou is amongst the most recent.

BIG, Bjarke Ingels Group CopenHill, Copenaghen

Photo Rasmus Hjortshoj, from Domus 1036 june 2019

BIG, Bjarke Ingels Group Oppo headquarters, Hangzhou, China

Courtesy Bjarke Ingels Group

15. Luis Barragan Colorful and sophisticated, exotic but soothing, photogenic and ready for Instagram long before the social media platform was launched: these are the works of Luis Barragan. It is not by chance if the Mexican architect earns, though by the skin of his teeth, the last available position of this ranking.

Luis Barragan From Domus 889

Luis Barragan From Domus 321

Which architects and designers are the most clicked on the internet? The ranking of the 15 most searched of them on Google over the last three months, in English and worldwide, confirms some assumptions but is also filled with surprises. When investigated on the basis of specific questions, the simple list of names lends itself to considerations of various nature. One can observe, for instance, the balance between the living (eight) and the departed (seven), the dramatic gender gap between two women and 13 men, but also the variety of their geographical origins, from no less than 10 countries: in order of appearance the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Brazil, Italy, Spain, Finland, Japan, Denmark and Mexico. A more daring exercise, though, would try to reorganize this ranking borrowing an interpretational tool from the history of architecture, that is the subdivision in currents, movements, trends. The mere summary turns into a sort of grand prix – of Formula One, not de Rome – an impossible race between pilots from different generations, made of unexpected over-takings, photo-finish arrivals, fulfilled promises and cruel disappointments. 

In first position Zaha Hadid takes the lead of the deconstructivist group, followed by Frank Gehry, fourth overall and the most searched of living architects. No sign of Daniel Libeskind.
Frank Lloyd Wright, runner-up, establishes himself as the most clicked modernist master, passing Le Corbusier, on the lower step of the podium. Oscar Niemeyer’s snow-white carioca modernism earns a good placement in fifth position, Alvar Aalto’s organic modernism barely makes it into the top ten, and Luis Barragan modern Mexico is 15th.
The great absentee of this cordate is Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Three architects that relate to the high-tech movement, or at least share an interest in the technological component architecture, are able to qualify: Norman Foster in sixth position, Renzo Piano in eight position and Santiago Calatrava in 12th position. The team is completed by designers Philippe Starck, seventh, and Neri Oxman, 13th, the evergreen Antoni Gaudí, ninth, the poetic postmodern Tadao Ando, 11th, and the superpop post-postmodern Bjarke Ingels, 14th.

The reasons behind this rankings are manifold and very complex, not necessarily relating to the designers’ quality and to the value of their works, nor this is not the place to elaborate on this issue.
Nonetheless, at the end of this first overview, one can suggest that it would be interesting to check the variations of these figures over time, to understand how they are impacted by the character’s fame on the long run, taste fluctuations in the medium term and the news of events directly involving them.

1. Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid’s first position is not a complete surprise but still it gives food for thought. Five years after she passed, the Iraqi-born architect remains at the very heart of the discourses on contemporary architecture, also thanks to the (hyper-)activity of her office Zaha Hadid Architects. The announcement of the arrival in Italy of the Hyperloop and the inauguration of Striatus Bridge – a prototype for a 3D-printed concrete bridge, exhibited in Venice as a side event to the 17th Architecture Biennale – have made headlines in summer 2021.

Zaha Hadid

Hyperloop

Zaha Hadid Photo Chiara Becattini 

Block Research Group, Zaha Hadid Architects, Striatus Bridge, Venezia, 2021.

2. Frank Lloyd Wright

It has already been four years since the large retrospective dedicated by New York’s MoMA to Frank Lloyd Wright, the master of organic architecture and the designer of the Kaufmann House and of the first Guggenheim Museum. His fame, though, doesn’t seem to be weakening, probably also thanks to the popularity and the continued success of the New York-based institution.

Frank Lloyd Wright  source Wikicommons / lachrimae72

Casa Kaufmann

Frank Lloyd Wright

Guggenheim Museum, image from Domus 832, December 2000

3. Le Corbusier

Le Corbusier è il grande sconfitto di questa classifica. Maestro per eccellenza del modernismo europeo razionalista, il progettista della Villa Savoye di Poissy e dell’Unité d’habitation di Marsiglia deve cedere il passo al rivale americano “organico”. Chissà quanta amarezza gli avrebbe provocato, proprio a lui che passò una vita a comunicare le sue opere ancora prima che a costruirle.

Le Corbusier

View of the exhibition "Le Corbusier, Mesures de l'homme", Center Pompidou in Paris

Le Corbusier

Pavillon Espirit Nouveau, Paris

4. Frank Gehry

Frank Gehry’s architectures are flamboyant and over-the-top just as much as their creator. Since the times of Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum and of Los Angeles’s Walt Disney Concert Hall, the buildings by the Californian architect keep fascinating, shocking and raising debate. Case in point, the Luma Tower, the new shiny headquarters of the Luma Foundation, inaugurated in Arles in 2021, has certainly caused a stir. 

Frank Gehry Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain, 1997. From Domus 798, November 1997

Photo Christian Richters

Frank Gehry  Photo Richard Bryant/Arcaid

Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, United States, 2003. From Domus 863, October 2003

5. Oscar Niemeyer

Snow-white, curvy, sun-drenched, Oscar Niemeyer architectures-sculpture have always met the favor of a large audience, even when critics took a distance from the Brazilian master, stigmatizing the reduction of his experimental attitude to mere formalism, style with no research. Niemeyer’s fifth position within this ranking seems to confirm his quintessentially pop inclination.

Oscar Niemeyer Photo courtesy of L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui. Domus 511 / June 1972; view internal pages

Headquarters of the French Communist Party, Paris

Oscar Niemeyer

Niemeyer Centre, Avilès

6. Norman Foster

Extremely prolific and always active in the contemporary debate on architecture and the city, Norman Foster earns a well-deserved sixth place. More that his presence here, what is surprising is the absence of his peer, friend and rival Richard Rogers.

Norman Foster Photo Nigel Young

Foster + Partners, Pavillon Vieux Port, Marseille 2013

Norman Foster

Foster + Partners, Buenos Aires Ciudad Casa de Gobierno, Buenos Aires, Argentina 

7. Philippe Starck

Philippe Starck is the very first star in the history of his profession, a skilled designer but also a communicator and a public figure in all respects. Forty years after he started his career, in the heyday of the postmodern age, Starck keeps designing objects that make the news. He also participated in the 2021 Milan Design Week, where he presented the outdoor furniture collection Serengeti for Janus et Cie.. 

Philippe Starck

ANUS et Cie, Serengeti armchair

Philippe Starck

Juicy Salif Alessi, 1988

8. Renzo Piano

Renzo Piano is in many regards an atypical figure on the scene of world architecture. He stands out for his low-profile approach: he builds high-quality architectures, he actively participates in the debate on the transformations of the built environment, but he gently and decidedly rejects all forms of mediatization of his own self. This old-time moderation hasn’t prevented him from reaching the eight position in this ranking. Over the last few years, a lot has been said and written about his reconstruction of the Morandi Bridge in Genoa.

Renzo Piano

Morandi Bridge, Genoa

Renzo Piano Photo Michel Denancé

Renzo Piano Building Workshop, architects, in collaboration with Adamson Associates, The Shard, London Bridge Tower, London, United Kingdom, 2000-2012. 

9. Antoni Gaudí

Born in 1852, Antoni Gaudí is the crew’s senior, the most “ancient” of all the architects of the ranking. The public success of the master of Catalan modernism, a declination of Art Nouveau, is tightly connected to the rise of Barcelona, where he lived and built most of his major works, as a tourist destination.

Antoni Gaudí

Palau de la Música Catalana, Barcelona

Antoni Gaudí

La Sagrada Familia, Barcelona

10. Alvar Aalto

Alvar Aalto has always been the most widely appreciated of the great modernists, also by non-specialists of architecture. Quite easily so: in fact, already in the 1920s he was advocating for a stronger organic relationship between architecture and nature, architecture and its user, while Le Corbusier speculated on machine-à-habiter, basically houses designed as cars. The Finnish master’s research themes are close to the sensibility of our age, engaged in the construction of new links between humankind and the environment.

Alvar Aalto Foto Alvar Aalto Musuem, Rune Snellman

Finalandia Hall, Helsinki, 1971 

Alvar Aalto Photo Alvar Aalto Museum, Martti Kapanen 

Pimio Chair, 1931

11. Tadao Ando Photo Studio Casali, Domus Archive

Domus’s Guest Editor for 2021, Tadao Ando is the only Japanese included in the ranking. The strong symbolic component of his architectures, as well as his capacity to narrate them in openly literary and poetic terms, might have contributed to his success online.

Tadao Ando

Bourse de Commerce, Paris

Tadao Ando

Teatrino of Palazzo Grassi, Venezia

12. Santiago Calatrava

Those years are long gone when, in the 1990s and even later, Santiago Calatrava’s works were amongst the few to actually make headlines, and cities all over the world would line up to secure a snow-white bridge sculpted by the Spanish designer. Calatrava, though, remains a protagonist of internet searches about architecture, even now that other and more colorful architectural icons are under the spotlight.

Santiago Calatrava Photo Paola De Pietri, from Domus 763 september 1994

Station for the Lyon-Satolas TGV, Lyon 1994

Santiago Calatrava Courtesy Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church 

Church of Saint Nicholas in New York

13. Neri Oxman

An architect and a scholar, Neri Oxman is the prototype of the successful contemporary researcher, who manages to profitably combine theoretical speculation and practical applications. With Mediated Matter, her team based at MIT’s Media Lab, she experiments particularly on materials, for instance perfecting organic composites that can replace plastic, such as the Aguahoja.

Neri Oxman

3D printing on glass

Neri Oxman

3D version of ancient death masks

14. Bjarke Ingels

The student has become the master. Rem Koolhaas, the behemoth of contemporary architecture, doesn’t make it into the ranking of the 15 most clicked designers, but his former protégé Bjarke Ingels does. The Scandinavian architecture’s enfant terrible has become an adult and is now the prototype of a contemporary star architect. The announces of his projects and realizations follow one another in quick succession: the O-Tower in Hangzhou is amongst the most recent.

BIG, Bjarke Ingels Group Photo Rasmus Hjortshoj, from Domus 1036 june 2019

CopenHill, Copenaghen

BIG, Bjarke Ingels Group Courtesy Bjarke Ingels Group

Oppo headquarters, Hangzhou, China

15. Luis Barragan

Colorful and sophisticated, exotic but soothing, photogenic and ready for Instagram long before the social media platform was launched: these are the works of Luis Barragan. It is not by chance if the Mexican architect earns, though by the skin of his teeth, the last available position of this ranking.

Luis Barragan

From Domus 889

Luis Barragan

From Domus 321