Architecture Cities
In some cities the buildings are the itinerary: skylines, campuses and experiments worth crossing oceans for. Architecture cities are travel for the trained eye — and the fastest way to train one.
An architecture city is one where building is the subject rather than the setting, and usually because a concentration happened in a short window.
Money plus a moment. Around 1900 Riga was the Russian Empire's third industrial city and the wealth went into building exactly as Jugendstil arrived — the result is roughly a third of the centre in Art Nouveau, most of it in the upper three storeys, so walk with your head up.
Or a single commission. After a fire destroyed its factory in 1981, Vitra rebuilt at Weil am Rhein by giving each structure to a different architect: Zaha Hadid's first completed building, a fire station, stands beside Gehry, Ando, Siza and Herzog & de Meuron.
Or nine foreign powers. Tianjin held nine concessions after 1860 and each built in its own national manner, so two kilometres crosses Victorian brick, Beaux-Arts stone and an Italian piazza.
Interiors are often the point. Several of these entries require a booking or a specific opening day, and the card says which.
Look up, and find out who paid.