International Women’s Day 2026: 13 amazing structures designed by women

Covered in 15,000 white ceramic tiles, Amanda Levete’s MAAT (Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology) in Lisbon’s Belém district features an undulating form inspired by the rippling waters of the Tagus River; the museum is located on its bank.

The arching structure is planned to act as a continuation of the promenade and is designed to allow visitors to walk over, under and through the building that sits beneath a gently expressed arch. During the first year of opening, MAAT welcomed over 500,000 visitors, making it more popular than any public Portuguese museum.

Levete, who heads the international award-winning design and architecture studio AL_A, is a RIBA Stirling Prize-winning architect and was awarded the Jane Drew Prize for women in architecture. in 2018.

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The Broad is a contemporary art museum built by philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles.

Designed by Elizabeth Diller, a partner of Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R), the design accommodates the institution’s need for public exhibition space and storage for its foundation’s lending library, which gave rise to its innovative “veil and vault” concept.

Rather than relegating the storage to secondary status, the “vault” is critical in shaping the museum experience from entry to exit. Its heavy opaque mass is always in view, hovering midway in the building. In addition, the “vault” is enveloped by the “veil,” a porous, honeycomb-like exterior structure that spans across the block-long building and provides filtered natural daylight.

Diller has been recognised on Time’s 100 Most Influential People list and the first MacArthur Foundation fellowship awarded in architecture.

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Hearst Castle, also known as La Casa Grande (The Big House) and La Cuesta Encantada (The Enchanted Hill), was the newspaper baron’s William Randolph Hearst estate in San Simeon, California.

The Mediterranean Revival mansion was designed by Julia Morgan, a project which spanned from 1919 to 1947. Morgan was the first woman to study architecture at the prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France, and the first woman to work as a professional architect in California.

Her training made her uniquely suitable for the ambitious Hearst Castle, making it into one of the most lavish and ostentatious private residences in the world, and one that successfully incorporated much of Hearst’s collection of antiques, works of art, and architectural elements. She also personally designed most of the structures, grounds, pools, animal shelters and workers’ camps down to the minutest detail.

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Berlin-based firm Sauerbruch Hutton won the competition to design the extension to an office tower which was one of the first projects to be built during the reconstruction of Berlin in the 1950s.

Designed by Louisa Hutton, who founded the practice together with Matthias Sauerbruch in London, she has been based in Berlin since 1993. The tower was completed in 1999, and Hutton’s design was celebrated for its eco-friendliness as the façade employs solar shutters and blinds, double-layer glass, and an ample amount of natural light.

The high-rise nature of the building is a throwback to 1950s-era office architecture while remaining forward-thinking with its technology. The new high-rise offers an exemplary working environment in its passive control of energy consumption while redefining an architecture in which the value of sensuous space is reassessed.

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Designed by the late Italian-born Brazilian modernist architect Lina Bo Bardi, the São Paulo Museum of Art is known as Bo Bardi's most important work.

Constructed from scratch on Avenida Paulista and inaugurated in 1968, the museum is built almost on stilts above the plaza so as not to block city views. The building expresses a mix of modernist and brutalist elements. Rather than hiding the massive concrete pillars that support the museum, Bo Bardi painted them a bright red to draw attention to them.

Another innovation was in how she opted for the art to be displayed. She challenged canonised standards of the Western art world by placing paintings on different themes and from different eras side by side on glass easels. She revealed her fearless principles of approaching history with a highly creative mind.

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New York-based firm WORKac’s Miami Museum Garage transforms the simple and often frustrating act of parking a car into an unexpected opportunity for social interaction.

Designed by Amale Andraos, principal and co-founder of WORKac, the design is a clever use of space employing the building’s façade. With just four feet of depth, the façade packs in a vertical series of public spaces, including a gallery for graffiti art, a children’s play area with a slide and climbing wall, a garden with a single palm tree, a DJ platform on top of the egress stairs, a lending library, listening lounge, fountain, bar, car washer/charger, and space for pets.

A few parking spaces are removed at the roof level to accommodate a small auditorium and “beach” space. A reservoir collects runoff from the roof to irrigate the garden. The public areas and connecting staircases are expressed on the façade as a series of mesh-screened tunnels, like an ant farm of urban activity presented to the street below.

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Located amongst downtown Chicago's famed skyline in Lakeshore East, the Aqua Tower, designed by Jeanne Gang of Studio Gang Architects, was a spectacular addition when it was completed in 2009.

An 82-story skyscraper which seamlessly blends functionality with elegance, the building's 140,000 sq ft base gives way to an awe-inspiring 82,550 sq ft terrace adorned with gardens, pools, and even a fire pit.

Gang and her team prioritised sustainability with features like solar shading, water-efficient systems, and a large green roof. Despite thermal bridging challenges, it achieved LEED-NC certification and boasts eco-friendly amenities for residents. 

Aqua's accolades include winning the Emporis Skyscraper Award in 2009 and earning a spot on the prestigious Illinois 200 Great Places list. Notably, it was the tallest building designed by a woman when it was completed.

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Amidst the arid Thar Desert in Rajasthan, the Rajkumari Ratnavati Girls School, crafted by Diana Kellogg Architects of New York, is a unique building blending innovation and tradition. Catering for up to 400 girls from kindergarten to class 10, the school offers education in traditional arts like weaving and embroidery.

Its oval shape was informed by the surrounding context and engineered to endure scorching temperatures up to 50 degrees Celsius. The golden sandstone structure resembles a protective embrace and symbolises resilience and femininity. Utilising ancient building techniques, including lime plaster and jali walls, it stays cool without air conditioning. This feature also acts as a modesty screen, allowing the girls to play uninhibited in the safe space of the courtyard.

This building was recognised with the prestigious AD100 award and the Honor Award at the 2022 AIANY Design Awards, among others.

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Futuristic and arresting, the Football Stadium Arena in Borisov, Belarus, by Špela Videčnik of OFIS Architects, takes into account the natural advantages of the location and the existing interventions within the terrain while maintaining as many of the existing trees on site as possible. The structure presents an illusion of enclosure from street level, only to unveil its open-roofed dome when observed from above.

Videčnik's vision marries modernity with a sense of harmony. Its exterior appears as a delicate, perforated textile draped over the stadium's framework, while beneath lies a vibrant public thoroughfare equipped with shops and amenities.  Above this bustling street, galleries cater to various needs, hosting offices, VIP lounges, and press facilities, a celebration of innovative design that redefines the stadium experience.

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Designed by Japanese architect Kazuyo Sejima together with Ryue Nishizawa, the satellite museum of the Louvre Museum was developed as part of the broader regeneration of a former coal-mining region in northern France.

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Rather than adopting a monumental museum typology, the architecture is defined by its low, horizontal profile, maintained at an approximate height of six metres to harmonise with the surrounding parkland.

The façades are clad in polished aluminium panels that produce a subtle reflective quality, mirroring the sky, trees, and landscape while allowing the structure to visually recede into its environment.

Within a restrained material palette, five interconnected pavilion-like volumes are organised along a gentle curve across the site; where extensive glazing and carefully calibrated skylights allow natural light to permeate exhibition spaces while protecting artworks.

The interior spatial arrangement is equally fluid, most notably in the long, column-free central gallery known as the Galerie du Temps, where artworks from different historical periods are presented in a continuous chronological sequence.

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Located on a former Soviet military airfield–a site choice carrying strong symbolic significance–French-Lebanese architect Lina Ghotmeh was part of the Dorell.Ghotmeh.Tane Architects trio (DGT) behind the Eesti Rahva Muuseum, which received the 2013 European Museum of the Year Award.

Conceived through an international competition that sought to transform a historically layered site into a contemporary cultural institution, the design features a long, horizontal volume that stretches across the terrain, extending the old runway into a gently rising structural form.

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Extensive glazed façades allow daylight to permeate exhibition spaces while maintaining visual continuity with the surrounding landscape. The sloping roofline reinforces a sense of movement and transformation, echoing both the site’s historical context and Estonia’s cultural evolution.

Inside, circulation flows organically through the elongated structure–a continuous journey rather than a sequence of isolated rooms that guides visitors through diverse programmed spaces that support exhibitions, educational activities, and public gatherings.

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Completed in 2012, the Heydar Aliyev Center has become a defining landmark of the Azerbaijani capital, distinguished by its sculptural form and radical departure from conventional architectural geometry.

Spanning approximately 57,500 sqm, the cultural complex–housing exhibition spaces, an auditorium, and a museum–embodies the signature design language of British-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid.

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Rejecting rigid angles and orthogonal lines, a steel space-frame structural system supports the building’s sweeping curves, creating the impression of a single uninterrupted architectural gesture that rises seamlessly from the surrounding plaza, folding and flowing to form the roof, walls, and entrances.

Meanwhile, the exterior is clad in thousands of custom-fabricated panels of glass-fibre reinforced concrete and glass-fibre reinforced polyester, visually extending the architecture into the landscape and transforming the adjacent public space into a gently undulating plaza that merges ground and structure.

Inside, the architectural language remains fluid, with expansive glazed openings introducing natural light into a series of interconnected spaces. The result is a dynamic spatial experience that reinforces the centre’s role as both a cultural institution and a powerful architectural statement.

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