High-tech and the present

British architects such as Norman Foster and Richard Rogers made technology into architecture, and the City of London became a showcase for new towers.

Rogers’s Lloyd’s building of 1986 has its stairs, lifts and ducts on the outside. Postmodernism got its London works in Venturi and Scott Brown’s Sainsbury Wing at the National Gallery and James Stirling’s No 1 Poultry. Foster’s 30 St Mary Axe, known as the Gherkin, was completed in 2003.

Herzog & de Meuron turned a disused power station on the Thames into Tate Modern, opened in 2000. Zaha Hadid, whose office was in London, became the first woman to receive the Pritzker Prize in 2004.

• Lloyd’s building
• Sainsbury Wing
• No 1 Poultry
• Tate Modern
• 30 St Mary Axe (The Gherkin)