Light Pavilion within Steven Holl's vast complex of towers in Chengdu, China. Completed in 2012, the Light Pavilion includes huge beams of light entered by walking on glass suspended by steel rods. Peter Zumthor Swiss architect Peter Zumthor is a significant figure who works in visionary architecture. In his 1998 architectural manifesto Thinking Architecture, Zumthor discussed the significance of emotion and experience in determining successful architecture. He believes that a building's beauty is not in its shape, but in the sensations and emotions, it creates. His work was mostly unpublished because of his philosophical belief that architecture should be experienced firsthand. Related architectural forms Visionary architecture overlaps with fantastic architecture, utopian architecture, and conceptual architecture. Fantastic architectural designs are built, whereas visionary designs are not intended to be built. Visionary architecture is more individualistic in its creation than utopian architecture. Conceptual architecture, or architecture based on imagination and visions, dissociates the physical nature of the architectural design. However, visionary architecture gains its significance in the belief that unbuilt drawings and images portray the true meaning of architecture and design. See also Conceptual architecture Deconstructivism Fantastic architecture Futurist architecture Utopian architecture Additional sources Cooke, Catherine and Belov, Mikhail. Nostalgia of Culture: Contemporary Soviet Visionary Architecture. Great Britain: Architectural Association, 1988. Feuerstein, Gunter. Visionäre Architektur : Wien 1958/1988. Berlin, Ernst & Sohn, 1988. Lampugnani, Vittorio Magnago. Visionary Architecture of the Twentieth Century: Master drawings from Frank Lloyd Wright to Aldo Rossi. Thames & Hudson, 1982. Lemagny, Jean-Claude. Visionary Architects: Boullée, Ledoux, Lequeu. Houston, University of St Thomas, 1967. Reissued 2002. Sky, Alison and Stone, Michelle. Unbuilt America: Forgotten Architecture in the United States from Thomas Jefferson to the Space Age. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976. References External links Architectural styles 20th-century architecture 19th-century architecture Visionary artists Architectural theory Expressionist architecture Futurist architecture