Shopping and star-gazing: the New Labour years in buildings

An antidote to icons ... the publicly funded Kielder Observatory (2008) in Northumberland is a gateway to the heavens open to all. An antidote to 'icons' designed by 'starchitects', and a model of low-cost public design
Photograph: Charles Barclay Architects

Most talked about ... the Swiss Re tower in London, aka the Gherkin, is one of the world’s most advanced skyscrapers. Looking like an upended dirigible airship, this Foster & Partners design remains one of Britain’s most talked-about buildings
Photograph: Dan Chung

Garden of delights ... rising from old Cornish quarries like a bubbling mass, the Lottery-funded Eden Project (2001) is a Hanging Gardens of Babylon for 21st-century Britain
Photograph: Jonathan S Blair/National Geographic/Getty Images

Hype and hubris ... the Millennium Dome in London (1999) was a contemporary take on a big top, with stylistic references to the 1951 Festival of Britain. Richard Rogers’s £45m design was undermined by the £1bn Millennium Experience housed inside
Photograph: John Stillwell/PA

Devolution architecture ... Edinburgh’s striking Scottish Parliament building (2004), designed by Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue, was a brilliant, and costly, way of signifying a new dawn for the country
Photograph: Murdo Macleod

Temple to shopping ... Selfridges in Birmingham (2003), by Future Systems, is a potent symbol of Britain’s extraordinary passion for shopping. Its voluptuous, colourful and decorative form was the best feature of the city’s redeveloped Bull Ring
Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

The fun one ... the 2002 Serpentine gallery summer pavilion by Toyo Ito and Cecil Balmond in London’s Kensington Gardens was hugely popular and quietly dramatic
Photograph: Eamonn McCabe

An old gem restored ... the splendidly revamped St Pancras station (2007) in London celebrates an unlikely marriage between Victorian neo-gothic and the latest in high-speed railway engineering
Photograph: Sarah Lee

Riverside renewal ... the bold and popular Lottery-funded development along the Tyne, with the Sage Gateshead music venue (2004), the Baltic arts centre (2002), and the fun Winking Eye pedestrian bridge (2001)
Photograph: Don McPhee