I mean, we have passed through 5000 years of different styles-Egyptian, Chinese, greek, Roman, Colonial, Modern, bauhaus…has everything been done?
Yes, just like music was completed when Iron Butterfly released the live version of "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. Everything since that time has merely been derivative of earlier work.
All literary styles are done. All painting styles have been tried. All culinary techniques tried. Hell, it’s The End of History!
Well, we don’t have Avatar-style hovering islands yet, but give it time.
I think that new materials like, carbon fiber and light transmitting concrete, will allow modern architects to do things previous architects couldn’t. The drive for green buildings will also result in new forms of architecture.
In the novel Rainbows End* by Vernor Vinge, it is speculated (by the author, via the plot) that buildings could be constructed out of superlight materials with microprocessors at the building’s joints that allow the joints to be adjusted continuously in response to wind and ground vibrations, making them storm and earthquake resistant to a degree impossible with current construction technologies.
If this were to happen, it would allow for building designs we could hardly have imagined in the past.
The novel’s based very much in what scientists and engineers are actually working on in hopes of fruition in the near future, so this particular idea is probably not crazy.
There’s also the fields of low gravity and zero-g construction. We’ve barely scratched the surface there.
Stephenson’s The Diamond Age described nanotech-constructed buildings that were basically extruded, with the floors following some standardized plan, and buildings being arbitrarily high, with floors added as needed. Thousand-foot-plus towers casually dotted the skyline of Shanghai and such, to the point where population density at altitude rivalled or exceeded that at ground level.
Well, science-fiction fans of course can dream up a lot of things that rely on yet-to-be-invented technologies and yet-to-be-identified resources. (Nothing against SF fans, here; I am one myself, at least for a small handful of writers.)
But I happen to believe that the future of architecture is going to have much more to do with the past–traditional methods and materials–than those dream suggest. Actually, I think so much traditional building knowledge and design principle has been effectively lost, that the most important “innovations” of the next several decades are going to be the rediscovery and reintegration of those.
Yeah, but what happens after they cut down all the trees, put 'em in a tree museum?
I agree with you. My point in launching the discussion, was that there are only so many ways you can design windows, dors, rooms.
Of course, if you go for the bizarre look (Frank Gehry) you might disagree-but I find his designs very impracticable (the roofs leak, there is much wasted space, etc.).
My favorite is Art Deco-I’d be very happy with a house that looked like it was in South Beach, Miami.
Architechure will only be complete when they make a Sim City style arcology that can shoot itself into space. I plan on being in one of them 
They charge the people a dollar and a half, just to see em.
See Bruce Sterling’s SF short story “The Growthing” for speculation about the potential of architecture-as-bioproduct.
I am thinking of doing more living buildings like this!
http://www.babybacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/funny-friday-8.jpg
But rest assured as long as there are young creative minds we haven’t seen the end of design…not by a long shot.
Like this?
I’m still holding out hope for a revival of expressionist architecture. At least, for the showy, monumental “High Road” stuff. (For the distinction between “High Road” and “Low Road,” see How Buildings Learn, by Stewart Brand.)
Interior spaces have a lot of room to change as we adopt new living patterns. For example, changing family roles and forms of entertaining have led to the rise of the open kitchen in the home. Who knows how our living patterns will change in the future?
What, exactly, has been lost?
Unlike the art of architecture, which changes in fits and starts, the science of civil engineering has been advancing in a fairly linear matter since Wren et al set down its mathematical principles 350 years ago. No scientific knowledge has been lost that I know of.
As for design principles - nothing has been lost there, either, as we have penty of buildings from the last 800 years still standing for everyone to see. Certain ideas may have fallen out of fashion, true, but we still know what they are.