A soothing Negroni for la dolce vita
The first draft of the famous story was called ‘A Martini as Big as the Ritz’. That’s not true, but…
Designing the swimming car, the Doodlebug and the Panzer tank was all in a day’s work for Ferdinand Porsche
The aggressive character of the famous German sports car, in a sort of sympathetic magic, often transfers itself to owner-drivers.…
Intelligent design
Peter Mandelson, in his moment of pomp, had his portrait taken by Lord Snowdon. He is sitting on a fine…
Stars in their eyes
‘The dominant narrative of space,’ I was told, in that strange language curators employ, ‘is America.’ Quite so. Kennedy stared…
Bursting the bubble
The conventional history of modern art was written on the busy Paris-New York axis, as if nowhere else existed. For…
God’s architect
Palladio gave his name to a style that spread around the world. But was it too successful for its own good, wonders Stephen Bayley
Zaha Hadid
Zaha Hadid is the most famous woman architect in the world. Would women or, indeed, architecture, be better off without…
City life
To gentrify or not to gentrify. That is the question, says Stephen Bayley
A narcissistic bore — portrait of the artist today
Two ambitious volumes of interviews with artists have just been published. They are similar, but different. The first is by…
Designer fatigue
Different concepts of luxury may be inferred from a comparison of the wedding feast of Charles Bovary and Emma Rouault…
Trailing clouds of glory
With Alpine wreckage still being sifted, this is either a very good or a very bad time to write about…
Cathedrals on wheels
Stephen Bayley hails the automobile – a miracle of technical and artistic collaboration – and mourns its demise
Athens
My first visit to Athens as a student gave me a set of impressions that the present crisis has only…
Public enemy
Stephen Bayley announces the launch of What’s That Thing?, The Spectator’s award for bad public art
The fine art of bluffing
My career at school and after was greatly enhanced by a series of books called The Bluffer’s Guide to….These gave…
Pop icon
The Coca-Cola ‘contour’ bottle is 100 years old. Stephen Bayley salutes a design classic
The art of design
Phaidon pioneered the modern art-book in 1936. The formula was: large format, fine production, exceptional plates, and essays by the…
Starry cast
The great municipal museums are products of the 19th-century imagination, evidence of lofty ambitions and cringe-making limitations. They are exact…
The only way is Essex
Stephen Bayley revisits the ambitious, and for its day visionary, campus that is Essex University for its 50th birthday celebrations
Beyond satire
Jeff Koons is, by measures understood in Wall Street, the most successful living artist. But he’s a slick brand manager…
The price test
If you wanted to find a middle-aged man in a bright orange suit, matching tie and sneakers, Frieze is a…
Magic bullet
Stephen Bayley explains why he has become addicted to Japan’s Shinkansen
Italy’s first computer wizard
Personally, I have always been sensitive about a credibility gap, a difference in prestige, between literary and visual cultures. More…
The quiet man
Shigeru Ban is the celebrated architect who refuses to become a celebrity. Thus, at 57, his career has run opposite…
