Architecture
Skyscraper squats and a lesson from India: the future of British architecture
Squatting, gutting and retrofitting – and a lesson from India: Stuart Jeffries looks at the future of British architecture
A passion for pastiche: China’s Potemkin villages
Closely inspect No. 23 Leinster Terrace, Bayswater and you might notice the house has no letter box. Push at the…
The death of the Southbank Centre
The roots of the Southbank Centre’s current crisis stretch back to before the pandemic, says Oliver Basciano
Clean lines and dirty habits: the Modernists of 1930s Hampstead
With its distinctive hilly site and unusually coherent architecture (significantly, most of it domestic rather than civic), Hampstead has always…
Trump should build to last
Will the government finally stop giving the concrete finger to popular taste by erecting ugly, expensive and unsustainable buildings with…
From cartoons to stage design: the genius of Osbert Lancaster
‘Bigger,’ said Sir Osbert Lancaster when asked the difference between his work for the page and for the stage. ‘Definitely…
The man who built Britain’s first skyscraper
In 2011 Britain’s first skyscraper was finally given Grade I listing. The citation for 55 Broadway — the Gotham City-ish…
Geoff Dyer on the poetry of motels
It’s to be expected. You take photographs in order to document things — Paris in the case of Eugène Atget…
‘Bolection’ and how the language of architecture was moulded
A pleasant menagerie of words grazes in the field of architectural mouldings (the projecting or incised bands that serve useful…
How Camilla’s grandfather helped popularise the architecture Prince Charles detests
Was the Bauhaus the most inspired art school of all time or the malignant source of an uglifying industrial culture…
It’s ugliness, not beauty, that spurs us to action
Timothy Hyde’s Ugliness and Judgment: On Architecture in the Public Eye is not about why we find things ugly. It’s…
Notre Dame is an architectural nullity
Notre Dame is only important from a Shakespeare’s-birthplace point of view. Architecturally it is a nullity beside the cathedrals of…
A clear vision of Walter Gropius the man is hard to come by
Walter Gropius (1883–1969) had the career that the 20th century inflicted on its architects. A master of the previous generation…
Here’s what I want from modern architecture, explains housing tsar Roger Scruton
The creation of a commission to examine beauty in new building created a stir in the media, with the chairman…
Not as good as his immoral brother Eric but still wonderful: Max Gill at Ditchling reviewed
MacDonald ‘Max’ Gill (1884–1947) is less well known than his notorious brother, Eric. But was he less of a designer,…
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A short history of art deco – from high art to two-tone shoes, garden gates to Twiggy
On 10 September 1973 the 1930s Kensington High Street department store formerly known as Derry & Toms reopened as Big…
The Statue of Liberty is a deeply sinister icon
Immigrants to the United States in the late 19th century discovered in Upper New York Bay, after a long, uncomfortable…
Strawberry Hill revived
We can’t know what Horace Walpole would make of the continuing popularity of serendipity, a word he coined in 1754…
Is modernist architecture unhealthy?
Architects and politicians have a lot in common. Each seeks to influence the way we live, and on account of…
Modernist architecture only worked for the wealthy
It was Le Corbusier who famously wrote that ‘A house is a machine for living in’ (‘Une maison est une…
The problem with British mosques
My earliest memory of a mosque is being with my father in London’s Brick Lane Mosque. He was a member…
How lucky we are to have the Royal Academy
What is the Royal Academy? This question set me thinking as I wandered through the crowds that celebrated the opening…
The real stars of Kew’s newly restored Temperate House
The glasshouses at Kew Gardens are so popular that they can be quite unbearably busy at weekends. And why shouldn’t…
The public are quite right to love Monet
Think of the work of Claude Monet and water lilies come to mind, so do reflections in rippling rivers, and…
From Stansted to corporate swank: superstructuralism has a lot to answer for
Amid the thick of the Crimean war, Florence Nightingale dispatched a plea to the Times deploring the lethal conditions of…
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