Architecture
The proposed cities of the future look anything but modern
The vision for California Forever, an American utopian city still at planning stage, is pure picture-book nostalgia of bicycles, rowing boats and tree-lined streets
Mother’s always angry: Jungle House, by Julianne Pachino, reviewed
But who – or what – is Mother? And are her exasperated warnings about ever-present danger exaggerated?
I’m not convinced Thomas Heatherwick is the best person to be discussing boring buildings
Architects are often snobby about – and no doubt jealous of – the designer Thomas Heatherwick, who isn’t an actual…
Fast cars, minimalist design and en suite bathrooms: the real Rachmaninoff
Fast cars, minimalist design and en suite bathrooms: Richard Bratby visits the composer’s starkly modern Swiss home
Policed conviviality: Serpentine Pavilion 2023 reviewed
As I sat down at this year’s Serpentine Pavilion, I overheard a curious exchange. ‘You mustn’t create art within art,’…
Why I admire Saudi Arabia’s monstrous new city
Sam Kriss on Saudi Arabia’s $1 trillion eco-city
Sixteen cathedrals to see before you die
There can be no clearer illustration of the central role that great cathedrals continue to play in a nation’s life…
How the quarrelsome ‘Jena set’ paved the way for Hitler
Frances Wilson describes a group of self-obsessed intellectuals united by mutual loathing in a small university town in the 1790s
Why Merseyside is the natural home for a Shakespearean theatre
A neglected little town in Merseyside is the natural home for Shakespeare North, says Robert Gore-Langton
The beauty of gasholders
Dan Hitchens on the beauty of gasholders
A play for bureaucrats: David Hare's Straight Line Crazy reviewed
It’s good of Nicholas Hytner to let Londoners see David Hare’s new play before it travels to Broadway where it…
Sex and politics in the precincts of St Paul’s Cathedral
In the tight dark maze of alleys that wind between the Thames and St Paul’s the pleasures of the living…
The psychopath who wrecked New York
Robert Gore-Langton on the man who wrecked New York
The genius of Iannis Xenakis
This year is the centenary of the birth of Iannis Xenakis, the Greek composer-architect who called himself an ancient Greek…
In praise of the Dome
We should learn to love our turn-of-the-millennium architecture, says Helen Barrett, starting with the Dome
Abstract and concrete: the beauty of brutalism
Nothing divides the British like modernist architecture. Traditionalists are suspicious of its utopian ambitions and dismiss it as ugly; proponents…
The Georgians feel closer to us now than the Victorians
‘The two most fascinating subjects in the universe are sex and the 18th century,’ declared the novelist Brigid Brophy when…
A keepsake – and to-do list – of Europe’s greatest cathedrals
In his new book on Europe’s cathedrals, Simon Jenkins begins with the claim that the greatest among them are our…
It’s a wonder any of our great country houses survived the 20th century
One of Adrian Tinniswood’s recent books, The Long Weekend, is a portrait of country house life in the interwar years.…
The Sunday Feature is one of the most consistently interesting things on Radio 3
The story is likely apocryphal — and so disgraceful I almost hesitate to tell it — but it goes like…
Absurd and amusing, solemn and scholarly: Charles Jencks's Cosmic House reviewed
An editor once told me: always look at the loos. It was remarkable, she said, how many grand cultural projets,…
Why I will miss our mighty cooling towers – and I suspect I am not alone
There are many examples of beautiful old buildings being knocked down in favour of undistinguished new ones. But not everything can be preserved in aspic, says Martin Gayford
The National Trust has lost the language of architecture
Press officers, breathe easy. This is not another column attacking the National Trust. Actually, I tell a lie. It is.…
Hugely pleasurable – a vision of summer: Jennifer Packer at the Serpentine Gallery reviewed
We need to talk about Eric. In Jennifer Packer’s portrait of her friend and fellow artist, Eric N. Mack sits…
The disgraceful decision to remove Liverpool’s heritage status
Unesco has cancelled the ‘World Heritage Status’ of the Necropolis at Memphis and the Giza Pyramid because a Radisson Blu…
