Architecture
Why are Chinese students giving up on architecture?
I recently convened an urban studies summer school in a top university in Shanghai and asked the assembled class of…
Never pour scorn on Croydon
Much derided as a philistine wasteland, the borough has an extremely distinguished history and could serve as a microcosm of Britain itself, says Will Noble
India radiates kindly light across the East
William Dalrymple describes how, from the 3rd century BC to 1200 AD, India illuminated the rest of Asia with its philosophies and artistic forms through unforced cultural conquest
The beauty of pollution
On the back of the British £20 note, J.M.W. Turner appears against the backdrop of his most iconic image. Voted…
Forget monetary policy, the Bank of England’s greatest crime was architectural
In 1916 the Bank of England committed what Nikolaus Pevsner was to call the greatest architectural crime to befall London…
Jam-packed with treasures: the eccentric Sir John Soane’s Museum
The delightfully higgledy-piggledy display of antiquities, filling walls from floor to ceiling, may have been inspired by the Piranesi prints Soane also collected
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.…
